This is one of those bizarre films, like Oliver Stone´s The Doors, where you end up shaking your head at the end wondering whether the director had some sort of vendetta against his subject. Don´t get me wrong: I am no fan of Basquiat. I have no idea, actually, what to think about his art. I do know that I myself have no artistic talent whatsoever, and if I foolishly attempted to produce portraits and paintings, they would be flat stick figures with no dimension or depth. I do have a good vocabulary, so I could pepper my works with some trigger words and maybe someone would discover me and I would become instantly famous and wealthy, and celebrities like Andy Warhol and Madonna would want to hang out with me. Who knows?
What I do know is that this particular film of Basquiat´s life makes it seem very much as though his mode of painting was not a choice but a consequence of his lack of any training or skills and wholly a product of a troubled youth who has Freudian parent issues and, on top of all of that, an inordinate sensitivity about being disrespected as a black person in America. He bristles when a journalist describes his work as ¨primitive¨, but what other word would be appropriate, I wonder? (Maybe ´childlike´?) I should say here, however, that the scene of him attempting to hail a taxi is accurate. I witnessed this treatment of one of my black friends when we were out in Boston and no cab would stop for us until I hailed the cab. Then, when my friend got in, the cabbie said, ¨Hey, what´s going on here?" Really.
Back to this highly unflattering film in which in one amazing scene Basquiat is depicted as a zombie walking around NYC in his pajamas. According to this depiction, Basquiat used hard drugs (heroin) from the very beginning, not just after becoming famous, as a more recent film, Basquiat The Radiant Child (2011), suggests. My recommendation to anyone interested in this subject would be to watch both films and assume that parts of each are true but both succumb to one of two excesses: psychological reductionism or idolatry.
What I do know is that this particular film of Basquiat´s life makes it seem very much as though his mode of painting was not a choice but a consequence of his lack of any training or skills and wholly a product of a troubled youth who has Freudian parent issues and, on top of all of that, an inordinate sensitivity about being disrespected as a black person in America. He bristles when a journalist describes his work as ¨primitive¨, but what other word would be appropriate, I wonder? (Maybe ´childlike´?) I should say here, however, that the scene of him attempting to hail a taxi is accurate. I witnessed this treatment of one of my black friends when we were out in Boston and no cab would stop for us until I hailed the cab. Then, when my friend got in, the cabbie said, ¨Hey, what´s going on here?" Really.
Back to this highly unflattering film in which in one amazing scene Basquiat is depicted as a zombie walking around NYC in his pajamas. According to this depiction, Basquiat used hard drugs (heroin) from the very beginning, not just after becoming famous, as a more recent film, Basquiat The Radiant Child (2011), suggests. My recommendation to anyone interested in this subject would be to watch both films and assume that parts of each are true but both succumb to one of two excesses: psychological reductionism or idolatry.