Widow Basquiat

Starred review from October 6, 2014
Clement (Prayers for the Stolen) creates a stunningly lyrical portrait of Suzanne Mallouk, the longtime girlfriend of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, that is original, insightful, and engrossing. Narrating Suzanne’s childhood in Canada and her troubled relationship with the avant-garde street artist up until his death, the brief passages alternate between Clement’s poetic voice and Mallouk’s plainspoken accounts. The author, who was a close friend of both Mallouk and Basquiat, eventually emerges as a secondary character in the narrative—a confidante to Mallouk. Clement crafts her story with intimacy but leaves it free of sentimentality or moralizing. When Basquiat died, Clement writes, “Suzanne covers her mouth with her hands... There are no teeth inside her words.” At another time, Mallouk “was able to sleep for seven days and her body fell beneath her when she tried to walk.” The book benefits from this favoring of poetic truth over realism. While filled with pop culture anecdotes art fans might seek—Andy Warhol and Rene Ricard both make appearances, for instance—Clement’s account is an honest love story above all else. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris Endeavor.

October 1, 2014
A provocative account of the passionate but stormy relationship between a Canadian runaway named Suzanne Mallouk and acclaimed New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).In 1980, Mallouk left a dysfunctional home in Canada for New York. With its bold and brashly inventive art scene, the city seemed the perfect place for a girl who wore paper dresses, hid heroin in her beehive hairdo and believed that she "had seen God" in Iggy Pop. Not long after she arrived, she met Basquiat at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Basquiat immediately moved into Mallouk's apartment, where he spent his days drawing, masturbating or snorting cocaine. At night, he would often go alone to clubs to pick up boys or girls and disappear with them for days at a time. Despite the unfaithfulness and his drug habit-which Mallouk shared for a time-she still supported the painter, loving him even after he infected her with the pelvic inflammatory disease that would leave her infertile. Basquiat became her addiction. When New York galleries and hipsters like Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol began to discover Basquiat's "jazz on canvas" paintings, Basquiat would spend his wealth indiscriminately, buying Armani suits only to ruin them with paint and renting limousines so he could throw $100 bills to bums in the street. Fame only made him even more erratic. Mallouk held on, fighting for him with other women, including, most famously, Madonna. Yet in the end, her love proved no match for Basquiat's addiction to heroin. Not only would the drug destroy their relationship, but also the painter himself. With short, episodic chapters, Clement (Prayers for the Stolen, 2014, etc.) delivers real insight into the life of the brilliant artist as well as the glittering-but ultimately chaotic-world that consumed him. A disturbing and poetic biography of a talented but massively flawed artist.

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