Watch Julian Schnabel's Basquiat tonight at 9pm ET on AUX Box Office
by Allan Tong
November 12, 2010
Jean-Michel Basquiat was a street artist who shot to fame in the eighties after pop art guru Andy Warhol discovered him. One day Basquiat was sleeping in a cardboard box on the streets of Manhattan and another he was beaming from the cover of the New York Times Magazine. His canvases may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he was a genuine rock ‘n’ roll artist who lived the rags-to-riches dream only to OD on heroin at the age of 27 in 1988.
Painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel directs this compelling biopic that neither lionizes nor condemns the prodigy. Much of that is due to Jeffrey Wright who walks that fine line in portraying the troubled Basquiat yet holds his own against a stellar cast: Benicio Del Toro, David Bowie (as Warhol), Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Parker Posey, Courtney Love and Willem Defoe who portray various characters in the heady world of fine art in lower Manhattan during the Reagan 80s. Ultimately, Schnabel succeeds in revealing to us what made the tragic Basquiat tick.