In 1983, an apparently emotionally disabled interviewer asked Jean-Michel Basquiat whether there was anger in his paintings. The artist responded that his work was about 80 percent anger. Basquiat’s exuberant, text-heavy paintings also convey joy, the coolheaded thought that went into their making, and a sort of stealthy erudition. But the artist, who died in 1988, had plenty of reasons to be angry. Just before the rise of political correctness, the highly educated, guilt-ridden white art world used Basquiat for catharsis—consuming and celebrating his expressions as fetish products. People liked his anger. Given the context, he found himself in the horrifying position of gaining from his own objectification. And not much of the context has changed.
The new documentary on Basquiat’s life—Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child—was made by a friend of his named Tamra Davis. It centers on an interview with the artist in which Davis asks not particularly interesting questions, leaving the impression of a treasure chest pawed at by a dog. Still, it’s not as bad as the 1996 Hollywood version made by Julian Schnabel, and you should see it for several reasons: for its many sequences of the paintings; in order to make an unprecedented amount of eye contact with the artist (this is the only feature-length documentary on Basquiat, who died of a heroin overdose at 27); and for what it unintentionally reveals about art, celebrity, and race in contemporary America.
Problematically, the movie reinscribes the old causes of Basquiat’s anger in some ways, rather than calling them out. For instance, it’s maddening to watch as art-world power broker Jeffrey Deitch (once Basquiat’s dealer, now, newly, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) paints a pitiful picture of coming across Basquiat on New Year’s Eve of the year before he died. Basquiat was sitting at a bar alone, with nobody by his side. “Here was the most famous artist of his generation,” Deitch
intones, “and he was alone!” Deitch’s incredulity is absurd—as if he doesn’t see that Basquiat’s fame is precisely what made him alone. (Deitch is still in the business of minting art stars, with sometimes dubious results. Shades of Basquiat reverberated out from the recent Deitch-facilitated train wreck of a performance on the soap opera General Hospital by Kalup Linzy, a bulky black man who crossdresses as various characters in his own parodic video series All My Churen. Linzy wore an appropriately lost look on TV.)
The obvious point that celebrity is isolating but celebrity and tokenism together can be fatal seems lost on Schnabel, the 1980s painter (now famous for his movies, especially The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) who serves as one of the documentary’s talking heads. Schnabel and Basquiat are sometimes described as friends; they were also certainly rivals. There’s unpleasantness in the fact that Schnabel created the Hollywood Basquiat biopic, which smooths over anything truly troubling and leaves the basic impression of the same old dead genius. There’s further Schnabellian unpleasantness in this new film, when he implies that the 1980s art world was simply a shit storm he weathered better than Basquiat, as if he were a returned veteran from the same front where Basquiat fell. Schnabel sounds like an elder, but his art world—that of a white guy admitted to the Whitney Museum of American Art’s prestigious independent study program about five minutes after getting his art degree—was not Basquiat’s art world. There’s one section of the film overtly devoted to a discussion of race, but then the subject goes unacknowledged (and the omission goes unexplored).
That’s the fault of the filmmaker, who doesn’t seem to have an enormous amount to offer in the way of analysis of Basquiat’s life and work. She does do the work of collecting storms of images of his paintings and of his early graffiti writings as SAMO© (Same Old Shit), which are a pleasure and a privilege to see all at one go. She also does a good job depicting Basquiat’s intellectually rich, emotionally difficult early family life and the painful rejection he felt later by his father, an accountant from Haiti who was busy trying to make his own way in a world into which he was continuously immigrating. The New York Times gave the documentary a lukewarm review, ending with this, which bears repeating: “It should help push the prices of his work higher.” 
Excellent review Jen, thank you.
Did you really think the Schnabel Basquiat was all that bad? I mean it did a terrible job of telling his story accurately, of giving a real honest depiction of the scene, and yeah the director certainly worked in his own life way too much for the subject….but I found it to be funny, charming, and even sweet.
It’s kind of like a hyper poetic take on the cliched idea of Basquiat’s life with a bunch of great, silly scenes stylizing the 80s NY art scene.
Plus David Bowie’s Warhol isn’t the best Warhol I’ve seen on film. (Parker Posey as Mary Boone? Dennis Hopper as Bruno Bischofberger! Totally cartoony and awesome!)
