No painter electrified the 1980s art scene like Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street kid whose visionary blending of expressionism, pop art, and the radical new aesthetics of hip-hop and graffiti propelled him to international fame before a tragic early demise. Julian Schnabel’s stunning debut charts Basquiat’s dizzying rise and fall with an insider’s eye for authentic details of the downtown arts demimonde as well as a fellow postmodernist’s interest in the dream-like and surreal.
