Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

For too long, the only Jean-Michel Basquiat we've had in film is Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic (a good movie but heavily fictionalized), and the Downtown 81, a patchwork curiosity. I saw this doc with a bit of apprehension, worrying I might see a film of rehashed, superficial hype about some famous guy's famous coolness and his famous burnout. I came away really pleased.

The doc is conventional, a no-frills mix of archive footage & contemporary interviews, but this works well - it left the focus on well-selected interviews and Basquiat's artwork, which the filmmaker apparently had free rein to use and did so liberally. The catalyst for this documentary is Tamra Davis's own footage of Basquiat (circa 1986/87?), and those sections are definitely a highlight.

The substance comes from a surprisingly diverse collection of interviews, none of which wastes any screen time. There were the ex-girlfriends, old friends and art dealers, but Robert Farris Thompson, the Yale art professor who may have never met Basquiat, had some of the films most interesting comments. Diego Cortez ("I was sick of seeing white walls with white people drinking white wine") and Fab 5 Freddy both had lines that were hits with the audience. But still, the focus on Basquiat's artwork itself was the best thing here.

Some of the most-repeated, least-interesting gossip I've heard about Basquiat are referenced (he dated Madonna, painted in an expensive suit, etc etc) but this is kept to a minimum.

The weak link was too much reference to the mythical time Basquiat was "living on the streets" as a teenager. It's said he was living on the streets (or with girlfriends, to be more precise) because he was a broke kid determined to live in New York. But the record was also set straight about his background: he wasn't a genius who magically spawned from uneducated poverty. His family was well-off, he was exposed to art, music and intellectual thinking at an early age. And yet one of those interviewed got away with saying he couldn't handle the pressure of success because he'd only a little while before "he was living in the streets."

The other odd omission was any information about the girlfriend Jennifer Goode despite several photos of her, when other women in his life were interviewed at length.

Overall, very good work, and a must-see for anyone interested in the work of Basquiat.

This superb documentary, opening with Tamra's early interviews taped in her California home, reveals the tragically short but meteoric career of this talented, humorous, driven artist of the streets. It's an enlightening revelation of his work and his walk, including historical interviews with and recent reflections of contemporaries, friends and critics. The soundtrack drops you back into the clubs and streets of the time, with scenes syncopated to beats of jazz, early hip hop and pop. Basquiat seemed to have an internal receiver that picked up myriad cultural/racial/sexual revolution vibes from the air around him. He spent his waking hours furiously translating those messages into color and vocabulary on everything and anything around him. Black meets white, history meets contemporary, illiterate meets egalitarian. Clashes and confusion became the prolific stream of dialog for his brush and spray can: ee cummings + Michaelangelo commissioned by God to interpret society on the Vatican walls of Soho. And as the demands began to consume him, the gentle muse slept off into the mist.

This "Radiant Child" documentary is clearly a very biased production as its producers were all close and chummy associates of American graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

IMO - Basquiat's talent as a gifted artist (with vast potential) was marginal, at best. After viewing numerous examples of his work in this production - I would actually go so far as to say that Basquiat was, basically, without talent and his artistic insight was atrociously counterfeit.

Basquiat's success in the art world was just a flash-in-the-pan, and, in 1988, he died at age 27 from a heroin overdose.

Jean-Michel Basquiat wasn't always a wonderful guy. He could be stubborn, and a "work-aholic" when it came to his art (he ultimately made over 1,000 paintings and postcards in his ten years making art), and got addicted to heroin which, if anyone brought it up around him, he would get vicious and vindictive. He died when he was 27 years old, and at a low point in his life and career following the death of his good friend Andy Warhol. But this isn't really what Tamra Davis wants to show, at least not entirely. She wants to give a fair assessment of her friend's work, a true artist in the sense that he pushed boundaries and conventions, did things his way, and got recognition and praise though somehow stayed on the fringe when it came to widespread acceptance. Like Jimi Hendrix, he was even revolutionary in his efforts at what he did, borrowing from others in a "neo-expressionist" style that was fresh, hip, but had a basic quality to it that could be understood.

We get a view of his career- how he started off as an underground artist living downtown Manhattan at a time where, as one person puts it, "everybody did everything." No inspiration was lost on people who painted, had a band, made movies, wrote poetry and fiction, and made other art projects or graffiti. Basquiat, or "Samo" as he was called (such as "Same Ol' S***"), put up worded graffiti all over the city that got him some attention, and he had a band with Vincent Gallo where nobody could play an intstrument. But it was the very graffiti drawings he did, starting with postcards that he got sold to Warhol on a whim, and then with paintings by the dozen that he took off. One of the joys of the film is Davis showing us so much of the art, how much there was variety in his work even if so much seemed the same child-like drawings. For how simple and crude they appear, one sees a pattern, and there's an amazing sophistication in his work.

Perhaps those who are not fans of Basquiat- and the documentary shows how there were some who looked down on his work, some of which (like the current MoMA director) have recanted- may not get a lot out of the movie. But as a film about the nature of an artist, how he works and how he interacts with people, some infamous like Warhol (their collaboration story is one of the highlights), and some not like the hangers-on at his apartment, it works very well. Some of Davis' low budget aesthetic makes it a little less than great, such as the newer interviews she's done with former curators, artists, musicians, and art dealers and buyers, are lessened in quality by bad audio and video. But perhaps (?) that was part of the point, too. She has an artist as her subject, also a close friend (Davis has some nice if uninteresting anecdotes about eating Chhinese food with Jean-Michel), and the work, and his life and his stories told from a 1986 interview done personally with him, speaks for itself.

This all said, if you are a fan, or think you are, or even just enjoyed Julian Schnabel's 1996 movie, this goes more in-depth and you get a lot of great looks at his daring, provocative artwork, and his process. 8.5./10

I really liked this movie and what it shows not only about the new york art scene of the 1980s and Basquiat, but about how fame and success can easily lead to destruction. However, at times the movie is hard to watch because the sound is TERRIBLE! I don't understand how clearly talented film makers could take so little time and have so little care about the sound. They clearly took lots of time and care in interviewing many important and interesting players within the scene and Basquiat's life, but often I fell out of the movie simply because i was struggling to understand the bad audio, then starting to wonder why the audio was so bad. Some interviews had clearly exposed clip on mics and that was so much preferred to the other interviews where the audio was either distorted, rustle or clearly just a camera mic. I mean, even the interview done on the analog video camera in the 1980s sounded so much better than half of the interviews that feature prominently in the film.

I want to recommend this movie highly, as I feel its story has a lot of continuity to the artists of today, but i also have to strongly warn them that the audio is so bad that it might not be worth the struggle.

Please! please! Please! Documentary film makers out there, care as much about the sound as you care about the image and content. All three are needed to make a movie work. Nothing is more frustrating than suffering through an interview solely because the sound is bad. Learn something about sound. Care about your sound, or hire some one who does!