Directed by Tamra Davis • Documentary • With Jean-Michel Basquiat • 2010 • 88 minutes
Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Jean-Michel Basquiat more than 20 years ago, this film chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. In the crime-ridden New York City of the 1970s, he covers the city with the graffiti tag ‘SAMO.’ In 1981 he puts paint on canvas for the first time, and by 1983 he is an artist with “rock star status.” He achieves critical and commercial success, though he is constantly confronted by racism from his peers.
The artist was 25 years old at the height of his career, and today his canvases sell for more than a million dollars. With the intimacy only a close friend could have, Tamra Davis details the mysteries that surround this charismatic young man, an artist of enormous talent whose fortunes mirrored the roller-coaster quality of the downtown scene he seemed to embody.
Featuring interviews with Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Bruno Bischofberger, Tony Shafrazi, Fab 5 Freddy, Jeffrey Deitch, Glenn O’Brien, Maripol, Kai Eric, Nicholas Taylor, Fred Hoffmann, Michael Holman, Diego Cortez, Annina Nosei, Suzanne Mallouk, Rene Ricard, Kenny Scharf, among many others.
Up Next in Painters (a collection)
-
Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti
Directed by Laura Mulvey • Documentary • With Miriam Margolyes • 1983 • 29 minutes
This tautly structured documentary sheds light on the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Italian photographer Tina Modotti, women icons of the Mexican Renaissance. The film not only explores the two women's a...
-
What Means Something
Directed by Ben Rivers • Documentary • With Rose Wylie • 2015 • 66 minutes
A portrait of the painter Rose Wylie. I met Rose quite a few years ago and we became good friends. I asked her if I could make a film about her and she agreed. The film, finally, is a meeting between two friends, made spo...
-
Niki
Directed by Céline Sallette • Drama • With Charlotte Le Bon • 2025 • 99 minutes
The debut feature of actor-turned-director Céline Sallette, Niki is a vibrant portrait of French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (Charlotte Le Bon, star of The White Lotus), one of the most iconoclastic figures ...
