I had been to one of his exhibitions in the mid 80’s and had met Warhol. “I lived and worked literally around the corner from Jean-Michel’s studio on Crosby Street. “I was originally from New York City, and back in the early 80’s was an artist showing my experimental films in Castelli gallery and at New York City museums,” said David Shulman, director and producer of American Masters - Basquiat: Rage to Riches. You don’t need to know anything about modern art to love these beautifully crafted documentaries.” These stories happen to be about visual artists, but the stories are engaging on so many levels. Kantor said the films aren’t just for art connoisseurs. “I think seniors will be particularly interested in seeing Andrew Wyeth pursue his own kind of dramatic, figurative painting in the face of the popular modernist explosion, watching pioneering women artists like Eva Hesse and Elizabeth Murray take center stage, and understanding how an untrained painter like Jean-Michel Basquiat could go from street art graffiti tags to selling paintings for millions.”
Older Americans in particular will enjoy the series, says Kantor. The mission of American Masters, and public television in general, is to help us understand who we are as Americans, so documentaries on artists are exciting, engaging ways to grapple with this key question,” Kantor said. “Artists reflect who we are, and what we are interested in – they create their own perspective on the world.
#American masters basquiat series#
Now in its 32nd season on PBS, the series is a production of THIRTEEN Productions for WNET and also seen on the WORLD channel. A game changer, his painting embodied and reflected breakthroughs in music, poetry and a new type of expressionism in modern art.Launched in 1986, the American Masters biography series has garnered 74 Emmy nominations and 28 awards - 10 for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series since 1999 and five for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special - 12 Peabody Awards three Grammys an Oscar two Producers Guild Awards for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television and the 2012 IDA Award for Best Continuing Series. The main weapon Basquiat used to fight prejudice was his art. With striking candor, art world colleagues, including dealers Bruno Bischofberger, Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone, and Basquiat’s most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists draw a portrait of a handsome, charismatic and fragile personality – one enmeshed in a world of cash, drugs and the pernicious racism that he encountered. The program features exclusive interviews with Basquiat’s two sisters, Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before spoken about their brother and his art for a television documentary. In death, he has emerged as one of the most important artists of his generation and now exhibits in museums all over the world. 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of Basquiat’s untimely death from a heroin overdose. Today, Basquiat is in the top tier of the international art market along with Picasso, de Kooning, and Francis Bacon. It took less than a decade for Basquiat, an accountant’s son from Brooklyn, to go from anonymous graffiti writer known as SAMO to an epoch-defining art star. He lived fast, died young and created thousands of drawings and paintings. One of the most influential American artists of the 20th century, Basquiat was a rock star of the early ’80s New York art scene. Another artistic adventure from PBS: American Masters: Basquiat: Rage to Riches.ĭirected and produced by David Shulman, this program tells the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat like never before.