Lee Jaffe and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
In 1983, the interdisciplinary artist, musician, poet, and filmmaker Lee Jaffe took a spontaneous trip through Japan, Thailand, and Switzerland with Jean-Michel Basquiat, documenting the unforgettable experience with his camera. Bonding over their shared love of art and reggae music along the way, the trip was pivotal for both of them.
In 1984, Basquiat executed Pattya, a deeply personal reflection on the globe-trotting tour, on offer in our upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London. Jaffe has comprehensively shared stories and images from this trip in his book Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads. Here, he offers us a glimpse into this remarkable journey of discovery and how he felt when Basquiat first showed him the work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pattya, 1984. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London.
PHILLIPS: How did you come to meet Jean-Michel Basquiat and decide to take this trip together?
LEE JAFFE: I met Jean-Michel at the opening of an exhibition of the work of sculptor Italo Scanga at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1983. Italo had been my professor in college and became a lifelong friend and collaborator. He was eager for us to meet, as he felt we had similar artistic sensibilities. In particular, the socio-political concerns prominent in our work, as well as the integration of words within our visual practice — something I had begun as a student in the late ’60s.
The art dealer Fred Hoffman, who I knew, was there. He was working with Jean-Michel at the time publishing prints, and kindly introduced us. I was excited for the introduction as I had seen the exhibition at Annina Nosei Gallery in New York the year before and it had made a powerful impression on me. A great fan of Jamaican music, Jean-Michel was aware of my work with Bob Marley and told me that he had worn out the grooves of Legalize It, the album I produced with Peter Tosh. He told me that the airline Pan Am was running a special “’round-the-world” first-class ticket for $4,400 dollars, and he had a trip planned, so why not come along?
Bangkok, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
P: Once you arrived in Bangkok from Japan, how did the two of you decide to travel to Pattaya?
LJ: It was the first trip to Thailand for both of us. We knew no one. Leaving the airport in Bangkok — humid, hot, and sticky — we grabbed a taxi. In the early ’80s in New York, Thai herb had become prevalent and was the best cannabis around. We were eager to find and sample. In Japan, we hadn’t bothered searching for something to smoke, believing it would be a quixotic endeavor... We asked our driver if he could help, and he emphatically answered “yes,” eager to make some extra money. We drove around Bangkok in the aircondition-less cab, cab, sweltry and muggy, immersed in raucous traffic jams and interminable honking, still not checked into a hotel after a seven-hour flight. The drive began to seem much too long.
Jean-Michel Basquiat in Thailand, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
LJ: Finally, we parked, and the driver guided us through a tiny, rancid-smelling alley. It felt dangerous and not right at all — like the opening of the Jamaican movie The Harder They Come, when the hero, played by Jimmy Cliff, arrives by bus in Kingston — the big city — as a naive country boy and immediately gets his baggage stolen. The driver knocked on a door, and a thuggish, scowling bouncer walked us into a club. It was one of the most indelible and depressing scenes — etched like a grim, sordid nightmare in my memory. The club was dimly lit. There was a stage — like a bandstand — but there was no band. About twenty girls with signs hanging around their necks with bold numbers printed on them were spotlighted. Two girls were lying down with cigars ensconced in their genitals, puffing smoke curling above their naked torsos. Shocked and disgusted, we turned around and exited, furious at the driver. The next day we wanted to get out of Bangkok as quickly as possible — anxious to put the experience behind us. When we asked the front desk guy where we could find a beach, he replied, “Go to Pattaya.”
The beach in Pattaya, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
LJ: Driving on the outskirts of Bangkok, we noticed a giant billboard along the road advertising the movie The Deer Hunter. It was an image of Robert De Niro holding a gun to his head — a still from the iconic Russian roulette scene with De Niro and Christopher Walken. It felt like that movie must have been playing interminably, as it had been released in New York five years earlier. How ironic that this powerful and tragic movie — so brilliant in so many ways yet so easily interpreted as Orientalist — would be so popular in Thailand. The two-hour drive was a welcome escape, but when we arrived, we discovered it was a national holiday and all the hotels were booked. Worse, there was a US Navy destroyer anchored a couple hundred yards offshore, and hundreds of sailors in uniform mingled with the tourists along the crowded beach. It felt like a scene from Apocalypse Now. We asked around and managed to buy some herb, when someone told us we could take a small boat to a little island an hour or so off the mainland. The island had a small fishing village devoid of tourists, and the people were extremely kind to us and so unpretentious. We drank coconuts and smoked spliffs. City life seemed a galaxy away.
Thailand billboard, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
P: What do you remember of the conversations the two of you had on this trip?
LJ: There were many conversations about Jamaica and what it was like living with Bob Marley and working with Peter Tosh. Of course, JMB’s work is so much about class and colonialism and deconstructing race theory, as was Marley’s and Tosh’s. He knew of the assassination attempt on Bob’s life and that both he and Rita Marley had survived being shot in the house I had been living in for three years. “Weren’t you scared living there?” He asked me. And I laughed, “No. I was too naïve.” I explained that although I knew about the political violence, it was largely confined to the underserved neighborhoods of West Kingston. The house we were living in was uptown — Bob was bringing the Dread uptown where previously dreadlocks Rastas had been forbidden — and also, I thought, because we were artists, we were immune — especially being with Bob who was truly revered amongst the “sufferer” class and so much the voice of the people. Of course, I was wrong.
Jean-Michel Basquiat in Thailand, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
LJ: And we talked about art. He had recently seen the Turner Slave Ship at The Museum of Fine Art Boston and drew the parallel with the powerful album cover for Bob Marley’s Survival — designed by the Wailers’ brilliant artistic director Neville Garrick — that incorporated an actual 19th century diagram of the packing of a slave boat which was probably the first time that had ever been used in an art context. And he talked about how the Turner painting subverted the Renaissance perspective, which was so entrenched in the roots of colonialism.
Photograph by Lee Jaffe, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.
P: Looking back today, what are your thoughts or feelings about this work? Did Basquiat ever speak to you about it?
LJ: When he showed it to me, I was really thrilled as it transported me to our trip from the beach town — Pattaya — and to our exodus aboard a tiny boat to the little island. And I was glad and inwardly gloating that our trip had been an inspiration for such an incredible work. I felt in some small way I was part of it, and at the same time, it made me feel envious of how he could condense so many levels of meaning into so few brushstrokes and overwhelmingly his use of negative space — of nothingness — to conjure the enormity of the sea. It was Melville and Turner and Gauguin all rolled into one, and I was in awe.
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