Angelina Jolie rents Basquiat's apartment in New York

«A privilege to be in this space. We will do our best to respect and honor its artist legacy with community and creativity.» With these words, Angelina Jolie announced on her Instagram account the establishment of Atelier Jolie, the brand founded by the actress as a co-design collective to soon launch a collab with Chloé, within the former studio-apartment of world-renowned American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Located in Manhattan, at 57 Great Jones Street in New York, the loft has witnessed the creation of some of the most famous artworks of the last century, as well as the memorable collaboration between Basquiat and his sponsor and great friend, Andy Warhol, former owner of the flat.

Basquiat's house 

Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio apartment, 1987

In the video of the announcement on Instagram, Jolie stands in front of the entrance to Basquiat's flat, a low white wall almost entirely graffitied on which the name of the actress's brand, Atelier Jolie, has just been spray-painted. The three-storey building was listed for rent last December for the sum of €60,000 a month, and will not be altered by the new tenants, as Jolie explains, to honour the artist. The loft is to all intents and purposes a relic of art history; Basquiat lived here for five years, having rented it to Andy Warhol shortly after meeting him for the first time, and it was here that he died, in 1988, following an overdose. The building had been bought by Warhol in 1970 and, after hosting Basquiat for five years, an exclusive Japanese restaurant had settled there. In 2018, a pop-up exhibition invited some of the most successful writers of the 1970s to decorate the building's exterior and interior walls with their artworks, but in 2022 the entire loft was painted white.

The arrival of Atelier Jolie   

In addition to retaining an indefinable cultural richness, this loft is also a very fortunate space by New York standards; it is spacious and offers plenty of light, which are key features for a good creative studio. Atelier Jolie was born with the intention of creating a community of designers, artisans and tailors from all around the world, brought together to breathe new life into vintage garments and create new ones. An online website will also be launched soon, for those unable to attend Jolie's New York initiative, while Basquiat's flat will serve as an exhibition space and atelier.