Brooklyn

Jean-Michel Basquiat's sisters talk growing up with the Brooklyn-born art icon

BROOKLYN, New York (WABC) --

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22nd, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York.

His father was from Port au Prince, Haiti, and his mother was a New York native of Puerto Rican descent.

When Jean-Michel was 8-years-old, he was hit by a car while playing in the street and suffered a broken arm. While recovering, his mother brought him a medical textbook Gray's Anatomy.

The book's detailed anatomical drawings were the start of a World-renowned artist's inspiration.

Jean-Michel was the oldest child of the family with two younger sisters, Jeanine and Lisane. His sisters sat down with ABC7 reporter, Sandra Bookman, for an inside look at his life.

As a young boy, they say he was quite the prankster. Telling us a story of when Jean-Michel convinced them to call 20 some odd food delivery businesses all at once, just for the laugh of when 20 vendors approached their front door.

The family saw him grow up in fame. His art not even at the beginning of its recognition.

"The way that his words and artwork resonate with people. Resonates with the experiences we are having today. I can't say I thought 'my brother is going to be an artist' but I knew and recognized his artistic talent," said his sister Lisane Basquiat.

"He was so ahead of his time. Genius almost," said sister Janine Basquiat. "He was not only able to put on canvas, his paintings but also his thoughts."

His early work consisted of spray painting buildings and trains in downtown New York alongside his friend Al Diaz.

After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works.

"I'm not a real person. I'm a legend," Basquiat once claimed.

Basquiat made a lot of references to Haiti, Puerto Rico and Africa in his works, bringing out his heritage and his own personal experiences. He also included a lot about racism and classism and the experiences around him that was making him upset.

Basquiat died of an accidental drug overdose on August 12, 1988, at his Great Jones Street studio. He was 27 years old.

In the decades since his death, the artist has become just that with his works collected by the likes of Kanye West, Swizz Beatz and Jay Z. His name and unique personal style have become frequent reference points in popular culture.

Don't miss more incredible stories in honor of Black History Month.

(Copyright ©2019 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.)

At Home, With Memories, in Brooklyn

Five years ago, after an academic career in Europe, Benedict Beckeld gave up teaching for writing and returned to New York, where he had spent his teenage years. The timing was fortunate. His older brother, Baltsar Beckeld, was newly divorced and living on the ground floor of a two-story, two-family brick house in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Dr. Beckeld, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy, ancient Greek and Latin, moved in with him.

His brother, an actor and former museum director, transformed the unkempt backyard, planting shrubbery and adding strings of solar lights that went on at dusk. The location was close to Dr. Beckeld’s mother and stepfather, who also rented in Borough Park.

The brothers paid a monthly rent of around $1,400. The landlady, who knew their mother, “gave us a friendly price,” said Dr. Beckeld, 39, who was born and spent his childhood in Sweden.

Last summer, after suffering from sudden stomach pain, Baltsar Beckeld received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Two months later, he died, at age 42.

“My brother was the person I loved more than any other,” Dr. Beckeld said.

He knew he couldn’t stay in the apartment. “It was too emotionally difficult for me to live in the place we had lived together,” he said.

So he prepared to move. He aimed to find a one-bedroom rather than a studio, preferring not to sleep in the same room as his thousands of books, which collect dust, though he dusts often. He wanted a separate kitchen, too, so cooking residue and odors would not permeate the pages.

With a budget of up to $2,200 a month, Dr. Beckeld thought he could find a place on the Upper East or Upper West Side of Manhattan. As a musician — he plays the violin — he was eager to be close to the city’s cultural and arts institutions. An agent took him around.

“This was my first time” apartment hunting in New York, he said. “I realized that when they say a one-bedroom, they don’t really mean a one-bedroom — they mean a glorified studio.” Some listings referred to a “real” one-bedroom, he added, “but that still includes a kitchen area in one of the rooms rather than a separate kitchen.”

He visited a fourth-floor walk-up, for $2,000, in the West 80s, across from a schoolyard. “The moment I walked in, I knew it was no deal,” he said, as the kitchen and living room were one. “I would have had to cook, work, read and do everything in the same space, and the space wasn’t large enough anyway.”

For $1,800, a ground-floor apartment on Park Avenue near East 98th Street was comparatively large. But the area seemed rundown and loud; directly outside, Metro-North train tracks emerged from underground.

