Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie is set to open a studio inside the three-story New York building that once housed the home and studio of famed neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. According art news, which first reported the story, Jolie signed an eight-year lease with Meridian Capital Group for the 6,600 square foot space at 57 Great Jones Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Although the terms of the agreement have not yet been made public, the property was initially listed at $60,000 per month, with the real estate agent requiring a minimum ten-year lease.
Basquiat lived and worked at the address for the last five years of his life, having rented the second floor from Andy Warhol, its landlord at the time, shortly after the couple met, in 1983. He died there at the age of twenty-seven. following an accidental heroin overdose in 1988. Prior to Warhol’s 1970 purchase of the circa 1860s structure, it had famously housed the Brighton Athletic Club, established there in 1904 by Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, better known as mobster Paul Kelly. In recent years, it has housed the upscale, invitation-only Japanese restaurant Bohemian.
According to Meridian agents John Roesch and Garrett Kelly, Jolie should keep the graffiti and street art covering the facade of the building as a tribute to Basquiat’s history as a graffiti artist: as one half of the duo SAMO, with Al Diaz , he tagged buildings across the metropolis in the late 1970s.
Atelier Jolie, a fashion line announced by the actress in May, “will use the high-quality vintage material and unsold fabric already available.” The garments will be made by “a skilled and diverse family of expert tailors, pattern makers and artisans from around the world”. The line is set to debut this fall.
