This is the second time I have seen this documentary film about the charismatic, tragic celebrity artist Jean Michel Basquiat that found himself to be the darling of the New york Art scene in the early to mid eighties.
It put me in mind of other tragic, live fast die young highly successful artists like, for example, Kurt Cobain. The similarities between Basquiat and Cobain, as far as I can tell, lie in them both having gone from sleeping rough as teenagers to global notoriety, fame and riches by the age of 25. The difference may be, and this is purely conjecture on my part, that Cobain probably never expected to be rich and famous, where as Basquiat is portrayed as having a determined ambition as an artist from a young age.
I wonder if the tragic component of these stories is not so much to do with the myth of tortured genius, but more to do with the meteor like trajectory of their lives that took them from urban anonymity to the highly unnatural state for any human being, (let alone a 20 year old) that of mega god/art rock star. It seems that when people get to a point in their creative careers where they can have anything they want, anytime they want it, have all kinds of apparently "important" people fawning over them and their work, when they are highly successful in the arts, it would seem, particularly, that the meaning of what they do begins to unravel somewhat.
It takes its toll. Yet there's little doubt in my mind that both Cobain and Basquiat were both serious artists.
1 comments:
I agree. It seems that Kurt's enormous fame was the worst thing that could have happened to him.
Have you seen "About A Son"? I'm sure you have, we may have even talked about it before. I can't remember.
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