Basquiat

A film set in New York in the 1980s. Jean-Michel sleeps in the park. He writes on walls, paints postcards and sells them in the street, and nobody knows him. He gets into a gallery circle. His paintings draw attention; a critic writes, a dealer buys, and within two years his name is everywhere. The second half is the price of that quick rise. Money comes, attention comes, and the people around him change. Old friends fall away; the new ones want work from him. He becomes friends with Andy Warhol. The relationship between the two artists is the warmest part of the film; they work together and the press attacks the collaboration. Drugs are present throughout and the film does not dramatise them; it shows them as an everyday matter. What the narrative is interested in is the art market: how a person is discovered, how he is sold and when he is dropped. Jeffrey Wright plays Jean-Michel, David Bowie plays Warhol, Dennis Hopper the dealer and Christopher Walken the critic. Gary Oldman, Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe and Michael Wincott are in the cast. Julian Schnabel directed; he is a painter and was in the same circle at the time. It is his first film. The paintings in the film are not Basquiat's own; the estate refused permission and imitations were made. An interesting production for anyone curious about artists' lives and New York in the 1980s. For a viewer expecting a comprehensive life story, the film looks at a short period.