Pollock and Jamison

For your next post, first reflect on the film. What image of the artist did it present and how? Are there any aspects of the "Schematic Structure" that you see playing out?

I enjoyed the movie Basquiat, but was a little taken aback by how short his life was and possibly how depressed he was throughout it. His mother lived in an asylum, his father really had no impact on his life, and he spent his days and nights on an array of hard drugs. The films point of view helped me to understand how his creativity came about. The drugs he used on a social and private level allowed him to have an elaborate imagination, where any object or any idea could be portrayed on a canvas, or on anything lying around. Basquiat saw art everywhere, whether it was in the sky, on the side of a building, or coming to life right in front of him after getting high. The art he created came from within, but was also influenced by what he experienced from the outside world. Although he did not interact with people regularly, and was a very secluded person naturally, the people in his life did have some influence on the artwork he created. That was usually through the process of receiving drugs from them, but he saw himself as more creative on drugs, and so did a majority of his viewers.
The movie showed us what type of person Basquiat became throughout his career. He started his career sleeping in a cardboard box, looking up to artists like Warhol, and once he was discovered, dominated the artistic world until his untimely death. His life was short lived, but the impact he made on the artistic community paved the way for the acceptance of unique artwork from other artists down the road.



Next, referring to the Jamison reading, do you think that the film links drug use and mental illness with artistic creativity? Don't say what you think, describe what the film "thinks." Refer to the suggestions for film viewing and analysis in Chapter 2 of "Writing about Film."

The film definitely links drug use and mental illness with artistic creativity. Basquiat even states that his art feels alive when he is using, and feels that without drugs, he looses his creative edge. It could be that he started created art when he began using drugs, but that is not depicted in the movie. There is a specific scene in which Basquiat has used and while he is going in and out of consciousness he envisions a new creation within his mind. Even the artists that he started to meet and create with were experimenting with drugs, so the environment that he lived in supported his drug use. Although it was not specifically stated that Basquiat had any mental illness, his mother lived in an asylum for a mental illness. He could have had bipolar disorder, or be manic depressive, which would explain his seclusion from people and his basic disconnectedness from the world, but the film does not tell us that. We can only assume that he may have had a mental illness, and that was enhanced with the drugs that he would abuse repeatedly.