The life of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat unfolds in the new bio-documentary by Tamra Davis like a Basquiat painting – short, deliberate, assured, wild, vivid, and full of a sense of significance. There have been many short-lived pop icons, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, but with Basquiat we also get an artist whose intellect and artistic accomplishments greatly exceed your usual pop star. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is a film that explores the appearance of genius. Genius is a word that is often thrown around liberally, but it has a place in the discussion of Basquiat because his talent was so precocious, it manifested itself with such immediacy, and it seemed to flare out from some hidden source that transcended the artist’s individual self.
The documentary takes as its primary source material an interview video taped in 1986 by Tamra Davis. The friend of the artist buried the footage away in a drawer after Basquiat’s premature death in 1987, and unearthed it two decades later. During that time, Basquiat went from high art outcast to the one of the leading artistic figures of his generation, celebrated in museum shows around the world. In addition to Davis’s casual interview with Basquiat, the filmmaker speaks to artists, friends, and other scene-sters to tell the story of his life and ask how such a talent could achieve so much in so little time.
The picture of Basquiat’s life that emerges is a contradiction. Viewed as a bohemian street urchin, Basquiat left a middle class home in Brooklyn when he was 17. He began as a graffiti artist and in two years vaulted into celebrity. He had flings with Madonna, became Andy Warhol’s best friend, walked runways in fashion shows, and graced the covers of magazines. Yet, Basquiat was also kind, soft, and introspective, possessing an innate understanding and suspicion of contemporary culture. As one interviewed artist puts it in the film: Basquiat paintings are enigmas. They show just how complex our culture is, with the artist throwing us some hints.
Basquiat’s life was bohemian and extreme. Like some Kerouac character, he worked fast and furiously (producing over 1,000 paintings and 1,000 drawings before his death) to a bebop soundtrack, and in the end, he wore his body down with drugs. To the film’s credit, the romance of Basquiat’s life isn’t what overpowers the film’s exposition. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child takes time to explore how the artist worked and to tie his paintings and drawings with milestones in his professional and private life. Most interestingly, it succeeds in showing a progression of style and substance in Basquiat’s work that betrays an artistic growth and maturation most artists hope to achieve in the length of a full lifetime.
Photo courtesy of Benno Friedman / Corbis Outline
