Jean Michel Basquiat

The director is wearing Reeboks, untied, with no socks. His purple shirt is damp with sweat, his love beads are red and turquoise over an exceedingly hairy chest. Hard to say about the legs, since they're covered in an orange sarong. This is Julian Schnabel, the very rich and very famous enfant terrible painter of the '80s art world, as film director.

Did it come with a card attached that says, "Thank you for being a friend"? A 1991 painting depicting a topless Bea Arthur that was created by artist John Currin has sold at an auction Wednesday for $1.9 million. The sale was part of a larger Christie's auction in New York of post-war and contemporary art that brought in a total of $495 million -- a record figure for any art auction. The Christie's sale featured 72 items by many of the most coveted names in 20th century art. Works by Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat brought in record auction amounts.

The call came one evening in November 1982: It was my friend and colleague Larry Gagosian telling me that Jean-Michel Basquiat was in Venice, painting for a new show and, more to the point, wanting to transform a 16-part work on paper into a silk-screen print. Would I be interested in producing it? I met with Jean-Michel for the first time that same evening and thus began an incomparable experience -- one I knew I was unlikely to repeat.

Fans can have one last look at works by Jean-Michel Basquiat before they go on sale. More than 30 pieces -- from simple crayon on paper to sophisticated, colorful canvases -- will be on display May 2 through June 9 at Sotheby's galleries in New York. Most are then bound for a private sale. Pieces by the Brooklyn-born painter, who died of a drug overdose in 1988, have continued to fetch high prices at auction. ART: Can you guess the high price? Christie's in November sold Basquiat's 1981 untitled portrait of a fisherman for a record $26.4 million, and next month the auction house is asking between $25 million and $35 million for "Dustheads," a 7-foot acrylic painting of two figures.

The titular painter and graffiti artist of Tamra Davis' documentary "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child" continues to garner fascination and analysis. Getting its title from an article in Artforum that first brought the sprout-headed artist to the attention of the New York gallery scene, the film builds upon footage of an interview Basquiat did in 1985. Davis, a close friend of the artist, who died in 1988 of a heroin overdose, gives the documentary a deep, emotional core. Landmark Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard.

Rueful riddle: He was black. In the '80s he rose mercury-fashion from obscurity to superstardom. Now he is dead of a drug overdose at the age of 27. What was his occupation? According to prevailing stereotype he should have been a rock musician.

For a long time we've had Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Now we have King Basquiat too. This is not royalty-inflation. Jean-Michel Basquiat -- the artist whose trademark graphic icon was a toothy three-pointed crown, sometimes bestowed on references to his heroes and sometimes, like Napoleon, bestowed upon himself -- most certainly deserves it. The Duke had 75 years and the Count had 80 to cement their titles.

Nicolo Donato's bleak yet compelling "Brotherhood," an unsparing neo-noir with the structure and inevitability of classic drama, opens in the dark of night with a man entrapping a young, inexperienced gay man into a bashing and then cuts to a young blond soldier being told by his commanding officer he cannot be promoted because he's been accused of making passes at fellow soldiers. The soldier, Lars (Thure Lindhardt), is vulnerable when by chance he falls into a group of neo- Nazis and is recruited by its leader, the bearded, paunchy but implacably forceful Michael (Nicolas Bro)

Re Christopher Knight's review of the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art ["Hail the King," July 19]: There isn't a landlord in America who, if he found these random scrawls on his walls, wouldn't immediately paint them over. If Basquiat's work is a parody of intellectual pretension, Knight's appraisal would have been the first one he would have taken aim at. Keith Rocklin Los Angeles MOCA delivers! The Basquiat exhibition overflows with exuberance, talent and intrigue -- a "must see" for art lovers everywhere.

