Beginnings: The Howl Arts Podcast

Talking Basquiat the Teenage Years

The great iconic artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is remembered by his friends who knew him when, as a teenager, he first burst upon the Downtown New York scene as Samo and began to make the artworks that sell for millions of dollars today. Sara Driver’s movie Boom for Real is the jumping off point for a conversation about Basquiat and New York in the 80s with “Beginnings” host and Paper magazine founder David Hershkovits, Driver, Alexis Adler, Felice Rosser and Lee Quinones.

This talk was Howl! Happening's key exhibition event for "Zeitgeist: The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat" a lively discussion about the times and artists in the exhibition. First-hand, and up close and personal, our panel of artists was in the midst of the development of a scene that has produced some of the most influential creators of our time. These artists present an unvarnished “realness” characteristic of the times—intersecting with the public’s avid interest it has pushed whole new generations to appreciate (and long for) that lost, raw and anarchically free era.
Artwork: Fight Tyranny In All Forms by Walter Robinson

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Carlo McCormick is more than a cultural critic and curator. He’s a seminal figure in the evolution of the Downtown art scene where he’s lived for more than 40 years. Championing work from marginal communities, he’s written hundreds of catalogue essays about contemporary artists and contributed to Paper, the East Village Eye, Juxtapoz and many other publications and in the process become perhaps the world’s foremost authority on street art and graffiti. Here he talks with “Beginnings" host and Paper magazine founder David Hershkovits.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat didn’t know how to play an instrument, but that didn’t stop him from asking Michael Holman to join him in starting up a band. Called Gray, they created an improvised collage of sounds more in tune (or out of tune) with the avant-garde than with rap music which had arrived as the new pop sound. Holman talks with “Beginnings" host and Paper magazine founder David Hershkovits about his days with Basquiat and GOD — the Good Old Days — when New York City was burning down physically and blowing up creatively at the same time.

Michael is an artist, writer, avant-garde musician, hip hop impresario and filmmaker as well as Early 1980s, Downtown Scene "subculturalist" best known as the screenwriter of the film Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel and released by Miramax Films, host of the short-lived hip hop music program Graffiti Rockand a founding member, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, of the experimental rock band Gray.

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