In the Spring of 1985, the actor and playwright Calvin Levels was taking in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery when he spied the artist, who had lately become hugely famous, standing alone in one of the rooms.“I had just read the cover article in the New York Times Magazine about him, and thought his life would make a great movie,” recalls Levels. “And there he was standing right in front of me.” The actor went up to artist and broached the subject. The reaction was sheer horror. “Jean said, ‘No, no, no! Are you kidding me?’ and I just backed off,” says Levels. “It was just so cold and sharp. He showed me the mask he always wore in public.”Three decades later, Levels is stripping away the mask of not only Basquiat but also Andy Warhol in his new play, “Collaboration: Warhol & Basquiat,” which is being performed downtown at HERE through December 22 in a production directed by Lonny Price. The play was inspired by a famous exhibition of 16 collaborative paintings by the two at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in the fall of 1985, a show that was not well received. Writing in the New York Times, art critic Vivien Raynor called Basquiat an “art world mascot” to the King of Pop. “The 16 results — all ‘Untitleds,’ of course — are large, bright, messy, full of private jokes and inconclusive.”Time has since treated the efforts better—or at least the market has. In 2014, at a Phillips auction, the duo’s “Zenith”(1985) sold for $11,365, 000.Levels, who was Tony-nominated for his performance in “Open Admissions” and has also written a play about James Baldwin, recently spoke with Artinfo about the intense relationship of the two art stars. They would die within eighteen months of each other, Warhol, 58, after a botched gall bladder operation in 1987; Basquiat of a heroin overdose in the summer of 1988 at the age of 27.What was the essence of the collaboration?I think the essence was love. They vibrated on the same wavelength. They were soul mates. Warhol was aware of it more than Basquiat, but I think at the end Jean realized that too. They made each other laugh, they could talk about art in a way they could with no one else. When Andy died, Jean realized what he’d thrown away. After the Shafrazi exhibition, Jean cut Andy off. He thought Andy had betrayed him, tricked him, so that he’d come out on top in the reviews. And that really hurt Andy because he was in love with Jean. All his life, Andy had a phobia about people touching him and yet he couldn’t keep his hands off Jean. People around Andy were amazed by that.Does your play explore the role of exploitation in that love?Yeah. It does. They were both trying to use each other. Jean had idolized Andy since he was 13 or 14. He had a picture of Andy above his bed and when Jean first tried to make contact with him, Andy couldn’t be bothered. But then Bruno Bischofberger, Andy’s dealer, became Jean’s, and he put them together. After a lunch with the three of them at Andy’s studio, Jean left for his own studio and within the hour did a painting of Andy and Jean together and sent it back. Andy took a look at it and said, “He’s faster than me.”When Basquiat declared to the press, “I’m going to be more famous than Andy Warhol,” how did his mentor take it?My interpretation is that he took it as a threat and I think he felt betrayed by that statement. Andy was hurt by it even though he was going to use Jean to catapult himself back into the stratosphere. His career had taken a dive, he was just doing the commissioned portraits at the time, and Jean, who was then at the top of his game, got him back into painting for the first time since the early ’60s. Jean felt that if he could knock out the King of Pop or at least be as good as he was, then he’d on top.Who was better at manipulating the press?They were both really great at it. I’d say Andy because he was so elusive with the press. He basically threw up a mirror at the interviewer, he would never answer a question directly. He would leave it up to the writer to interpret things. As much as he loved being in the public eye, he took on the persona of the star he most admired, Greta Garbo. He was so insulated and yet so adept at handling the press.Who was more thin-skinned about the critics?Jean, for sure. Andy had had more experience with it. He’d spent ten years trying to break into the art world after years doing his commercial art thing. I think that toughened Andy’s skin. People would not accept him because he was commercial, because he was gay, even artists like Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg. He didn’t sell any paintings at first, didn’t get good reviews. Jean basically sold out his first major show and had never had bad reviews until the collaboration. He just wasn’t conditioned to it and consequently was very hurt by them.Were they both driven, as Basquiat says in your play, “to prove them all wrong”?I think he probably says that out of a moment of frustration. I don’t think that was the main motivation. I think art was just something they both had to do, against all odds. They just loved it, were addicted to it, loved the rush of it. They certainly both wanted to be famous. Jean wanted to be a rock star and watching Andy’s career proved to him that you could be a rock star in the art world. A lot of it was ego but there was mainly a love of art.In “Collaboration,” sex is a volcanic engine of Basquiat’s art, Warhol is virtually celibate. How did that manifest itself in the collaboration?I think that this polar opposition was part of what attracted them to each other. Andy was meticulous. Jean was very messy. Andy was basically a voyeur and Jean couldn’t keep it in his pants. When he was very young, his father caught him having sex with his male cousin and stabbed him in the ass. There was a period he was homeless and turning tricks and then he had an S &M relationship with a guy. Jean was just out of control.Jean says in the play, Warhol’s work just “begs for defacement.”I think Andy’s work was highlighted by Jean’s work and Jean’s work by Andy’s. They were so diametrically opposed so they were the perfect match in that way.They didn’t confuse each other and were able to keep their individuality in the collaboration. At a certain point, Andy told Jean, “Let’s paint in each other styles.” The work in which they were able to merge their styles, find the most common ground, was a piece called “African Mask.”Warhol has been the subject or a character in many films. Why do you suppose he’s proved to be so elusive in this medium?Most people, when they do Andy, it’s almost superficial. You never get the private Andy and that’s what I hope to do. When I first started presenting this play to people I invited the directors of the Warhol Foundation and when they saw it, they said, “You really make Andy multidimensional. We’ve never seen that before.” They’ve been very supportive. What I hope to do is get behind the mask, to get past the persona he created.And Basquiat?I hope to capture the grit, the rawness and the brilliance. Jean was an old soul. And, like James Baldwin, he had a very difficult time dealing with people. He didn’t have the patience to deal with people he thought were stupid. And that’s when he’d throw up that mask.And that’s how you met him?[Laughs.] Yeah. In the Mary Boone Gallery. And after he reacted to me the way he did when I suggested we work on a film together, I thought, ‘Oh, right, that was a stupid idea. Get out me of here. Now!’”
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