Feverishly prolific New York graf-based expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat would have turned 52 today. That fact jars us because of the inevitable Peter Pan myth that accompanies the premature death of any young artist in any discipline.

Though I hate to pursue it, does it depress us to imagine a middle-aged JMB? Would he be still cocooned and slickly dressed, and now entrenched and heavily sponsored downtown, or maybe bugged-out HR-from-Bad-Brains style, redolent in gray dreads, pursued often and obtained for the occasional commission in order to keep up his paranoid existence in who-knows-where?

Of course, Basquiat’s influence dwarfs the downtown New York art scene in the way that he embodied the New York mix of hip-hop, post-punk, and fashion. But our culture also tends to rely on him in an unspoken way as a kind of purified representation of redundant cliches like doomed youth, avant-garde blackness, and the price of fame. We do best to remember each of those features as part of him—and separately, we do best to remember Basquiat as Basquiat.

In that spirit, we draw your attention to Tamra Davis’s excellent documentary, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child, kindly uploaded to YouTube for the budget-minded…
 

 
Thanks to the excellent musician Aybee Deepblak...

 
After seeing the below trailer, I’m excited to see director Tamra Davis’s documentary portrait of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child. The other day I found a photo I took of him at a New York nightclub opening in 1986 in a box in my garage. He’s just glaring at the camera, like he’s pissed off, but he looks cool doing it. The same roll had photos of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.

A friend of the graffiti/Neo-expressionist painter, director Tamra Davis paints her own portrait of the artist, who died at age 27, and offers an indictment of celebrity culture.

Davis met Basquiat while she was attending film school and working as a gallery assistant in Los Angeles. In 1985, she filmed an interview of Basquiat, which comprises the centerpiece of this film, along with rare footage of him painting.

“I saw anger in him but I also saw this whole other side of him, very intelligent, funny, filled with life, smiles, dances and super-flirty, super-charming,” said Davis. “That was the person who, I felt, people were getting it wrong.”

Davis said being around Basquiat there was “always so much happening, let’s do this, let’s go here, let’s see how far we can push this, what would happen if I did this, let’s go as fast as we can, let’s fly to Paris, let’s go out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant and order the best wine. Pushing the limit the furthest, so being around him was really fun but also crazy.”

The documentary, which will have its theatrical release later this year, is a collage of period footage, including the interview with Basquiat and new interviews with his friends/colleagues, such as Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Fab 5 Freddy, Glenn O’Brien and others.

 
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child: Director Tamra Davis Paints a Portrait of the Artist (WSJ)