“Julian Schnabel’s highly publicized success made him the first art star of the 1980′s and created an atmosphere of expanded possibilities for any promising artist since.” – New York Times Magazine, 1985

It was in this climate that Jean-Michel Basquiat first saw attention in New York, a young native son who gained first attention as a self-promoting tag artist (Tao Lin has obviously taken some notes), noise musician, and general personality. His rise to success was relatively meteoric, going from dropping acid and selling painted sweatshirts in Washington Square Park to a group show to the Venice Biennale and on; a steady ascent as onlookers gushed, frowned, or smirked. Eight years after his death the same person who had made his career culturally palatable, Julian Schnabel, made his first film a self-involved biopic of Jean-Michel. While that movie was panned even by its star, Jeffrey Wright, who said “I think my performance was appropriated, literally, and the way I was edited was appropriated in the same way his story has been appropriated and that he was appropriated when he was alive.” Good then, maybe, that after all these years Basquiat has a proper documentary in which to parse an odd, interesting, and too-short life. The documentary’s centerpiece would definitely be the footage director Tamra Davis shot and sat on for two decades. Having screened at the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, it will probably or possibly be arriving at a Landmark theater near you sometime this year.

A preview of the film: