View of the entrance of the exhibit and the Liberty statue, one of the 120 artwork from Keith Haring ... [+] during the press preview for "Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody" at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, California, on May 24, 2023. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

Perhaps it's a coincidence or perhaps it's kismet that Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat who both first came to prominence in the 1980s in New York, and who both died untimely deaths within the decade (Basquiat from an overdose in 1987, Haring from AIDs in 1990), are currently the subjects of major exhibitions across the Street from each on Grand Avenue in Downtown LA.

LOS ANGELES-CA-MARCH 22, 2023: Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure an ambitious exhibition, produced ... [+] by the artists sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, will open at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles on March 31. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

King Pleasure, is an exhibition mounted by Basquiat's family and takes over four gallery spaces at the New Frank Gehry designed Grand Ave, across from Disney Hall.

Although I had heard good things about the exhibition which debuted in New York, I still had a certain reluctance to go. Mostly I was concerned that Basquiat's best work was already in the hands of collecters, dealers, foundations and museums.

A few years ago, businessman Peter Brandt exhibited his collection of Basquiats held by his Art Foundation in a brownstone in the East Village. There was some great work there, but in a strange way I felt like the Brandt exhibition was almost too much Basquiat, and that not all of the paintings were of the same quality, and that exhibiting the good with the bad, lessened the power of Basquiat's work.

Also, given that in 2017, a Basquiat skull painting sold at Auction for 85.2 British pounds (more than $100 Million), I was skeptical of whether the family still held any great works or if they had all gone to collectors or were sold, or in the absence of that, if this was a way the family was cashing in on and validating Basquiat ephemera as valuable.

I was wrong in all my expectations. King Pleasure is a thoughtful, expansive exhibition that reveals aspects of Basquiat's life and artistic vision that grounds us in appreciating his work.

LOS ANGELES-CA-MARCH 22, 2023: Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure an ambitious exhibition, produced ... [+] by the artists sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, will open at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles on March 31. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

There are childhood doodles and cartoons and notebook doodles from school where we see the beginning of the style and iconography that would come to populate his work. There are also recreations of rooms in his childhood home, and his painting studio that give the visitor a better sense of where Basquiat came from, and the development of his work. There are several important Basquiat paintings and works on view, some of which have not been exhibited elsewhere.

All in all, King Pleasure deepens our knowledge and appreciation of Basquiat's talent and his work.

At the same time, as this is the family's presentation of Basquiat. There are many significant gaps. There is little to nothing about his early attempts to be an actor, a musician in the band Grey, his love life, or his drug use.

Los Angeles, CA - May 23: Untitled, 1982 on display in the Keith Haring exhibition at the Broad on ... [+] Tuesday, May 23, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. Haring's work pushed boundaries and created work outside traditional art spaces. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images).Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody at the Broad is exuberant in keeping with Haring’s own personality. We see his early chalk drawings that he made in New York's subways, and how the various totems of his work began to appear – the radiant baby, the UFOs, and the phantasmagoria of his later work.

The exhibition very much chronicles Haring's explosion from street artist to worldwide phenomenon, as well as his social activism for various causes – against apartheid in South Africa, and for AIDS awareness.

In both the Basquiat and Haring exhibits we see how quickly they both went from impoverished to awash in cash, from traveling by subway to taking the Concorde – as well as the prodigious productivity they both engaged in that brought in tremendous sums to each.

I was in New York when they each became supernovas in their own right. I was aware of Haring first.

Keith Haring in an office at 611 Broadway. August 14, 1984. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Getty Images)Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Just to set this in context, in the 1970s in New York City there was an explosion of graffiti on subway cars, where "taggers" achieved notoriety for the ubiquity of their work, the most famous being the enigmatic "Taki 183," sometimes referred to as the Godfather of NY graffiti. Whether graffiti was Art was much debated at the time, but the first graffiti artists were outsiders to art school, and the art world.

In the mid-seventies, Richard Hambelton, a Canadian artist living in New York, began to do chalk drawings that resembled the outlines done at crime scenes for murder victims. Hambelton began doing his chalk drawings on the streets and in the subway. Getting around New York became a scavenger hunt to happen upon his work.

I recall that the first time I saw one of Keith Haring's chalk drawings in the subway, I thought that it was Hambelton's work or someone imitating Hambelton. But from the beginning there was something about Haring's line, just the way his forms took shape that spoke to its being Art, much like Matisse's late career Jazz cut outs.

Haring was an art student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and there were already stories about his legendary parties and painting sessions. Although Haring continued to do his subway chalk drawings for years, not charging for them, and making them available to everyone to see, he was soon included in important shows and galleries — such as the East Village gallery Fun House and PS 1.

NEW YORK CITY - NOVEMBER 7: Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat attends "Gifts for the City of New York" ... [+] Benefit on November 7, 1984 at Area Nightclub in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

It was in a hallway at SVA that Haring first met Basquiat who was being denied entry by a security guard (Basquiat did not attend the school), Haring told the guard to let him in. Haring was two years older than Basquiat.

Even so, as the Haring exhibition at the Broad makes clear, Haring remained devoted to having his work be accessible to all, doing many public work projects (His mural "Crack is Wack" in a handball court, visible from the FDR expressway being among my favorites).

In 1985, Haring opened his "Pop Shop" on Lafayette Street across from the Puck building that was like a Haring gift shop with stickers, badges, and Haring images at affordable prices. That same year, the United Nations issued a Keith Haring stamp to celebrate "International Youth Year" and the Pop shop sold prints of the image in an edition of 1500 at $50 each, with the funds going to the UN program. I purchased one of those prints then and am looking at it now as I write this article.