“I probably should have used Google Street View to rule out neighborhoods,” Dr. Beckeld said. Seeing what his money would buy in Manhattan “definitely took the wind out of my sails.”

He learned that a suitable place would cost around $3,000. And without a regular job, it would be tough to meet a strict Manhattan landlord’s income requirements. Dr. Beckeld writes primarily on philosophy (which he used to teach, along with classics); he also gives violin and foreign-language lessons.

So he decided to return to Brooklyn, where he could get sufficient space for a lower rent. He would be near his parents, too.

“Since I lived away from them for 10 years on a different continent, I enjoy having what remains of my family not too far away,” he said.

Dr. Beckeld turned to Craigslist, and found a place in Ditmas Park that seemed suitable: The one-bedroom, in a four-story brick building dating to the 1920s, had 850 square feet, high ceilings and a separate kitchen overlooking an interior courtyard. The rent was $1,750. The building didn’t have a laundry room, but there were plenty of other advantages, including big closets and updated appliances. Dr. Beckeld signed on in the fall.

In the meantime, his mother, Simonne Beckeld Hirschhorn, had also been considering a move. She and her husband, Mordechai Hirschhorn, who were living on the third floor of a house in Borough Park, wanted more space. Maybe they could move into the Beckeld brothers’ old place. It was bigger, and Ms. Hirschhorn could build a beautiful sukkah, the temporary structure constructed for the Jewish festival of Sukkot, in the well-tended yard. Also, the apartment made her feel closer to Baltsar.

“I asked Benedict, ‘Would you feel creepy if we came to live here?’ He said, ‘No, on the contrary, you will make the place look so different anyway,’” she said. Ms. Hirschhorn, the director of a recreational program for Holocaust survivors, enjoys interior decorating.

So in the winter, the Hirschhorns moved, too.

“It made me feel this was my son’s legacy to me,” Ms. Hirschhorn said. “I felt a certain comfort in that. The grief is going to be with me the rest of my life no matter where I live, but here I feel the closeness of him. Here, he was happy.”

As for Dr. Beckeld’s new home, he finds it quiet and well suited to his work. Bookcases line the living room walls. “I am fairly introverted, so sitting quietly in my office space and working is appealing to me,” he said.

And he barely recognizes his old place, which is an easy bicycle ride away, or a two-bus trip. “My mother has a very different style,” he said. “All shades of pink are welcome.”

Still, Dr. Beckeld has a tough time there. “Walking in there is like visiting a haunted house,” he said. “My brother’s shadow is everywhere.”

Email: thehunt@nytimes.com

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

Brooklyn Chef Was Cooking The Books, Prosecutors Say

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK -- An innovative Brooklyn chef found a brand new ingredient to cook: the books.

Vincent Tropepe, 36, stands accused of scamming a Yemeni restaurant in Bay Ridge out of more than $14,000, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.

Tropepe conned Yemen Café's owners between July 13 and Aug. 18, when he served as a business consultant and kitchen staff instructor at the Fifth Avenue restaurant near 72nd Street, prosecutors said.

The chef claimed the owners owed him thousands for delinquent violations he'd discovered, negotiated down and paid on their behalf at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, prosecutors said.

Tropepe showed them forged documents to back up his story and demanded reimbursements of $2,570 on July 13 and $11,650 on Aug. 13, said prosecutors.

But owners became suspicious and a trip to OATH proved the Tropepe made up the violations,, said prosecutors. When Tropepe demanded a third payment in December, the owners didn't give him any money.

Tropepe was arraigned Friday on grand larceny, criminal possession of a forged instrument and falsifying business records charges in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Friday, prosecutors said.

The Bay Ridge chef, who could face seven years in prison if convicted, was released without bail and ordered to return to court on April 17.

Prosecutors did not name the Yemen Cafe owners, but Eater did in a trip to the restaurant in 2017.

Sid Nassir told Dining on a Dime host Lucas Peterson that he to cook from his father, who was a chef at Windows of the World, the restaurant at the top of the Twin Towers, in the 1980s, and that his father had served as an ambassador to Yemeni immigrants arriving in New York.

"I don't know a lot of the Yemeni people but the ones I met today are incredibly kind," Peterson said. "I love the food ... I'm giving them my money