Sundance 2010: Jean-Michel Basquiat
What constitutes fine art, who’s in charge of the process wherein art is called art, and why do those who make it, so often, get damaged in the process?
In an unusual way, the film Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child is both conventional documentary and personal narrative. Without hearing the filmmaker, Tamra Davis, speak before and after the film, one would assume it is entirely the former. Davis, who was a close friend of Basquiat, has structured the film to speak for her, in describing his short life and their shorter relationship, in a way that would be appropriate to both his and his family’s wishes.
Basquiat was a darling of the New York art world in the 1980′s. He became the most publicly recognized of several artists including Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel, and was a close friend and protege of Andy Warhol. A high school dropout, he began as a graffiti artist and entered the cultural elite via the New York club scene and the early icons of the era: Madonna, Blondie, and David Bowie.
His work is primitive in nature and refracts African, Haitian and Hispanic cultural influences. The most significant outgrowth of his work has been in graphic design where colorful, bold and childlike images are juxtaposed with text. This has developed, in part, as a response to the ubiquity of neat and predictable computer graphics. Basquiat died of complications related to heroin usage at age 27.
The film presents Basquiat in an almost identical way as Wikipedia. The major difference is that some of the negative aspects of his life are not present in the film. Throughout, I found myself wondering the extent to which the film, as a celebration of his life, excluded negative details. In the Q&A it became clear that, through control of the display of his work, the Basquiat family also approved and censored the film. Negative aspects of his family life, including his mother’s mental illness, went without exposition in any great detail.
Another thing which could have stood in the way of a complete depiction of the artist is the filmmaker’s involvement in the same community of artists, dealers, curators, and buyers that produced and, perhaps, destroyed the artist. Since reading Tom Wolfe’s (of the Bonfire of the Vanities variety) 1975 The Painted Word, I’ve regarded the art world with healthy skepticism.
In the case of much modern art, a prohibitive factor in the escalation in the value of work is the productivity of the artist. Because a lot of new work can be created very rapidly, it is difficult to value existing work highly. Wolfe argues somewhat convincingly that it is the traders in art who make the market for it by manufacturing demand. In other words, it’s all about the PR. He also infers, less convincingly, that this process is independent of the quality of the art.
At any rate, while watching the various art representatives, dealers and buyers speaking, I wondered about the extent to which they may have financially benefited from the artist’s early death. Basquiat fits an established model of artistic incandescence, associated with notoriety, followed rapidly by decline and demise. I think it is worth wondering why this occurs again and again, and questioning who benefits from it. The absence of these questions was the film’s greatest fault.
The film is well made and worth seeing. I found it much more compelling than the similar drama made about his life. Aspects I enjoyed most were the Filmmaker’s use of music (jazz and Ravel), the abundant use of his art, and the tenderness with which the childlike essence of Basquiat is portrayed. It is unfortunate that the entire story could not have been told.