New York´s New Wave

Jean-Michel Basquiat and the curator Diego Cortez met for the first time at the Mudd Club in Downtown Manhattan in 1979. Two years later, Cortez curated the group exhibition New York/New Wave at the city’s P.S.1. The opening night saw the writing of art history: The exhibition was a blockbuster success and opened up the New York art scene to the then 20-year-old Basquiat. In its exhibition Basquiat. Boom for Real, the SCHIRN has reconstructed the arrangement of the works from that time, true to the original.

The New Wave, the experimental downtown culture of Manhattan, a symbiosis of music, film, performance and art, reflected the pulse of the time, charging Cortez’s exhibition with energy. The avant-garde movement was formed of a group of creative, rebellious and self-taught artists – qualities that Basquiat was also happy to use in describing himself. The interest in this frenetic and socially critical art of the mid-1970s and early 1980s spilled over from the streets into the galleries of New York.

Diego Cortez and Jean-Michels Basquiats first encounter: on the dance floor of the Mudd Club

It was a time of rebellion, of experimentation and of artistic freedom. New York may have been heading for bankruptcy, but the underground scene didn’t let this spoil the mood. On the contrary: From this dearth it drew a creative energy that captivated Diego Cortez, too. At that time the young curator was spending a lot of time among the circles of No Wave filmmakers and musicians, such as John Lurie, Scott and Beth B and Lydia Lunch. As a co-founder of the Mudd Club, which was originally intended as a Punk club but whose rooms later served as exhibition spaces and gallery areas for artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Cortez met Basquiat on the dance floor in 1979. 

In the same breath, Basquiat also created the promotional signs for the exhibition. These included the prominent Jimmy Best and the graffiti “NEW YORK NEWAVE” sprayed onto a metal plate, which hung in the corridor close to the exhibition entrance. He not only replaced the poster advertising, but ultimately even advanced to the point of being the defining statement and trademark of the event.

An explosive success with resonance

During the exhibition period, one after another gallery owners and collectors like Annina Nosei, Emilio Mazzoli and Bruno Bischofberger became aware of the young Jean-Michel Basquiat, as the news spread like wildfire. At the time Nosei, a gallery owner, was known for representing international contemporary artists like Francesco Clemente, David Salle and Sandro Chia. She signed a contract with Basquiat, donating not only paint and canvases, but also providing the artist with the cellar of her gallery at 100 Prince Street in SoHo so he could use it as a studio.

In 1982, in his first US solo exhibition at the Annina Nosei Gallery, Basquiat’s works sold out in one night. This was followed shortly afterwards by a successful solo exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, West Hollywood, as well as the ARTFORUM cover story The Radiant Child by writer and art critic Rene Ricard. It was from that point that Basquiat’s career really took off. A year later the painter went down in history as the youngest participating artist in Documenta 7, and during the course of his life he became a cult figure.