I’ve lived in New York City’s East Village for many decades, the very neighborhood where much of the action in Anthony McCarten’s currently running Broadway play, The Collaboration, takes place, and where art-world legends Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) — here channeled by actors Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope — could frequently be seen roaming the streets. Just reading for weeks on end about McCarten’s drama working its way from London’s Old Vic to Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater (despite the play’s mixed reviews), had me lusting to return to the 60s and 70s and early 80s (the pre-AIDS days) where all of the happening people, and those that actually believed they were happening, gathered to play, display, and get laid at Max’s Kansas City, the Chelsea Hotel, the Fillmore East, and Studio 54, to name but a few of the then city’s more popular hotspots.
The play opens, with a story-setting prologue if you will, at the Zurich gallery of Bruno Bischofberger (Erik Jensen), where he is showing Andy the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquait. It seems that Bischofberger, who also represents the up-and-coming Basquiat, is hell-bent on by pairing the work of both artists in what he is sure would be “the greatest exhibition ever in the history of art.”
Though the timing was perfect, as the sales of the 56-year-old Warhol, who hadn’t lifted a paint brush in decades, were at a low ebb, and the 24-year-old, frenetic, jazz-loving Basquiat’s paintings were selling like hotcakes and were all the rage, both artists had to be tricked by Bischofberger into collaborating, as Warhol didn’t get his co-hort’s work, which he described as, “busy paintings with skulls and grave stones everywhere were bleak. All these words and symbols. What’s it all mean? What’s he trying to say? They're so ugly and angry and yeah, well they’re kinda violent. I’d be careful, he’s really in trouble, I think.”
And, as far as Basquait, Warhol was old hat. “Does anyone really care about Warhol anymore? All that fag silk screen stuff” he quips. Of course, money won the day, and the crowd-pleasing show, which boosted the sales of both artists, opened in NYC at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in September 1985.
Jumping forward a couple of years at the play’s end, and just before the heroin overdose death of Basquiat and Warhol’s botched gallbladder operation, we find ourselves at Sotheby’s. With projected images of the Collaboration Paintings flashing by, we listen to a real-life recording of their auctioneer. “I’m going to start the bidding here” he says. 57 million dollars, 65 million dollars on the telephone…New bidder, 91 million dollars now…the hammer is up sir and selling for 98 million dollars.“
In between the opening and closing of the fictive-filled, two-hour play, the author uses lecture-like conversations to show the storied lives of each artist, along with their opposing art philosophies and eventual friendship.
Special attention is paid to a number of major events such as Warhol being shot by Valerie Solanas, the horrific death of a close graffiti artist friend of Basquiat, which brought him to tears, and the repeated mention of his rumored bedding of Madonna which held special interest for the gossip-loving Warhol.
Another one of Basquiat’s many girlfriends, Maya (Krysta Rodriquez) makes two cameo appearances, the most interesting being her purchase with Warhol’s help of Basquiat’s graffiti-covered refrigerator from his studio apartment.
So I thoroughly enjoyed The Collaboration, mostly because I actually played and lived through these times, but also it is worth experiencing the finely calibrated, rock-star performances of Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope.
