Syed m.

Haque
Film: Basquiat
Class number: 194492
The plot begins with what Basquiat as a small child with the notorious gold
crown on his head, the crown. Then the scene goes to Thompkins Square Park in a
cardboard box, where you see Basquiat wake up from. From his point the audience
believes he is homeless. He and his buddy then go get breakfast at a coffee shop.
From the moment Basquiat sits down he starts pouring syrup on the table and
spreading the syrup with the menu. He is attracted to the waitress and chooses to
draw her in the syrup puddle on the table. They mingle and have an affair. He
sleeps with her and they become a couple.
In the film, his first encounter with a gallery of paintings and his work with art
pieces is when he is acting as the apprentice to a maintence worker in an art
gallery. He notes the way a lady is rude to him and uninterested in what he has to
say so he leaves the gallery. After this moment he goes into a development phase.
Basquiat is seen spray painting on New York walls under the pseudonym SAMO, he
paints on his girlfriends dress, and sketches on small cardboard pieces. His work
isnt noted are praise worthy at the time. Then he has a reluctant encounter with
Andy Warhol and his art agent. Basquiat follows them into the restaurant in which
the gentlemen are having lunch; Basquiat ends up selling his small paintings to
Warhol for $20 but ends up receiving $100. This is surprisingly not when Basquiat is
discovered. He has a run in with an artist who he meets after a party in an
apartment where Basquiat has paintings. The gentlemen is intrigued and this is the
pivotal moment where Basquiat is discovered. Basquiat ends up having a gallery
show case and meets with Warhol again and they have dinner right after the
opening of his gallery. He works under Warhol and becomes an international
sensation.
Progressing through his, Basquiat never is happy as a rich man. Along the
way, he never stopped detesting the rich, and he never lost his naivet. This all
entails basquiats growing addiction and with heroin. He is seen struggling to admire
his love for his lover, which wasnt normal for Basquiat; who speaks almost as a
poet to her when they were younger. He also is displeased with the blemishes he
received on his face. Basquiat just had a strong struggle with fitting into the society
white society he is around. To top all that, he was here clear accusations from
people around him that Andy was just using and exploiting Basquiat for personal
gain. This all perpetuated basquiats growing addiction and with heroin. Wish
eventually led to his overdose and death.
The plot of this movie was very hard to follow along. In my opinion, if the film
was edited in a better fashion, it would have been much better. So for this reason I
dont think the film does that well of a job when it comes to depicting the life of
Basquiat as an up and coming artist. The film mostly revolved around his
preparation for his first gallery opening, which entailed his heroin addiction, and his
love life troubles. The film also does a mediocre job at describing his relationship
with his mother, who is mentally ill and his father who is married to a Caucasian

women. The audience was left questioned at many moments. I thought at some
points the director is trying to allude to a certain place in time to Basquiats life but I
think its safe to assume the director intended for the film to be distorted and
chaotic to set up a metaphor to represent the abstract nature of Basquiats
paintings and life as a whole. But all in all, I will give credit where its do, and praise
his film because Jean Michel Basquiat was an abstract genius, and anything with his
name on it, even a B grade movie is amazing.