Widow Basquiat (Canons): A Memoir

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Basquiat fans, be prepared. It is hard to excuse the many examples of his selfcenteredness, the waste of everything from food to Armani suits and his nasty treatment of people who cared for him. A runaway from an unhappy home in Canada, Suzanne first met Jean-Michel in a bar on the Lower East Side in 1980. Thus began a tumultuous and passionate relationship that deeply influenced one of the most exceptional artists of our time. That time, for the first time, he also talked about his childhood. He told me how he had always been in trouble and had gone to so many different schools. He also told me about the time he had gone to live in Puerto Rico with his father, when he was eight and after his parents were divorced.

Born in 1960 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Clement moved in 1961 with her family to Mexico City, where she later attended Edron Academy. She moved to the United States to finish high school at Cranbrook Kingswood School, before studying English Literature and Anthropology at New York University. She received her MFA from the University of Southern Maine. [3] Suzanne Mallouk, M.D. is a painter, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in New York City. She is best known for being an East Village artist in the 1980s and for her relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat. This relationship is portrayed in the book, Widow Basquiat: A Memoir , written by Jennifer Clement. In 2015, Vogue magazine listed Basquiat and Mallouk amongst “ The 21 Most Stylish Art World Couples of All Time.” Several of Clement’s works have been adapted for the stage. Her novel on the mistreatment of servants in Mexico, A True Story Based on Lies, was staged in France by the Traits de Marque Company and in Mexico by The National Theatre of Mexico and adapted by Ximena Escalante. Ados Teatro in Spain is currently adapting Prayers for the Stolen for the stage and the BBC is creating a 5-episode radio play of Prayers for the Stolen with an adaptation by Jeff Young.She is the co-director and founder, with her sister Barbara Sibley, of the San Miguel Poetry Week. Clement lives in Mexico City, Mexico. Jean always did drugs, he never stopped. Whenever he went to Europe or Japan or any new place you could count on it that in a couple of hours upon arriving he knew where to buy what he wanted. It was like he had a radar for it. Once when he came to Canada to get me, within five minutes he was off on my brother’s motorcycle buying drugs. A beautifully evocative, poetic memoir … Basquiat was aware of the criteria with which posterity would judge him. Widow Basquiat should be part of those criteria.”– The Herald Apart from her relationship to Basquiat, Mallouk's own story is one worthy of being read. With heartbreaking honesty, she shares with us both her own personal demons as well as intimate moments spent with Basquiat, the good, the bad, and indeed the ugly. In comes, Jennifer Clements’s book Widow Basquiat, a very personal accounting of the relationship of her friend Suzanne Mallouk longtime lover of Basquiat’s, and it reads like porn. Not just any salacious sexy porn, but art porn. Not the stuff with all the nudity and sex, artists call that art.

It was clear that his sexual interest was not monochromatic. It did not rely on visual stimulation, such as a pretty girl. It was a very rich multi chromatic sexuality. He was attracted to people for all different reasons. They could be boys, girls, thin, fat, pretty, ugly. It was, I think, driven by intelligence. He was attracted to intelligence more than anything and to pain. He was very attracted to people who silently bore some sort of inner pain as he did, and he loved people who were one of a kind, people who had a unique vision of things. Mallouk is darker and less lyrical. Sometimes it feels as though her account is at odds with Clement’s. The facts are the same but Clement’s point of view, imbued with less emotion than Mallouk’s, seems more reliable. Toward the end of the book Clement begins to appear as a character named Jennifer Clement who has drinks with her friend Suzanne and wanders the city with her until sunrise. However…A love story this is not…If you are looking for a heart wrenching love story that will bring tears to your eyes and run home and kiss your significant other…

INSECURE ARTIST

Widow Basquiat" is a mixture of longer quotes taken from interviews Clement conducted with Mallouk and episodes written in the third person that the author renders in her typical poetic style. The result is a very moving text that portrays the complex relationship between Mallouk and Basquiat and thus allows glimpses into the contradictory character that was Jean-Michel Basquiat. We meet two people who deeply love each other, but who are also two junkies in a toxic relationship - and the whole story unfolds during Basquiat's steep rise to the very top of the international art scene and lasts in all its glorious (and often not-so-glorious) turbulence until his death of a heroin overdose in 1988.