post 3

Julian Schnabel's film on the life of his friend is well acted with lots of big name stars, but falls short of a magnificent eulogy that he must've been intending. Though Basquiat comes off as a cute endearing artist who wants to climb the ladder of fame, we never get a sense of what his life meant to himself. His drug abuse really didn't seem to make much of a difference to Basquiat except for his brilliant idea to paint a stack of tires white. If the film intended to display the absurdity of Basquiat's work, it has succeeded. If the stack of tires was meant to represent the epitome of Basquiat's genius then I must ask, was everyone in New York on heroin during the 80's? I will acknowledge the pretentiousness in the community, everyone wanted art, but if Julian wanted Basquiat to be praised through his film, he should have added a little more depth and a little more context to the work of art Basquiat created. As far as I could tell, there was no meaning at all. As Samo, he was an eccentric but clever “tagger”; as an artist he was a confusing mess that at times I thought that a bum on heroin could reproduce such staggering works of art. I don't mean to suggest that I don't appreciate the works of the artist, but I felt the film made him appear rather insubstantial.

Basquiat did look at things differently. He saw the world as a proverbial playground which he was destined to toy with. This is what made him so endearing, he maintained this level of innocence throughout the whole film, even when he was being a bastard to the woman who sincerely cared about him. With regard to the psychoanalysis of creativity, the playground that he toyed with was the relationship between form and content. When he looks to the sky, for example, he sees the form of a big blue wide open space. The form was big and blue and the content he manipulated from being something taken for granted and juxtaposed it with something contrary. Both the sky and ocean are different worlds to us (as humans are condemned to live on the land) as well as each other but rather than “flying high” he was surfing the wave. He could have just as easily been seeing himself flying, but that wouldn't have required much creativity. I didn't feel like there was anything particularly creative about this image though. In fact, what this film did reveal was the banality of Julian Schnabel's experimentation. You'd think someone who considers themselves a great artist would be more willing to take risks.

I don't think Basquiat struck me as being entirely mad at all. In fact, other than his mannerisms, he seemed totally normal to me. He had the same aspirations as most up and coming artists (fame) the same faults (arrogance), everything about this film made him appear the same as any other film of an artist that came before. At least Pollock had passion and anxiety and intensity. Basquiat is always portrayed as a particularly reserved character concerned about nothing other than his success. We never get a revelation into the character's mind except for external metaphors like the surfer. He didn't even particularly strike me as being bi-polar. He wasn't very inconsistent in his moods or behavior until an external stimulus influenced him to change. One could suggest Basquiat was obsessive and therefore mad, but it wasn't something he obsessed over so much as just did. Pollock was obsessive about his work, that is all he would do. But Basquiat never had much that pinned him down except his obsession for fame and his willingness to do almost anything to get it such as betray those who help him become famous. I had a problem with his character because I felt no sympathy for him. He seemed to deserve everything that happened to him because he had no respect for those who cared enough to help him get what he needed. Andy Warhol seemed to be the only person in this film that Basquiat was devoted to, but when he became paranoid at Andy's sincerity he became anxious and started interrupting Andy's work. If Andy hadn't died in the middle of their friendship we might have found out whether or not Andy really was using him as he had used other artists in the past. His ex-girlfriend found happiness even though it wasn't in painting while Basquiat had found misery in his fame. He deteriorated into despair after he finally got what he wanted, and personally I think it's what he deserved. Unlike Pollock, I had not sympathy for Basquiat's life, and I think that was partially a result of the films portrayal.

The other motif that was frequently used was the crown. It came in during the introductory dream, and became his tag icon, like Prince. The grown is a symbol of royalty and being as though Basquiat's aspiration a fame it is hard to detach the crown from his desire to be famous. But then we get the story of the prince who has become prisoner and he makes noises to get people to rescue him between his crown and the prison cell bars. But even though the sound is beautiful and catches everyone's attention no realizes it is being made by someone calling for help. Taking this into consideration, the crown becomes a symbol for his message/art. He makes it, and people think it's beautiful, but they totally misinterpret it. Rather than realize his art is a prison, he view it as an escape/release. If Julian intended for us to see Basquiat's art as some sort of cry for help, he did a poor job.

Jamison's article posits that Madness and Creativity go hand in hand. I agree that I think the influence of Creativity is corrupting on the subjects perspective of the world. To be able to constantly manipulate form and content into something other than is explicitly stated on its surface would drive anyone a little mad. It would lead to the subjects realization that meaning is totally up for interpretation and they would probably start thinking on a level where nothing meant anything except what you wanted it to mean. To any “normal” human being, this consideration that a chair may not actually be a chair seems a bit odd, but to someone who sees form as a manipulated figure, this is totally reasonable. This is not madness, this is flexibility. Madness would imply a constant state of intensity and imbalance. Pollock's explosive outbursts, his unthinking dramatic movements and his quickness as if his body were moving at the speed of his thoughts, these things imply a state of madness, a letting go of reason. Basquiat allowed for the flexibility of reality (the surfer in the sky) but did not really let go of reason at all as far as we could tell. The only time we watched him really let go of reason was when he was painting the tires. He looked at it and saw it as the tower of babel as opposed to a stack of tires, and painted. It was smart and reasonably unreasonable, but it was influenced by drugs. When he went to the basement studio to paint, I didn't feel like he was prone to madness. He was taking his time, examining space and color, and gradually put down his paint like he had to consider whether it was a good idea. Basquiat did not strike me as mad ever, just eccentric.