The biographical film Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child tells the story of the young influential artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The film was done by Basquiat’s friend Tamra Davis, and his story is told through interviews conducted by Tamra of his friends and even himself. Being a very gentle young man in New York in the late seventies, Basquiat struggled deeply with many aspects of his life. Despite being a black artist in a predominantly white community, Basquiat climbed his way up to stardom, becoming friends with Andy Warhol and even collaborating with him. The film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child lets Basquiat and his friends tell his story from their perspective and share how he made it in the art world, becoming one of the most influential and well-known artists of his time.
In the beginning of the film, his friends tell the story of how challenging life was for the young people living in the SoHo community, having to scrape change of the ground at clubs to survive on a fifteen cent bag of cheese doodles for a couple of days, but as he described it, Basquiat enjoyed his life as a bum and wanted to be on his own, away from home. Basquiat also would take doors and windows off the street to paint on, as he could not afford canvas. With these anecdotes, the film shows how strong-willed Basquiat was and how hard he worked for his dreams of being an artist in New York.
Basquiat was always an artist even before becoming well known for his paintings. When he first moved to New York, he created a band called Gray, named after Gray’s Anatomy. This was a book his mother gifted him in the hospital, that he took deep inspiration from, even using some references in many of his paintings. Basquiat was also once known as SAMO, known in the New York community for his poetic-like graffiti. The film showed how Basquiat was always expressing himself artistically and making his presence known.
The film’s name Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child came from a piece Rene Ricard wrote about Basquiat, naming him The Radiant Child. Ricard described how Basquiat appreciated a child’s art and how they made no mistakes, very similar to how Basquiat would defend his own work. This aspect is very important when you first view Basquiat’s work, as one might be confused about how he presents it. The film showed how Basquiat took a very different approach to art, and how he had a unique ability to access everything in his mind and put it on canvas, displaying his very busy and genius thought process. Basquiat was not only inspired by art through the child’s eyes but he was also very inspired by many painters, writers, specifically William Burroughs and even jazz musicians. Basquiat took their art and made his own revisions in their work, making it his own.
One very important topic the film talked about was how Basquiat had such a fragile soul, which I think is very important when discussing Basquiat. The film quoted Madonna saying that “he was too fragile for this earth.” Basquiat identified with the tragic ending many heroes had, specifically his heroes like Pollock and Van Gogh. Basquiat was a genius for his time and struggled not only with his busy mind but also with his rise to fame in the early eighties. As his friends describe it in the film Basquiat basically went from being a bum to being the most famous artist in a short two year period. This lifestyle transition was very rough to adapt to in such a short time period. He went from selling his paintings for two hundred dollars to making hundreds of thousands in one night at a show. Basquiat was seen as a God-like figure in the art community where he was known, but as soon as he would walk the streets of New York someone would think he was just a bum. I think that it was important for the film to include this so viewers could understand aspects that lead to his tragic ending.
Towards the end of Basquiat’s career, he eventually became friends with Andy Warhol. As his friendship with Andy blossomed, he cut out many of his friends from before he was famous, as his friends described it. Basquiat and Warhol soon became so close and inspired by one another that they decided to collaborate on multiple pieces together. But the unexpected happened and the collaboration flopped and received very bad reviews. This caused a falling out between Warhol and Basquiat. Following the falling out, Warhol suddenly died sending Basquiat into a very guilt-ridden spiral, as he did not get to make up with Warhol. This caused Basquiat to get into drugs, specifically heroin. Basquiat struggled deeply with his internal thoughts and addiction. He eventually died from a heroin overdose after being sober for months on August 12, 1988 at twenty seven years old.
The movie ends right after his death specifically so one could focus on all of Basquiat’s work and not his downfall. Basquiat was an amazing artist and I think one should focus on his monumental work and not his downfall. I do still think it is important that the filmmakers included his addiction because Basquiat struggled so deeply with himself, as they spoke of this all throughout the film, but once he became famous it became worse.
Whether one is looking to view the film for entertainment with no interest in Basquiat or looking to learn everything about Basquiat I would recommend it. Going into this film with little background information about Basquiat, this film opened up my mind to his very exciting and genius mind and how he could paint exactly what he visioned. I also enjoyed how Basquiat himself got to tell his story and how his inner circle shared their experiences too. This documentary-style film showed the viewer exactly what went down in Basquiat’s life during his rise to success and how it affected him and everyone around him. It also was able to convey his friend’s thoughts about his downfall and their view of him struggling so deeply within himself.
