Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child

Director Tamra Davis discusses her documentary about legendary New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat

By Todd Konrad

A fixture of the New York art boom in the Eighties as well as a talent who, like many before him, gained even greater acceptance and praise after his own life had ended. Jean-Michel Basquiat was this and far more, however little effort has been made to communicate his genuine importance to the art world and culture to a mass audience since his passing twenty years ago. However, noted director and close friend Tamra Davis has come a long way in addressing that void with her insightful and loving tribute to a lost friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Since premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary has begun its domestic release courtesy of stalwart art-related film distributor Arthouse Films. Before the film’s release, I spoke with Ms. Davis about the origin of this project and its various facets, including the inclusion of a rare on-camera interview she conducted with Jean-Michel nearly three decades ago that is only now seeing the light of day in this new film.

Vegas Outsider: What was the impetus to start shooting Jean-Michel in the first place and then after so many years dusting that footage off and using it to put together a proper film on him?

Tamra Davis: I first started to make the film when I was in film school, I was in Los Angeles around ’82, ’83; I was going to film school in ’82 but around ‘83 was when Jean-Michel came to town for his show with Larry Gagosian Gallery and it was his first time in Los Angeles. He came by the gallery that I was working at while going to film school and became friends with this kid, Matt Dike, who worked for Larry Gagosian. Matt and I were best friends; we were like the gallery assistants there. Jean-Michel and I then hit it off immediately; he was really into film and excited to meet someone who was going to film school, wanted to be a director, and was as obsessed with movies as he was about them. So we started to hang out and go to movies, go to clubs, he didn’t really know that many people in Los Angeles. And because I was going to film school, I always had a camera in my hand and was constantly filming. So it was his suggestion actually when he said “Oh, you should make a movie about me”. I was like “ok”, and so that’s what happened.

I started to film him in the studio painting and it was a couple of years later when we did the formal interview in 1985,1986 in the hotel. So that’s why I shot that footage and then when he died, I had seen him about a week or two before then, and he was very saddened about many things including feeling that with so many of his friends, he had given them gifts or things and they had sold them so they just became commodities and weren’t gifts anymore. I felt like after he had died, the film I had was something that he had given me and I put it away in a drawer because I didn’t want him to think I was ever going to take advantage of the relationship we had and it would have been too saddening to start editing it at that point.

I did make a short out of the footage though and showed it at Sundance where David Koh, from Arthouse Films, saw it and he asked me if I’d be interested in turning this short into a feature and I said yes. I then had to go and get permission from Jean-Michel’s dad, who runs his estate, and is one of the reasons why I hadn’t done much with the footage before because I always knew I had to get his permission and that he had never given anyone any permission to do anything with Jean-Michel, so I was a little afraid of his rejection.

VO: How did it feel to you personally during interviews to get a sense of the man from all these other people who knew him throughout his life and could comment on him in ways you perhaps weren’t aware of before?

TD: It was such an amazing journey in that way, because each time I met with one of his friends, I felt like they became one of my friends, because we had one in common. It wasn’t just journalistic, like I’m going after a story about a person I didn’t know; we each knew Jean-Michel, so it immediately opened people up to me who otherwise may not have been so that was really amazing. I just learned so much about him that I really had no idea about, because I didn’t know about this certain part of his life. To me it became this incredible adventure learning about parts of New York.

I think one of my first interviews was with Glenn O’Brien where he described this romantic idea of New York back in those days where everyone was driving around in a car, going from club to club, no one had any phones, the Downtown 500, this whole world opened up to me that I wasn’t really aware of until I started doing these interviews. I also started to see, which I felt was important and wanted to keep in the film, how he had come from SAMO to then the band (Grey) and all the transitions in his life from his life on the street and felt it was important to know where he came from before becoming a star in the art world, getting an idea of what he was like before that happened.

VO: Could you comment on importance of competition in Jean-Michel's life and how it both helped and perhaps hurt him in regards to career and life?

