Description
Few artists have become more mythologized than Jean-Michel Basquiat, but Downtown 81 catches him before the mythology hardened into history. Originally filmed in 1980–81 and released years later, the movie follows a young Basquiat moving through the decaying, electric landscape of Lower Manhattan. The photographs gathered here by Edo Bertoglio and Maripol document that same world: abandoned buildings, graffiti-covered streets, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and the creative chaos that defined downtown New York at the dawn of the 1980s.
What makes this volume especially compelling is that it functions as both film companion and historical document. Glenn O’Brien’s text, Bertoglio’s photographs, and Maripol’s visual sensibility preserve a moment when Basquiat was still becoming Basquiat. The result is less an art book than a time capsule of a vanished city—a New York populated by artists, punks, musicians, hustlers, and dreamers before galleries, auctions, and seven-figure prices transformed the narrative.
A beautiful book documenting one of the most influential artists and creative scenes of the late twentieth century.
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