"Basquiat" tells the story of a 19 year-old graffitti artist who rose to the top of the New York art scene. His departure from the scene was nearly as fast as his ascension which happened jsut after his graduation from City-As-School in Manhattan (your teacher was a classmate).

The Rest Is Art History.

Please answer the following questions in your journals;

1. How did Basquiat become famous? Was he deserving of the treatment he recieved from already established artists?



2. How did Basquiat accept his new found fame? Do you thgink he was he comf
ortable with it?


3. Can you make a comparision between Miguel Piñero (whose life we have seen in film) and Basquiat's?



4. The film Basquiat takes place in the early/mid 1980s. Was there anything different you saw in the film about New York City at that time than what you know about the city today?
5. What is it about characters like Piñero and Basquiat and New York City? Does new York need artists like them, does the city produce them or make them the way they are, or do they need New York to be who they are (were)?



6. What did you think about the film? (Try to include all aspects of the film; music, direction, photography, acting, sound, etc.)

Internet Move Database http://us.imdb.com/Title?0115632)

Short biography of Basquiat (http://www.basquiat.net/)

Commentary of Basquiat (http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/basquiat.html)

A commercial website with Biography, photographs and samples of his work (http://www.basquiat.com/)

Biography of Basquiat (http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Basquiat.html)

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