Skip to Content

Arts Intel Report

Basquiat: Black and White Version

Jeffrey Wright in Basquiat, 1996.

7 Ludlow St, New York, NY 10002, United States

Julian Schnabel’s 1996 debut feature about his old friend Jean-Michel Basquiat is many things—brash, beautiful, sometimes maddening. Above all it is a film made by someone who was actually in the room. Jeffrey Wright plays the fast-burning, comet streak of an art star with a dreamy, hopelessly self-destructive charisma, and David Bowie turns in what is by some distance the finest screen Warhol on record, wearing the man’s actual wig and glasses. Metrograph is screening a black-and-white version, part of its series “The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,” with Schnabel himself on hand for a Q&A. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: Janus Films