<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Inscribed</a> by early Basquiat champion &amp; historic downtown art scene critic and curator, Glenn O’Brien, New York Beat brilliantly documents the production of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Downtown%2081&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Downtown 81</a>, director Edo Bertoglio's seminal take of New York's Downtown scene, featuring a turn, 19 year old J<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=ean-Michel%20Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ean-Michel Basquiat</a> as semi-biographical protagonist.<ul><li>Glenn O'Brien (American).</li><li>Photographs by Bertoglio and Maripol.</li><li>Tokyo: Petit Grand Publishing, Inc., 2001.</li><li>112 pages.</li><li>Hardcover book with dust wrapper.&nbsp;</li><li>Reverse of interior jacket forms a striking vertical poster featuring Basquiat's portrait.</li><li>Text in English and Japanese.</li></ul> "Shot as New York Beat in 1980-1981 but completed for release only last year, Downtown 81 emerges as a nostalgic portrait of pre-Giuliani Manhattan, an unruly place full of garbage, graffiti, rubble-strewn lots, unlicensed after-hours clubs and highly idealistic kids eager to make their mark as avant-garde artists and musicians. The film's central figure is Jean, a young Bohemian engagingly played by a not yet famous Jean-Michel Basquiat. Jean survives mainly by relying on the worldwide network of hip: there will always be another bar to go to, another gig to Crash, another wealthy European to write a check, another gorgeous model in a Cadillac convertible to give him a ride home. The script, by the rock critic Glenn O'Brien, also the film's co-producer, follows the basic day-in-the-life format, beginning with Jean's release from a hospital. Jean returns to his Alphabet City tenement to find an angry landlord demanding his back rent, and departs with a painting he hopes to sell. The day brings many disappointments but also many fortuitous encounters. He meets assorted new-wave musicians (Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Tuxedomoon, James White and the Blacks, DNA, the Plastics, and Walter Steding, most of whom perform); go-go dancers; and street people, among them Deborah Harry, who plays a bag lady with magical powers. It's as a documentary that Downtown 81 is most successful, particularly at those moments when the somewhat unfocused filmmaking allows us to look past the foreground characters and catch glimpses of a vanished cityscape: the pornography shops and grind houses of West 42nd Street, the greasy spoons and outlet stores of East 14th Street, the labyrinthine interior of the Mudd Club in what was then the largely uncharted territory south of Canal Street." (New York Times, 7/13/01) Glenn O'Brien, an American writer and art/fashion critic, was a close friend, confidante and early champion of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

New York Beat: Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown 81

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basquiat</a> created this impossibly rare printed flyer to advertise a band performance within his feature acted <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/collectibles/vintage-poster/film" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">film</a>: Downtown 81 / New York Beat in 1980.<ul><li>After Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>The flyer with text and imagery by Basquiat, promotes a segment performance by Kid Creole and the Coconuts at The Rock Lounge: 285 West Broadway, New York, December 15th, 1980.</li><li>Offset printed flyer.</li><li>Accompanied by a letter of provenance.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> A much historical work, much notably exhibited and cataloged as part of, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music (October 2022 - February 2023) &amp; sister show at the Paris Philharmonic (March - July 2023). ‘In 1980, writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a graffiti innovator and noise music artist who’d just begun to exhibit his paintings, hit the streets of lower Manhattan to make a movie about the bombed-out bohemia they lived and breathed. Left unfinished due to assorted legal and financial issues until it was fully assembled for release in 2000,&nbsp;Downtown 81&nbsp;follows Basquiat, a naturally compelling screen presence, as he tries to hawk a painting (one of the artist’s own first works) while hustling for a place to sleep. So what was meant to be a document of its time instead became a window into a long-lost world of life on the margins and creative ferment—and it feels especially potent today, when NYC had transformed into an artless ghost town, before escalating racial injustices brought people back to the streets. The film features appearances by John Lurie, Fab 5 Freddy, and Debbie Harry; musical performances by DNA, James White and the Blacks, and Kid Creole and the Coconuts; and, most remarkable of all, a portrait of a more innocent Manhattan in all its mangy glory.’ (Metrograph)

Downtown 81 / New York Beat Movie Music Performance Poster

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