Text: "Jean-Michel Basquiat Vrej Baghoomian 611 Broadway New York April 29 - June 11"
Collector's item: Rare exhibition poster for Basquiat's show at Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, NY, April - June 1988, photograph by Jerome Schlomoff. Absolutely historic, uncommon offset lithograph poster from what would become the very last exhibition of Basquiat's short life. Indeed, what makes this poster so extraordinary is that this exhibition ended June 11th, 1988 - almost exactly two months before Basquiat's own life ended, at the age of 27, on August 12, 1988. Unframed. Sheet: 28 3/4" x 21". Very good vintage condition. This was done in Basquiat's lifetime making it such a collectible. "Phoebe Hoban reported in her biography Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, the FBI in 1994 investigated a matter in which Vrej Baghoomian, the dealer who represented the painter at the time of his death, had sold five fake Basquiats at a Paris art fair. Though he apparently hadn’t made the fakes himself, and was never convicted, “Vrej was a big crook,” says the artist Rick Prol, Basquiat’s last assistant. “He got kicked out of the art world, and then he died....We do know that Basquiat was falling apart in 1988. Prol helped the artist prepare for what became his final show, at the Vrej Baghoomian Gallery that spring. “He seemed like a ghost—like something was gone,” remembers Prol, who had been hired by Baghoomian in hopes that he might inspire the barely functioning artist. “He didn’t seem interested in anything—sex, or seeing anybody, or doing the work. He seemed very isolated and alone.”" - Liza Ghorban, New York Magazine, 2011