BY: Miguel Ernesto Yusty

BASQUIAT
Year: 1996
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman
Award and nominations:
1996: Venice Film Festival: Nominated for the Golden Lion
1996: Independent Spirit Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Del Toro). 2 nominations
1996: National Board of Review: Special Mention

Although public, graffiti is transgressive and frequently illegal, sometimes punishable by death, as evidenced by the violent death of graffiti artist Diego Felipe Becerra, murdered in Bogotá. This furtive nature forces its creators to possess a high degree of improvisational skill, because no matter how well prepared the act of "painting" is, the artist is subject to any unforeseen event that might force a sudden change of plans. This preamble is justified when examining the character in the film Basquiat (1996), because he is a graffiti artist who achieves success as a painter and retains the inherent freshness of a certain type of street art. Lacking time for aesthetic refinement, this art breaks conventions, but when it is honest, it conveys the same quality as the most recognized of art forms.

The film is based on the life of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a renowned New York artist during the 1980s. In it, the character and the painter are closely linked to jazz. The connection between film, painting, and music begins because they share similar principles regarding the creative process. Jazz musicians largely rely on a training grounded in an empirically transmitted heritage, similar to that of other cultural expressions like flamenco or vallenato. This school grounds artists in the knowledge of their craft, providing them with a common language that allows them to understand each other and communicate naturally, resulting in the phenomenon of improvisation. Similarly, when Basquiat paints, he improvises, but not spontaneously; rather, as part of a pop culture from which he has learned its norms and through which he can communicate with the society of the world to which he belongs.

In real life, Jean-Michel Basquiat was the son of a cultured and affluent Afro-Caribbean family who provided him with a refined education from a young age. Thanks to street culture, this resulted in a version of Abstract Expressionism that led him to be considered the most important Black painter in American history. The film is directed by one of his friends, the painter Julian Schnabel. This is why, in the end, the essence of the artist is so masterfully captured, because his audiovisual biographer understands and shares the artist's language and history.