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Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (DVD)
Year: 2010
Rating: M
Director: Tamra Davis
Cast: Jean Michel Basquiat, Larry Gagosian, Julian Schnabel
Release Date: February 03, 2011
Distributor: Hopscotch
The Film: 4.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5“...treats his work with the reverence it has earned...”
For a brief few years in the early 1980s, Jean-Michel Basquiat was the most famous fine artist in the world, trumping contemporaries like Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel and even his mentor, Andy Warhol. Rapidly evolving from street art folk hero "Samo", his work is rich, accessible and moved against the prevailing tide of ultra-minimalism that bordered on the academic. He sold to Debbie Harry, dated Madonna, charmed famous art dealer Bruno Bischofberger and utterly transfixed a late in life Warhol.
This excellent documentary, composed of mothballed home videos by friend and director Tamra Davis and scored by two Beastie Boys, covers his precipitous rise and heartbreakingly familiar drug decline and death at the age of 27. It treats his work with the reverence it has earned, is reasonably even-handed with regard to the man he was and is on strong footing in placing Basquiat in the context of his time.
