Using film footage, music, images, and stories from his artworld contemporaries, Sara Driver brings the successful yet tragic life of Jean-Michel Basquiat to life with her new film Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michael Basquiat, which hit theaters this May. Basquiat lived during times of change. He came of age in a world that did not know what AIDS was but was about to be surrounded by it. He found success as a penniless artist and poet at the dawn of an era that would become known for greed and the economic policies of Ronald Reagan. Born in Brooklyn on December 22, 1960, Basquiat enrolled as a Junior Member of the Brooklyn Museum when he was six. After running away from home at the age of 15, the artist began to establish himself during the 1970s graffiti movement: he and artist friend Al Diaz would spray paint buildings in downtown Manhattan under the name SAMO. Despite having died from a heroin overdose at the age of 27, his graffiti-inspired and against-the-social-grain work has become widely embraced in the art community, and he is rightfully remembered as a prime example of the Neo-Expressionist movement. magpictures.com/boomforreal
Last modified: March 28, 2019