Although in King Pleasure we see Basquiat's early affinity for cartoons and becoming a cartoonist, he first entered the public consciousness as a graffiti artist whose tag was SAMO (in collaboration with his classmate Al Diaz). However, even then Basquiat's work set him apart from other graffiti tagers – SAMO was the signature that was followed by fragments of poetry. At the time, literary writings on walls were mostly kept to the walls of bathroom stalls – and Basquiat’s word play always challenged the status quo, white privilege, and the art commerce complex. In much of Basquiat's early graffiti work, SAMO was often followed by a © — which both lampooned the rampant commercialization of the era, and spoke to Basquiat's own commercial aspirations.

Basquiat's next incarnation was an actor in Interview magazine music columnist Glenn O'Brien’s film Downtown 81, and as a guest on TV Party, O'Brien's public access cable TV program (there is a Basquiat painting called GLENN).

Around this same time, Basquiat was also chasing fame by playing the saxophone and synthesizer in an experimental punk noise band called Gray. Being in a band brought Basquiat into the New Wave No Wave Scene, and the club scene in New York. Both Haring and Basquiat hung out at the Mudd Club and Club 57. Haring would discover the gay disco club Paradise Garage which would become his home away from home.

NEW YORK CITY - NOVEMBER 7: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol attend "Gifts For The City Of New ... [+] York" Benefit for Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 7, 1984 at Area Nightclub in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Whether O'Brien was the one who brought Basquiat into Warhol's orbit, or Haring did, there is no question that Warhol, Haring and Basquiat were, for a time, in thrall with each other. Haring embraced Warhol's ethos of Art as business with the use of multiples, prints, and commercial items. Warhol saw the talent in each, and the three spent time together, collaborated on artworks, and influenced each other.

At that time, I was a contributing writer to Interview and so, I found myself in the room with Basquiat and Haring on a few occasions. I never spoke to either and I can't say either was particularly friendly. They enjoyed their celebrity but there was a self-protective remove for each.

I remember being at the party Interview held for the opening of the Mike Todd Room at the Palladium in New York, where a giant Basquiat painting was installed above the bar and other works were in the room. Haring, Basquiat, and Warhol stood together at a remove from everyone else making small talk.

Le peintre américain Keith Haring peint des fresques sur le mur de Berlin en octobre 1986, ... [+] Allemagne. (Photo by Patrick PIEL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Haring was a performative personality – whatever he did, he put out there in world, with great enthusiasm and to excess. Haring made lots of art, took lots of drugs. He loved to dance all night long, and he had lots of sex. All this is chronicled in his work, and he was very candid about it at the time.

Los Angeles, CA - May 23: Posters from left to right, National Coming Out Day, 1988; ... [+] "Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death", 1989; Safe Sex, 1987; Talk to Us AIDS Hotline, 1989; Stop AIDS, not dated; AIDS: Trading Fears for Facts, A Guide for Teens, 1988; , Art Attack on AIDS, 1988 on display in the Keith Haring exhibition at the Broad on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. Haring's work pushed boundaries and created work outside traditional art spaces. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images).Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

As The Broad made clear, Haring had a strong activist streak. He did public works of art, he did charity work, he was very philanthropic, he used his Art as a platform to get attention for issues and causes he believed in and supported such as the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, and AIDS awareness.

LOS ANGELES-CA-MARCH 22, 2023: Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure an ambitious exhibition, produced ... [+] by the artists sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, will open at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles on March 31. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Basquiat was less extroverted and was at first impression less public in his activism. But Basquiat was incredibly aware that he was always on show: He was often the only person of color in the room. He was the only major Black superstar visual artist at the time, and he always stood out in how he dressed and even his signature mop of hair (way before Jay-Z). Basquiat’s life and work were his activism. Basquiat’s artwork questioned white supremacy and majority culture. Basquiat’s presence and success in the art scene has probably done more to inspire the generation of Black artists that followed him than any philanthropic or social activist organization. But the weight of being the Black Artist of his time weighed heavily on him.

Although Basquiat and Haring found tremendous artistic and financial success quickly, and they both enjoyed the luxuries their fame afforded them, it was clear that success did not solve the riddle for each of how to be.

Warhol, Basquiat and Haring would all die young – in short order: Warhol in 1987, of complications following surgery; Basquiat in 1988 of an overdose; and Haring in 1990, of AIDs.

In King Pleasure, and in the Haring exhibition at the Broad, we see how each developed their own distinctive vocabulary of images (for Basquiat: the skull, the crown, the use of written words; for Haring, the radiant baby, the dog, and the rhythm of his lines and the almost Mayan way his maze-like works were their own hieroglyphics).

It is impossible to visit these exhibitions and not wonder, at least briefly, about the direction their art may have taken had they lived longer. It is hard to know because it feels like Basquiat was reaching an end point in his work, and that his work was about to change. Haring's late works are so apocalyptic and became so dark that he, too, would have had to reinvent himself anew. But there is no point to such speculation.

Haring and Basquiat each in careers of less than a decade produced prodigious amounts of work. Basquiat is thought to have made more than 600 paintings and some 1500 drawings, while Haring made some 50 public art installations and an estimated 10,000 works of art.

The history of Art is filled with talented, distinctive artists who were friends and whose careers rose in tandem, be it Gauguin and Van Gogh, Picasso and Braque, or Rauschenberg and Johns. To see the Basquiat and Haring exhibitions is to be reminded of the creative ferment of the 1980s in New York, and of two artists, one gay, one black, who were friends, and who would each in their own way have such an outsized impact on the art world and the culture in general. The exhibitions remind us of all that Haring and Basquiat accomplished in their short lives — and all that they never got a chance to create.

Thinking about Haring and Basquiat, what keeps buzzing around my brain is the refrain from “Shooting Star”:

When you wish upon a star

Your dreams will take you very far

But when you wish upon a dream

Life ain't always what it seems.