Fans can have one last look at works by Jean-Michel Basquiat before they go on sale. More than 30 pieces -- from simple crayon on paper to sophisticated, colorful canvases -- will be on display May 2 through June 9 at Sotheby's galleries in New York. Most are then bound for a private sale. Pieces by the Brooklyn-born painter, who died of a drug overdose in 1988, have continued to fetch high prices at auction. ART: Can you guess the high price? Christie's in November sold Basquiat's 1981 untitled portrait of a fisherman for a record $26.4 million, and next month the auction house is asking between $25 million and $35 million for "Dustheads," a 7-foot acrylic painting of two figures.

Four straight rows of four palm trees each stand on the northeast corner of 2nd and Spring streets downtown - a block from Los Angeles City Hall, right alongside LAPD headquarters. They're directly across from the newsroom. I stare out at them from my desk. Lately they have come to look like hourglasses running out of time. Small tufts of green fronds reach to the sky. Ample brown ones drag down toward the dirt. Will the dead fronds ever be trimmed? Would it make a difference?

Robert Hughes, a giant of 20th-century art criticism who first became known in the U.S. through his reviews for Time magazine, has died at age 74. The Australian writer was famous for writing big books on big subjects -- from the early history of Australia ("The Fatal Shore" of 1987) to the pioneers of modern art ("The Shock of the New" of 1981).  Both books were bestsellers for his publisher Random House, which confirmed that Hughes died Monday in New York after a long illness.

MOVIES Topanga Film Festival Now in its sixth year, the Topanga Film Festival is committed to bringing the best in independent and experimental filmmaking to its screens. Documentaries, short films, features and contributions from budding young directors will be screened — some under the stars — over four days. The main screening tent is at 120 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, but there are other locations as well. Fri.-Sun. Times and prices vary. http://www.topangafilmfestival.

Nicolo Donato's bleak yet compelling "Brotherhood," an unsparing neo-noir with the structure and inevitability of classic drama, opens in the dark of night with a man entrapping a young, inexperienced gay man into a bashing and then cuts to a young blond soldier being told by his commanding officer he cannot be promoted because he's been accused of making passes at fellow soldiers. The soldier, Lars (Thure Lindhardt), is vulnerable when by chance he falls into a group of neo- Nazis and is recruited by its leader, the bearded, paunchy but implacably forceful Michael (Nicolas Bro)

In 1983, filmmaker Tamra Davis, then working at a Los Angeles art gallery, struck up an acquaintance with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, subsequently shooting a lengthy interview with him in 1985. She cut her footage of him, capturing a handsome, enthusiastic, articulate young man into a 20-minute film, screened at MOCA's major Basquiat retrospective 20 years later. Davis then realized she had the nucleus of a documentary that would take years to complete, tracking down archival materials and the numerous people who knew him before his drug-related death at 27 in 1988.

"Stillness is one of the pleasures of painting. It's a surface that doesn't move," says artist Vija Celmins in the Museum of Contemporary Art's new children's book, "Breaking the Rules: What Is Contemporary Art?" Celmins' comment is striking because it points to the changing landscape of art making and viewing. Long the archetypal art form, painting is now an exception, surrounded by the ubiquitous, never-still surfaces of videos, computer monitors and touch screens. On such a slippery terrain, can the slow, embodied pleasures of older art forms be made accessible and relevant to young people?

Did it come with a card attached that says, "Thank you for being a friend"? A 1991 painting depicting a topless Bea Arthur that was created by artist John Currin has sold at an auction Wednesday for $1.9 million. The sale was part of a larger Christie's auction in New York of post-war and contemporary art that brought in a total of $495 million -- a record figure for any art auction. The Christie's sale featured 72 items by many of the most coveted names in 20th century art. Works by Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat brought in record auction amounts.

Few artists' public images have been as important to their early careers as Jean-Michel Basquiat's. But these days, the image most people have of the 1980s New York painter comes mainly from the press and a 1996 film by Julian Schnabel. Basquiat lived too briefly to leave much more of a record than his often sensationalistic interviews and incandescent, jazz-and-graffiti-influenced paintings.