Can you be a token if you’re better than everyone in the majority, and they acknowledge it? Yeah, maybe some people in the art world are white-guilt driven or racist, but he gained worldwide fame because his ability was too great to ignore, not because he was black, and white folks felt bad about it.
He was an addict and probably had some mental health issues, but despite all that he managed to become a genius, skilled, disciplined, and world-famous artist.
I saw it back at SIFF. My friend and I agreed that some of the commentators were annoying. There was one quote I couldn’t forget and then did. One of the commentators said his paintings were “inspiringly inspiring” or “amazingly amazing” or some redundant “adverbly adjective” combo that escapes me.
Basquiat – the ‘Hollywood’ version (what the hell was the budget!? really, you think that was ‘Hollywood’?) – is one of my favorite movies. Schnabel makes beautiful films.
Basquiat the artist died too young. I suspect he didn’t have much more to say, though, or heroin wouldn’t have been so attractive.
‘Treasure chest pawed at by a dog’? Harsh.
I’ll see it.
I too saw this one at siff.
The director combines this with various stills, interviews with friends (such as Schnabel, musician Thurston Moore, etc.), and random footage of the artist at events and TV shows. These types of documentaries are in just as much danger as the biopics- they can become repetitive, overly formulaic, and act too much like a “Greatest Hits” of whoever the film’s about, but this one doesn’t fall into that trap (though, honestly, it might be because of his short life). Surprisingly, “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” remains fresh for its entire 90 minute duration, though it is as Jen points out, a bit uneven.
hi everyone – since the showtimes don’t appear to be working right now on the site, you can find all the info about when and where this movie is playing (August 6-12) here: http://www.nwfilmforum.org/live/page/cal…
Schnabel’s Basquiat film was fantastic. I’m not sure what you saw that was such a dissapointment – especially for a first feature length outing. Like another commentor mentioned, maybe it didn’t really portray his life well but it was an excellent film. I’ve watched it dozens of times and each time it reveals new layers of depth and meaning. Maybe you should give it another chance?
insightful review, ms. graves… particularly i think re julian s. and jeffrey d’s commentary….
“Downtown 81” is another film anyone interested in Basquiat should see. It was filmed in Manhattan in 1981 and stars the artist and is loosely based on his life.
Oh, wait. So he wasn’t just another self-absorbed dickwad artist, concerning himself with navel-gazing narcissism instead of like, oh I don’t know, building useful things or programming computers or inventing stuff that improve people’s lives? How come we never agonize over posthumous regret about the legacy of a successful wastewater treatment engineer or naval architect?
Ah, Basquiat. Does anybody really know how to pronounce his name? Is it Bass-kwat? Bas-kwa? Bass-kwa? Bas-kee-aa? Bass-koo-wat? Bass-koo-wa?
The Schnabel flick was beautiful and not Hollywood. It was produced by Miramax. Even though Miramax was bought out by Disney, they aren’t based in Hollywood and still release arthouse and foreign films. It was made with a few million though. Jus’ to set the record straight Jen… nice review etc. etc..
@ 10
Just saw your comment and had to reply.
What you said is perfect and should be said, but you’re speaking in a different language here. There’s a dichotomoy of human thinking that Robert Pirsig, the author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” calls the “Classical” mind and the “Romantic” mind. I think it’s a great theory that applies to nearly everything in the world. You are approaching the world from a classical mind (how things work, what they’re mad of, how they’re used, etc, etc) and Basquiat, and most artists approach the world from a romantic mind (what it looks like on the surface, how does it feel, is it beautiful, etc…).
There’s nothing wrong with looking at the world from either of these perspectives, but it’s important to realize that for whatever reason, many people are only capable, or only want to, look at the world from the classical or romantic mind.
Is art useful, does it improve people’s lives? It improves my life, at least my enjoyment of life. More than a dishwasher does. But art probably has little effect on your life.
Tamra Davis is far more “Hollywood” than Schnabel- she made Billy Madison and Half Baked, and lives in Malibu part time, NYC the rest, with her husband, Mike D of the Beastie Boys.
Still, its great she made this.
More Basquiat is always better.
And I am definitely in the camp that considers the first Basquiat movie to be a great film. Accurate history, maybe not- but what kind of a boring pedant would let truth get in the way of a good story?