With Atelier Jolie, Angelina Jolie wants to pick up where Warhol and Basquiat left off

It was a Saturday night, and behind the graffiti-scrawled facade of Atelier Jolie, her downtown creative space and gallery, American actress-director Angelina Jolie was in conversation with artist Shirin Neshat.

- Melena Ryzik

NEW YORK — It was a Saturday night, and behind the graffiti-scrawled facade of Atelier Jolie, her downtown creative space and gallery, American actress-director Angelina Jolie was in conversation with artist Shirin Neshat.

The topics were heady: the plight of refugees, the rights of women, how to wrench meaning from exile; the value of art in all that. Jolie, ethereal in a cream dress with an embroidered capelet, was gracious.

"I'm so happy to be with all of you," she said to the invited 50 or so guests, adding that she sought community to "keep trying to understand ways to help." For her, being an artist was a means of communication. "I want to know if you feel the same pain."

Jolie, 49, listened intently to Neshat, an Iranian visual artist and filmmaker, a striking figure with kohled eyes.

"Art doesn't come from intuition," Neshat said. "It has to come from the life you have led. It has to relate to the world."

At the reception, notables such as American musician Jon Batiste and his author-wife Suleika Jaouad, and American singer-rapper Jack Harlow mingled amid the artwork. A Sufi dancer in a crimson gown twirled between the tagged-up walls.