Tamra Davis’ documentary “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” has started to make the festival rounds this year, and with the opening and a clip now online, our interested has been raised considerably.
For those of you a bit unfamiliar with the man and his work, Basquiat was one of the leading figures of the New York City art scene in the 1980s. He got his start doing graffiti, signing his work with the tag SAMO (as in “same old, same old”) but quickly graduated to the upper echelons of New York City’s cultural elite. He dated Madonna, was close with Andy Warhol and by the age of 25 was an international art sensation. Sadly, his drug addiction overwhelmed him and he died of an overdose at the age of 27.
Director Tamra Davis (music videos for Sonic Youth, Depeche Mode, Beastie Boys; films “Billy Madison,” “Half Baked”) met and became friends with Basquiat in 1983 and began to document his life and career. Devastated by his death in 1988, Davis put the reels of footage away only to revisit them in 2005 when a friend encouraged her to create a short about Basquiat for a restrospective at MOCA. The twenty minute short ended up being an eye-opener for everyone who saw it and Davis then went to work expanding the project into a feature length documentary. The resulting picture paints a portrait of the artist using Davis’ rare and never-before-seen footage and features interviews with a wide range of subjects including Julian Schnabel (a contemporary of Basquiat’s and the director of the biopic “Basquiat”), longtime girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk, Fab Five Freddy and Thurston Moore. The soundtrack is by the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond and Manhattan-based composer J. Ralph.
The opening credit bit below is a nice set up for the film, featuring shots of Basquiat working, and this clip is a great summation of what made the artist such a captivating figure and why he remains so fascinating to this day. The documentary will be released by Arthouse Films hopefully later this year.
-Written by Kevin Jagernauth