thenationofartists.com

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek from the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival [From MovingPicturesMagazine.com]

Director: Tamra Davis
Starring: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Bruno Bischofsberger, Jeffrey Deitch, Tony Shafrazi, Suzanne Malouk, Fab Five Freddy

Tamra Davis has surpassed the art world’s expectations with “The Radiant Child,” the newly definitive Basquiat documentary, which superbly sets out the life and times of Jean-Michel Basquiat with never-seen-before first-hand footage of the artist; source and anecdotal interviews and quotes from almost every player in the 1980s art scene in New York; and a pointed dissection of Basquiat’s oeuvre as it related to his relationships, education, racial and socio-economic identities, philosophies, finances and talent.

Starting with the quote, “Nobody loves a genius child. Kill him and let his soul run wild,” Davis draws the audience into the soft-faced, self-taught world of Basquiat; paying homage to her friend, she lands the viewer amidst the “artist of a generation” whose newness is felt now more than then, and whose desire for vindication and acceptance saw him beholden to a critical community that dealt with him in equal and opposite measures of acceptance and exclusion.

There is no doubting Basquiat’s place in history as one of few black artists to be afforded unbridled fame and popularity. His desire for neo-expressionism so raw that it bled, he found fandom from the time’s best-known artist, Andy Warhol; one of the most comprehensive examples of 1980s excess, he transitioned in two years from his penniless role in creating the graffiti project “SAMO” with Al Diaz (without which all discussions of contemporary street artists Shepard Fairey and Banksy would have had to find a new groove) to sell-out shows grossing $200,000 in a single night.

Davis reveals that Basquiat’s personality was reviewed more often than his work. The girlfriends (including Madonna), the parties, the drugs and the politics of downtown Manhattan all conspired to send the artist cascading toward his death at age twenty-seven, leaving behind more than 1,200 drawings and almost 1,000 paintings, many of which are now considered nothing less than “masterpieces.”

With frank conversations into Davis’ camera by Basquiat himself, this poignant commentary on the art society’s mores and moxie reveals much about Basquiat’s processes and particularities that have not before been witnessed. By landing us in the times in which his life — which ended more than two decades ago — was led, Davis has her own masterpiece of which to be proud.