Basquiat: Black and White Version

Director: Julian Schnabel

1996 / 108min / DCP

In his brash and beautiful debut feature, Schnabel pays tribute to his old friend, the titular tumultuous, fast-burning art star of 1980s New York, with Jeffrey Wright as the rags-to-riches, dreamy-eyed, hopelessly self-destructive Jean-Michel and David Bowie as far and away the finest and most multidimensional of our screen Warhols, modelling the late artist’s actual wig and glasses. (Gary Oldman’s “Albert Milo,” meanwhile, is a thinly veiled version of Schnabel himself.) A rare depiction of the art world—and the ravenous-for-fresh-product market of the “Greed is good” 1980s—coming from an intimate insider position.

Schnabel’s multidisciplinary practice extends beyond film to encompass sculpture, painting, architecture, and design. His most recent body of paintings inspired by the Italian umbrella pine are now on view in the exhibition Julian Schnabel: Portrait of Italy Through Its Trees, open at Pace Gallery in New York through August 14. Featuring new map drawings and plate paintings, the exhibition signals a new chapter in Schnabel’s decades-long relationship with the country through two of his longest running bodies of work.

Distributor: Janus FIlms

Part of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters