Painting Pictures: Basquiat (Dir. Julian Schnabel, 1h 46m, 1996)

Alongside his mentor, Andy Warhol, and his New York contemporary, Keith Harring, no artist has enjoyed a greater post-mortem windfall like Jean-Michel Basquiat. His estate is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, his art decorates t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel from designer to fast fashion, his canvases on celebrity walls from Di Caprio to Jay-Z. Basquiat is a brand, a series, at least for the fashionista and the ultra-rich casual art collector, (welcome to the column to the latter), of interchangeable iconography of crowns, skulls, polychromatic lines, blocks of colours, lines of text, and quasi-collage streetwise post-modernism. Jean-Michel today is little more than 'Brandsquiat', a surface level understanding of one of modern art's most illusive figures. The biopic Basquiat (1996), artist Julian Schnabel's cinematic debut is much the same, an off-the-peg rags to riches narration and 'product' that does little to remind us of the brief, but stunning, power of Basquiat's work.

Beginning with his childhood, and an encounter of the younger Basquiat and his mother before Picasso's 'Guernica' after which, seemingly out of nowhere, the embryonic artist is crowned with a glowing representation of the crown that will soon become a key motif in his artwork. The film then leaps forward to the adult Basquiat, (Jeffrey Wright), waking in a box, whilst, in the first of several 'flourishes' by Schnabel, we get brief narration by artist (and, yes, friend of the director), Joseph Glasco, before the film is off into the first of many tired artistic biopic topes. Thus, we're taken through several scenes in which the misunderstood genius of the artist goes unnoticed, Basquiat and his friend, Benny Dalmau (Benicio del Toro), kicked out of a restaurant, their creative process-and band, Grey, who Schnabel claims to have been a member of- are briefly depicted, together with Basquiat's relationship with fellow artist and waitress, Gina (Claire Forlani)

A sweetly sublime role in the middle of dross: Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat

What these opening sections depict, in curiously underplayed fashion, is that Basquiat seems destined to remain an underground figure, scribbling his esoteric graffiti as SAMO on street walls, only for him to seemingly stumble into a lucky meeting with Andy Warhol (David Bowie), who later re-emerges as Basquiat's mentor. Thus, with the help of Rene Ricard (Michael Wincott), who quickly takes the young artist under his wing, and art dealer, Mary Boone, (Parker Posey), who lends the painter a studio space, and is the first of many to capitalise-and profit- from his new-found fame, which quickly grows into a crowd, including Albert Milo (Gary Oldman), an entirely fictitious figure, largely based on Schnabel himself, and real art dealer, Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper).

The problem with Basquiat (1996) is that it's not very interested in Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). When it is, it's so bogged down in a stodgy mix of 'Biopic 101' and 'Rags to Riches tale' that we rarely seem to get more than a glimpse, much of it via the sequences where Basquiat is creating or discussing his art, of the man beneath the paint. What Basquiat is interested in is Julian Schnabel; in the kindest way possible, Basquiat is, at best, Schnabel trying to come to terms with the death of a fellow artist. At worst, it's a vehicle for self-promotional. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cavalcade of celebrity bit-parts and cameos-nowhere seen than in Gary Oldman's Milo, who acts both as Schnabel's alter-ego and mouthpiece, playing up, to an almost risible degree, Milo-As-Schnabel's role in the artist's life, imparting advice about art and creativity to Basquiat the character in a way that Schnabel wishes he could have done.

"Warhol, as in Holes"- Andy Warhol (a paperflat David Bowie) and Basquiat discuss their art

 Much of the rest of the cast's inclusion feels like celebrity idolatry of the highest order: Wilhelm Dafoe, (who you have to remember, has since been the star of Schnabel's unquestionably good At Eternity's Gate), hoves into view as an electrician-cum-painter at one point, Christopher Walken gets an extended cameo as a hostile interviewer in the film's second half, and, most gratuitous of all, alongside the mildly perplexing cameo of Courtney Love as Basquiat's heroin-addled lover, comes most of Schnabel's extended family in cameos, largely as Albert Milo's family. This inclusion of Schnabel's friend-group in this navel gazing exercise continues on the soundtrack, where Tom Waits and John Cale are practically cantilevered into place in the film's eclectic yet largely ill-fitting score.

All of this pales in comparison to the silver-wigged elephant in the room, for the film's starstruck casting reaches a nadir with David Bowie's pantomime dame-ish take on Andy Warhol, complete, in faintly ghoulish fashion, with the artist's real life wig, glasses, and jacket, worn during the performance. Bowie is certainly a hoot-his first appearance, approached by Basquiat in a restaurant, where he gets to bounce off both Wright and Hopper as the faintly irritable figure of Bischofberger is-I assume unintentionally-hilarious, Bowie in full Anthony Newley camp tones, fright-wig parked on top of his head as he peruses Basquiat's postcards. In this scene, it's at least the oddness of Warhol that is meant to be most prevalent, but elsewhere, it's laughable.

Crowded out of his own story: Basquiat, Warhol, Albert Milo (Gary Oldman) and Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper)

For, when placed in a scene in which he has to actually interact with other characters, Bowie's Warhol is a weak impression, mildly absurd and largely ridiculous; up against Milo or Schnabel or Boone or Ricard, he's a caricature, a screenprint of a performance, that simply cannot get out of two dimensions, a flatness that only feels flatter when Bowie-as-Warhol has to share scenes with Jeffrey Wright's Basquiat. Unfortunately for both of them, this is the vast majority of the dramatic moments in the film, and for all the work, all Jeffrey Wright's charm and ability as the titular artist, it's a single standout performance wandering in search of a good film.

Basquiat the film is not interested in Basquiat the man. At best, it's Julian Schnabel, struggling to make sense of the short life of the man he knew and shared creative spaces with. At worst, it's yet another work on the teetering pile of 'product', that neither understands, nor seeks to understand, Basquiat. All of this in a film that feels more like self-indulgence than serious attempt at depicting a life.

Rating: Avoid

Basquiat is available to stream via AppleTV, and on DVD and BluRay from Twentieth Century Fox. It is also currently available via MAX, and on DVD and BluRay from Twentieth Century Fox in the US.

Next week, we conclude Painting Pictures Season with Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's superb depiction of the final quarter of the life of J.M.W Turner (Timothy Spall)

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