The wig gives it away, otherwise we’d be hard-pressed to immediately – or even slowly – recognize Paul Bettany’s fast-talking, extroverted and inquisitive artist character i…
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and inspired by the real life 1984 painting collaboration of the aging Warhol and the soaring Basquiat – a project presented so much more convincingly and movingly in the 1996 film, starring Jeffrey Wright and, in the definitive performance of Warhol, David Bowie, who haunts this play like a shadow –is an oddly lifeless endeavor, a failure in capturing even a moment of simple artistic inspiration much less the ignition of of collaborative genius.
– a work that betrays similar history-via-Wikipedia inclinations – reduces two of the greatest, most artistically influential and culturally impactful artists of the late 20th Century into stick figures spouting their respective viewpoints of artistic merit, art’s worth, art’s role in society, art as personal commitment, art versus commerce, photography versus painting, beauty, fame, heroin and ambition. So many subjects, so few credible or original thoughts.
“I broke down a wall between business and art,” says Bettany as Warhol, in what passes for small talk inas a collection of twitches and far-off gazes and sing-song cadences that suggest a cartoon version of the historical Basquiat. “All gloomy bastards should be clubbed to death.” The play’s first act – in which art dealer Bruno Bischofberger arm-twists the two antagonistic, reluctant artists to collaborate for the sake of posterity, careerism and loads of money – mostly finds Warhol and Basquiat in Warhol’s studio circling one another like boxers waiting to land the first punch.
Never mind that Bischofberger’s actual role in the historic meet-up was considerably less significant, or that the antagonism expressed by the two artists feels more like dramaturgical set-up for the de rigueur reconciliation in Act II. That kind of fictionalizing is always acceptable if it contributes momentum or some sort of spiritual truth to a play. Here, it does neither.
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