Harry's Bar, Paris

Founded in 1911 at 5, rue Daunou, Paris, Harry’s New York Bar is renowned for its classic style and celebrity patrons of an earlier era, ranging from Ernest Hemingway to George Gershwin (rumored to have composed “An American in Paris” here) to Humphrey Bogart, among many other Hollywood stars, who formed a luminous crowd of literary, musical, and artistic greats with whom one imagines Basquiat would have been very comfortable.   

Harry’s Bar is equally lauded for being an expats’ home away from home (especially after World War II) – a place where an American outsider would have been in the company of other patriots from abroad.    Like Great Jones Cafe, where Basquiat was welcomed and treated equally among an eclectic and creative downtown society, Harry’s, at least in Basquiat’s words, was a special place – “THE  / BEST BAR IN / PARIS  (MAYBE  / WHOLE / THE FREE / WORLD” . 

As an artist acutely aware of anti-black racism in the United States, and police brutality that he and his friends suffered, the concept of a “free world” takes on additional meaning.  Gun’s relationship to Basquiat was based on respect and appreciation.  Within the context of a quiet bar before opening, their mostly nonverbal communication of just being  would have allowed both men to be in their own “free world”. 

Janis Gardner Cecil