Basquiat: Rage to Riches

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Basquiat - Rage to Riches

Janet Lee

David Shulman

Documentaries

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

07/10/2017

BBC Two - Basquiat: Rage to Riches

The story of Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Documentary film telling the story of Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work reflected a new type of expressionism in modern art.

Nearly 30 years after his death from a drug overdose in 1988, the legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat managed to take the world by storm yet again when one of his skull paintings from 1982 sold at Sotheby's for over one hundred million dollars. The monetary value and historical importance of the work by this former Downtown NYC street graffiti artist is now considered on a par with such luninaries as Picasso, Pollock and Francis Bacon.

This film features exclusive interviews with Basquiat's two sisters - Lisane and Jeanine Basquiat - who have never before talked about their brother and his art for a TV documentary. Other contributors include some of the most powerful art dealers in the world, such as Bruno Bischofberger, Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone. They helped fuel Basquiat as he rocketed to art world fame, but their own careers and fortunes may have benefited just as much, and possibly more. 

With striking candor, Basquiat's art dealers and most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists spill the beans on the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism that Basquiat encountered and fought against on a daily basis. And the main weapon that Basquiat used to fight this racism was his art.

The beating heart of this documentary is the actual art of Basquiat - and the substantive ways in which it embodied and reflected breakthroughs in music, poetry and a new type of expressionism in modern art. But the story of his life is the raw material for countless legends!

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