New York is a phoenix: in death it is reborn. During the 1970s, after years of white flight, landlord-sponsored arson, and systemic government disinvestment cozily termed “benign neglect,” the city teetered along the edge of bankruptcy and nearly collapsed. Though naysayers cried, “New York is dead,” they were wrong. The city arose from the ashes in the 1980s, stronger than ever before.
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In Ronald Reagan’s America, greed was good and gauche was chic as the lifestyles of the nouveau riche and famous set the art world ablaze. Art became the ultimate commodity, the status symbol that telegraphed not only a sense of worldly sophistication but business savvy among the emerging neoliberal elite. Investors flocked to the world’s only unregulated industry, transforming the art market into a luxury exchange.
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All things considered it was the logical extension of Andy Warhol’s veneration of “the object” that fueled the creation of his distinctive brand of Pop Art. In creating an instantly recognizable iconography centering the mundane matters of everyday life, Warhol not only elevated the commonplace into the sacred realm of art but also transformed the artist into a brand. Like any heritage brand, Warhol understood the way to keep current was to mix it up with the youth — a mission that put him on the path to socialize and collaborate with Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist fueled by an ambition and a savvy all his own—to infiltrate New York’s highly exclusionary art world.
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