LOS ANGELES — In the fall of 1982, Jean-Michel Basquiat was living at art dealer Larry Gagosian's Venice Beach home, making swarms of new paintings in his private wing of the house. Gagosian had been "electrified" by the 21-year-old artist's work at New York's Annina Nosei Gallery about a year earlier. So he and Nosei collaborated on Basquiat's first West Coast exhibition, at Larry Gagosian Gallery, in the spring of 1982 — after which Gagosian invited the artist to move into his Market Street house so he could create new paintings for a second L.A. show in 1983.
When he wasn't working, Basquiat loved to shop for clothes at the high-end Maxfield Blue in what's now West Hollywood. But the New York artist didn't drive and Gagosian had temporarily lost his license, he says. So Basquiat's girlfriend at the time, a not-yet-famous singer named Madonna, then visiting from New York, drove the three of them around town.
Basquiat bought expensive suits at Maxfield Blue, but he was so intent on getting back to painting that he often didn't wait for the fashion boutique to finish tailoring them. He'd race home, pins still affixed to his new suit cuffs, and paint voraciously — still dressed in the suit. By the end of the day it was paint-splattered and ruined, as Gagosian recalls. But the works were incredible.
