Basquiat -- Portraits in Cinema

Basquiat -- Portraits in Cinema and in Print

The half-Haitian, half-Cuban artist Jean-Michel Basquiat died at the age of 26, which might make him initially seem like a poor subject for a biography. Most people, even by the time they reach their mid-20s, are still building their careers. However, at the age of young adulthood, Basquiat had already lived many lives. He was born the son of a middle-class accountant, but he became alienated with conventional capitalist values, and fell into drug addiction, and eventually homelessness. While living in a cardboard box, he gained renown as a graffiti artist who signed himself SAMO. His work was so striking; he fell into the Andy Warhol 'Factory' crowd and became the first prominent African-American artist of the international art 'scene.' But the brilliance of his work and the satisfaction of his artist output were not enough to turn Basquiat from a life of drugs, and he died from a heroin overdose. In the works that strive to remember him in print and cinema, the social world that propelled him to fame takes predominance over his artistic legacy.

True, both Phoebe Hoban's 1999 biography Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art and the 1996 film that bears the name of its subject have few biographical materials to work with -- Basquiat's life was short, his artistic legacy is relatively recent and difficult to judge from the perspective of history. He left no extensive writings about the meaning of his art. He preferred, like many artists, to let his works speak for themselves. Both works tend to use Basquiat as a kind of case study of American artistic celebrity, and as a way of illustrating the excesses of the New York art world. The film gives a far more sympathetic and psychologically subtle portrayal of the central figure. Because Hoban's account is a written biography, it is easy to forget the visual power of the artist's works, and instead focus only on the lurid details of his life, like his outrageous sexual practices, his many celebrity lovers, and also the truly staggering sums he spent on cocaine. Basquiat's relative muteness on the subject of his work and his life (he granted only a few, enigmatic interviews) propels Hoban to interview the persons who were a part of the Warhol scene at the time, and the book thus tends to show many views and very sides of the character, without a truly coherent portrait emerging from the psychological collage. Quite often, the reader feels as if he or she is learning more about the interviewee, rather than upon what drove Basquiat to create art, and then to destroy himself with drugs.

Art is a visual, rather than a verbal medium, and the first and perhaps primary advantage of film is that it allows the viewer to see the subject's art, and to gain a sense of how it was received at the moment of its creation. The actors representing gallery-goers stare at the work, and show the viewer how radical Basquiat's images seemed at the time, and indeed, how striking they still are today. Because the film does not have to rely upon the singular voice of an associate of the artist at any time during the narrative, it can always hold Basquiat as its focus.

The portrayal of the central character, by showing non-verbal aspects of his life, like the intensity of his focus when engaged in creative works, or his silent, brooding intensity when confronting the naked racism that patronizing, rich connoisseurs often showed towards his works, helps the viewer better understand the torment that fueled the genius. To know, for example, the fact that Basquiat had a three-hundred dollar a week cocaine habit means little, it does not tell us why he continued to use drugs and still had the drive to create art. Although the film portrays the full Warhol milieu, as it was such an integral part of Basquiat's discovery, and provided the environment where his works were created and received, it does not glamorize New York during the 'Studio 54' years. It also does not glamorize drug use, as it stresses that Andy Warhol hoped that Basquiat would get off of drugs, and put his potential to better use.

Film allows small details to speak volumes from the artist's short life, like when he sees his mother in a mental institution, and goes stumbling through the streets of New York afterwards, spiritually shattered by the sight. The addition of music and sound effects also add to the sense of Basquiat's addled consciousness, and gives a more textured 'feel' of what it was like to live when he did, given that music was such an important part of street and club life. Hoban's use of interviews provides a sharp and incisive critique of the racism and the liberal attitudes towards fidelity and substance abuse that show that Basquiat's excesses were not as striking as they might seem to an outsider, but although her work is far above the usual trashy 'celebrity' biography, it is still not a full portrait of Basquiat's visual power.