Basquiat

Starring: Jeffrey Wright, David Bowie, Benicio del Toro, Gary Oldman

Release: 1996

The career of the Neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is the subject of the film Basquiat, released just seven years after the painter’s death of a heroin overdose. The son of a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father, Basquiat’s art reflected his ethnic heritage and the New York street scene, incorporating graffiti into his anatomically interested images. The film follows the painter’s uncomfortable journey from homeless street artist to member of the New York art elite.

Basquiat was a part of a circle of artists who incorporated multiple media into their works, and he performed music and DJed, while also selling homemade postcards to support himself early in his career. As the art community started to recognize his unique voice and viewpoint, the film represents him as drifting further away from his friends and musical collaborators, until he is left with very few close relationships. As the film nears its conclusion, Basquiat’s only lasting relationships are with Andy Warhol (played here by David Bowie) and characters played by Benicio del Toro and Gary Oldman.