There was a swell dinner to celebrate the opening of the Richard Hambleton exhibition at the Teatro Armani in Milan last Thursday. The 120 guests included Eugenia and Stavros Niarchos; Pierre Andrea Casiraghi, a son of Princess Caroline of Monaco; Dasha Zhukova, the founder of the Garage, a new contemporary-art museum in Moscow, and the inamorata of Roman Abramovich; Lapo Elkann, the dandified Fiat heir; Aby Rosen, the Manhattan developer and art collector; Clive Owen; Mario Testino; and Roberta Armani, the niece of Giorgio Armani, who has been the sponsor of what has to be called the Hambleton Project.

It might occur to you that this is rather an unusual line-up for an art opening, especially when the artist in question has for years shut himself away in darkness and alienation on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. You would be right. The Hambleton Project is a relaunch and a highly sophisticated one. It’s hard to think of a comparable precedent, though one imagines that there will be successors. It began when Andrew Valmorbida, a New York-based Australian art-entrepreneur, was introduced to Hambleton’s work by the veteran private dealer and Chelsea Hotel resident Rick Librizzi. Librizzi’s son, Nemo, then took Valmorbida around to see Hambleton himself.

The Vancouver-born artist began making street art in the late 1970s and rocketed to attention with his "Shadowman" series, which splattered black-painted figures against a canvas, a wall, or the pavement with the delicacy of a fly swatter. In 1984 he put up the explosively menacing figures in just about every major city in Europe. He had also been making work in the studio from the beginning, and his career took off before those of New York’s better-known — and shorter-lived — art-world-savvy street artists, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But Hambleton’s overpowering heroin habit, some disabling knocks (he took a bad fall off his bicycle), and increasing reclusiveness took him first away from the art scene physically, then more or less out of both the discourse and the marketplace.

It seemed clear to Valmorbida not only that Hambleton's career was ripe for resuscitation, but also that — because of both the nature of his work and the self-destructive, poète maudit trajectory of his life — such a project lent itself to the new approach to art dealing that Valmorbida and his partner, the 25-year-old Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, had in mind. Their background is relevant. Valmorbida is heir to a billion-dollar fortune, Restoin-Roitfeld is the New York-based son of Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, and both young men are well acquainted with the sleek marketing machines that move product in the worlds of fashion and entertainment. Why shouldn’t art be marketed with the same panache?

Their first Hambleton show opened in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in New York’s Meatpacking District last September. It was the middle of Fashion Week, which was no accident because the partners' sponsor was Giorgio Armani. Faces at the opening included several not often spotted on the tepid-white-wine circuitry of art openings, such as Bruce Willis, Alicia Keys, Josh Hartnett, and Mary J. Blige, to say nothing of the seldom-seen artist himself.

Now in Milan, the Hambleton Project has entered phase two. It seemed relevant to ask Armani about his views on the direction of the art world generally and on the Hambleton Project in particular. This was our exchange, conducted by email.

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Anthony Haden-Guest: Would you agree that the last twenty years has seen Western culture penetrated by contemporary art as never before? For instance in my generation, the 1960s, young people revered Godard and Antonioni. All that energy has poured into art, I think.

Giorgio Armani: I agree that contemporary art has become much, much more mainstream in its appeal and influence over recent years. Your analogy with the film directors of the 1960s – including those associated with France’s Nouvelle Vague – is a good one, though I like to think people are still excited by cinema. Nevertheless, the dominance of the Hollywood blockbuster has certainly taken some of the edge off film as a medium. This may be why contemporary art has moved into that space – it is challenging and modern, but has impeccable cultural credentials.

AHG: Had you been thinking of associating the Armani name with an artist for a long while? If so, why?

GA: I have often collaborated with various artists, such as Bob Wilson, Massimiliano and Dorian Fuksas, David La Chapelle, Tadao Ando and Owuso Ankohma. In addition, I’ve sponsored many art exhibitions in the past from David Carson, to Rankin and Pasolini. I have long had associations with artists from the world of film – I’ve worked with my friend Martin Scorsese and other great directors, for example. I chose film because it has been a lifelong passion of mine, ever since I was a kid.

When the opportunity to get involved with Richard Hambleton presented itself, it just felt like the right thing to do. His work is of the streets, and for me stands as a reminder that art in all its forms is first and foremost driven by individual passion and creativity and should not be overly commoditised. You may think this an odd statement for a fashion designer to make, given that the world of fashion has very consciously aligned itself with the art world over recent years. There is hardly a fashion group without an art foundation these days.

AHG: The Hambleton Project has resuscitated Richard Hambleton’s reputation. Will you repeat the experience with another artist?

GA: Only if the art in question appeals to me personally, and fits with Armani. As you can see, given my support of the Hambleton exhibition, this “fit” need not be an aesthetic fit. It will just have to have something of the Armani spirit.

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I used to see a fair bit of Hambleton in the early 1990s when he was living on two — or was it more? — ramshackle floors on a Chrystie Street building, back when he still kept one foot somewhat in the world. I even remember a party of sorts there. Marcia Resnick was there, and, I think, Richard Hell. And I am part of the Hambleton Project to the extent that I wrote an introductory piece for the Milan catalogue. Phase three, the next rung of the undertaking, will be the opening of a show in Beijing this October. So the project is an unqualified success? Well, this being Richard Hambleton, there is a dark side too.

The artist didn’t make it to Milan. Nor is he expected in Beijing. I managed to make contact with him again while I was working on the essay. He asked me to his (different) place on Chrystie. The door opened. It was dark, apparently nobody there, no signs of life or art-making. I turned to go and found I had locked myself in. I called Richard. A very pale young girl came in and let me out. There had always been a wraith of a girl.

Richard had asked me to return later. I waited over a glass of wine in a modish Lower East Sidery, with globed lights, brick walls, glimmery glassware. The tragic hipsters to my left were talking about ”demographics.” I sank a glass of red, returned. And there — somewhat to my surprise — he was. We went up the darksome stairs.

As for the rest, well, its all accounted for in the catalogue. But Hambleton is lucid, indeed brilliant, at once mild and intent. He was analytic and precise about art in general, revealing about his own work and savage about the workings of the art world. And all around was the evidence that he was still painting, drawing, and object-making — remarkably, because of his corrosive self-destructiveness. After losing his Chrystie Street home in the early 1990s, he effectively became homeless, and he lost a sizable collection of Basquiats and Harings because he didn’t make storage payments.

So, he didn’t make it to Milan. Nor is he expected in Beijing. He has been swallowed up by his habit and dissolved into his myth. He no longer returns my calls. I imagine that he is still working obsessively and that the work still has enchanting strangeness and beauty, like oil slick on a tortured ocean. And I hope he somehow gets to read this.

Anthony Haden-Guest is the author of True Colors, and he is currently at work on a successor.