Growing Up With Jean-Michel Basquiat | I Was There

there's like this yummy shell basquiah who is this profound painter and creator and then there's yeah michelle our brother jean-michel our parents son i marvel at his genius and the creativity that he had but then i really just kind of cherished those moments that we had and can't really believe that this is the same person my name is lisanne vasquez my name is janine harovo we were there during the life and times of our brother jean-michel basquiat joe michelle was born december 1960 in park slope brooklyn eventually we ended up on 35th street in the east flatbush section of brooklyn it was really a very old brooklyn neighborhood where kids would play on the street and we'd play hopscotch and double dutch and the ice cream truck would come down [Music] as a child i would describe jean-michel as curious mischievous playful quite the prankster so he would do things like leave bugs on our bed and make coffee and tell us to drink it and it may not have coffee in it we were kids it was summertime and there was some kind of a block party or something happening and there was watermelon on the table and our mom was cutting the watermelon up and so john michelle says to me he says you should eat the watermelon seeds because if you eat them then when you sweat you'll sweat watermelon juice all you have to do is stick your tongue out and you'll be able to just like drink watermelon juice all the time and my greedy behind i did it it was ridiculous so we three are the children of a puerto rican mother and a haitian father our father came to this country when he was less than 20 and he used to tell the story that he came to this country with the two portion of his pocket and couldn't speak the language and it was cold and then our mom was from brooklyn and puerto rican and so we grew up within the context of that and all that that meant in terms of what their dreams were for their family and for their children one of the things that our mom did was she brought joe michelle to the brooklyn museum to ensure that he got a membership card and so he became a member at a very very young age joe michelle had difficulty in high schools because he was one who just didn't really excel in kind of the traditional setting and i think that his mind was genius-like and he was just bored and so because of that he tended to get in trouble with his teachers because he couldn't stay focused or right around the time that he turned 17 was when he actually left our father came from haiti where you are successful when you are a white collar attorney doctor accountant or when you're in business just imagine being a teenager and telling your haitian parent that no i'm not going to be a businessman like you envisioned for me i'm gonna go and do this other thing that's risky that's never been done before and so he went off to go and do that so it was a very stressful strained and scary time for both of them [Music] i realized that things were starting to unfold for jean-michel when i went to a show that he had at the adena jose gallery he invited us all to this opening that he had and it was like filled with the kind of thing that you would see on tv where it was like a gallery and there were all these like beautiful people around and it was then that i really started to recognize that he was really doing well and making this happen for himself [Music] it is a huge misconception that joe michelle left home and never saw us again but gemma show came back he knew that he had to come back and let my dad know that he had made it and which is which is what he did he had had a show he showed up at seven o'clock in the morning and he rang the doorbell in a limousine tired with these huge dreadlocks that you know he didn't have when he left and the first words out of his mouth were by made it i think that was a very proud moment for him to show my dad that i had a purpose i was determined to do this and i did it successfully jean-michel loved movies and books and music he had a wall full of videos he was an avid reader joe michelle was a world traveler he was a collector of various things from other artists works to baseball cards and he just had so many different interests show michelle hung out a lot you know it was kind of part of that time period so he was at the mud club he was at arya he was at the palladium and you know he was frequently at mr chow and going to other art exhibits and and galleries you know it was a fast-paced life it was a partying life and it was fun if there was something that he was interested in he dove right into it you know doing the runway in paris for come together song being in a noise band really kind of immersing himself in food and culture and travel the djing rituals in africa [Music] i think jamichael was really trying to break through the barrier and the constriction of the way that black people were being portrayed at the time it was like there was one story for every black person at the time where it was like a kid grows up in poverty is exposed to certain things and he himself was a child of an immigrant father and he grew up in a middle class and upper middle class lifestyle and it frustrated him that there seemed to be this very singular way of looking at people living the black experience and he really wanted deeply to broaden that view and i think he also was very clear about who he was as a black man and the way that he portrayed himself through the symbolism of a crown he knew that he was royalty he knew that he was valuable his success also in a lot of ways took him outside of his circle and into another circle where he in some ways was alone [Music] charmichael was frustrated at times at having to defend not as much his work because his work is phenomenal what he did have to defend was himself he had to defend his identity he had to defend the image that people wanted to have where they wanted to pigeonhole him into for example being a black artist and he wanted to be seen as an artist he wanted to be respected as an artist he was very frustrated at the questions that would be posed to him like i remember this one interview and i don't remember who it was with but he defended the fact that he was an artist in residence versus the way that he was being portrayed that he was like this wild guy with dreadlocks in the basement in a basement where they were like throwing food down to him and so he was given this kind of dual role of introducing his artwork to the world and also having to defend his humanity the collaboration show between joe michelle and andy warhol for whatever reason received really negative press and the critics were not kind to the work and to jean-michel and some of the words really dug deep for him and really affected him mentally and he pulled away from a lot of people he distanced himself from andy and then shortly after that with andy's passing that really really hit him hard i called him to express my condolences he could really barely talk on the phone and so i think those two things just had him at a place where he felt alone i think that that's probably one of the things that hurt the most was that he was in that place and was feeling that way right around the time that he passed away you know for years afterwards i would think you know if he could have just you know seen just kind of seen himself around that corner he had a family and we all loved each other very very much and we all still do ultimately you know we lost a brother and our parents lost the sun and that's very tough to live through it has been humbling and mind-blowing to see people from all walks of life from all over the world who have all of these stories about their own struggles with their own identity and then having discovered this artist named jean-michel basquiat and what that did for them or how that has impacted them for me the best thing is knowing that joe michelle is proud and smiling and happy and seeing that we are making sure that his voice is brought to a younger audience and making sure that his work is being seen by those who may not have the opportunity to get to a museum who may have never been to a museum but are interested in seeing work of someone that looks like them [Music] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 870,787

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, basquiat, basquiat interview, basquiat documentary, jean michel basquiat, basquiat movie, basquiat pentagon, basquiat fortnite, basquiat art, basquiat death, jean michel basquiat documentary, basquiat and andy warhol collaboration

Id: S-kYompsyLU

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022