TD: I mean to me that was a part of who he was. Jean-Michel, as a successful artist, had a swagger and in order to make yourself number one you have to believe you are number one and he believed that he could be considered one of the top artists. So to me that was really important since it was something I didn’t see being portrayed properly in other media about him. He was as driven as any rock star I’ve ever met that wanted to get to the top or any actor who wanted to get to the top; he had this real desire to do that and it wasn’t like he just rambled around and happened to be in the right place and right time, this guy was very driven and I felt it was important to show that about him.

VO: One particular aspect of the film I enjoyed was examining how race figured into Jean-Michel’s life and work as well as how he commented on it when perhaps many people couldn't see it at the time. I’m curious to know your own thoughts on that facet of what he produced and how people reacted to it, either in person or through the process of making this film.

TD: To me, that was a big issue; anytime I hung out with him I had no idea because this was in the Eighties and I personally wasn’t so aware of how racist people were. We would walk to stores together or other places and would be treated differently, we wouldn’t be able to get cabs, etc. I saw his reaction to all this and thought he was very conscious of how he was perceived and wanted to show how it reflected in his art. I didn’t have an art historian or expert to help guide me so a lot of it was just myself studying these paintings and letting them talk to me and try to share what he was trying to say. Also Suzanne (former girlfriend) had really good insight into how he felt about racism too so I think anyone who really close to him knew how he felt about it and once you know that and see it in his work you’re like “oh my God, it’s so obvious, it’s in all the paintings”.

VO: Looking back now since his death, what are your impressions of the art world he left behind in terms of how he has influenced it, as well as the reassessment of him in general?

TD: I think actually my research showed me, which I didn’t get to include in the film, is that after he had died people sold his work because they thought that he was probably just some flash in the pan and now it was all over so a lot of people just dumped it. I don’t really think it rose again until Enrico Navarro and a bunch of collectors started to band together and bring it back up again. I also have to credit the Schnabel film which really pushed his star up higher too which is really odd but if you tracked the price of Jean-Michel’s paintings after he died, there was a definite down period for his work and then it slowly started coming back up. VO: Since you touched on it, what do you think of the Schnabel film? I’m sure many people, as you said, were first introduced to Jean-Michel through it which is why I like how your film touches on subjects and aspects of his life that Julian didn’t focus on with his take on it.

TD: I totally respect Julian as a filmmaker; I think he is a beautiful, wonderful filmmaker and that Jeffrey Wright is a fantastic actor made a good film. But I really feel that Jean-Michel is really a Rashomon character, so many people have different interpretations of what their relationships were with him or how he saw his own life. So the person I knew is probably different from the person Julian knew and for that reason, I am not really critical of the film but respectful of it. Peter Brant told me afterwards that that movie really isn’t about Jean-Michel, it’s really about Julian and that made me understand the film much better. So again that’s why I’m not critical of it because Julian’s Jean-Michel is going to be different than the man I knew.

And then I interviewed Julian for the film and came into it thinking beforehand “ok, I’ve heard Jean-Michel talk about Julian before” and then when Julian told me that Jean-Michel was such a good friend and would call him in the middle of the night and all this I thought “you know what? In the end, you really don’t know whom your friends are and call in the middle of the night” and I just realized who am I to place any judgment on this guy because Jean-Michel probably did call him in the middle of the night and was close friends with him. It was just interesting for me to see that people can have all these sorts of different relationships and not be so quick to judge others.

VO: That’s interesting given how in the film there’s discussion over how Jean-Michel saw himself in direct competition with Schnabel and would quip about boxing him as well. But it doesn’t sound unlike the friendly rivalries you hear about from all sorts of artists, be they painters, musicians, etc.

TD: Yes and once he then moved onto Warhol, in a sense as his competing figure/partner, I think he stopped being concerned about boxing Julian and all that.

VO: Finally, how do you feel now that this film has been completed & what plans are there right now for its release?

TD: It’s going to be distributed all throughout the world which I’m really excited about. My producers have been going to all the different film festivals and markets and I’m so excited to know that Jean-Michel’s work is popular throughout the world. It’s been doing well overseas because he is an international artist and has had recent shows in Paris, Switzerland, Japan, etc. So he’s become more popular internationally than ever.

For more information about the film, screening dates and DVD preorders, go to www.jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com and www.arthousefilmsonline.com