Basquiat Heroin: Video Analysis

This paper is intended to educate those who almost nothing about heroin and those who use it. Many people have been associated with friends or families who have used some kind of drug. There are many people who have not had any contact with heroin users or if they have, don’t understand much about it. Using various sources about heroin to explain where it came from, how it is used, who uses it and how a person starts on the path towards heroin, preventing addiction, and global issues surrounding this drug. Although the topic of heroin is inexhaustible, it is my hope to spark reader’s curiosity. Knowledge of this drug might just help the reader join in on discussions about heroin.

Today we are viewing a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled (Fallen Angel) created in 1981 using acrylic and oil-stick on canvas. I will articulate a few of the elements and principles Basquiat uses in this painting that make this an amazing piece of art that sold for $11.2 million in 2008.

The painting overall is a critique on members of the African American race. With this painting, Basquiat is questioning how an African American can be a policeman and work to enforce rules that were meant to enslave African Americans. Basquiat intentionally paints little details to show how African Americans are controlled by the White majority in America. For example, the figure itself is a black mass painted on a completely white background. But the figure isn’t completely attached, as it can be seen, the right

“Basquiat, The Radiant Child” is a documentary about a young artist of the early 2000’s. This young artist left home to begin his journey; he started out as a bum with nothing and became a street artist. Obviously, Basquiat was very driven by his work otherwise he wouldn’t have taken such a big risk. For this reason, many people were inspired by him and loved what he was doing. I however wasn’t a big fan of his. Throughout the documentary his friends and other artist talk about how he would pretty much mooch off of other people; although his friends said it in a nicer way. He even told his girlfriend that he couldn’t work because he didn’t like how people treated him, so she had to pay for their rent on her own. I personally felt like this

“...from that moment on I didn't take heroin because I wanted to, I took it because I needed to.” Heroin is a highly addictive, illegal drug that comes from the opium plant. In just the year 2014, 12,000 people in the United States died from heroin overdoses. The York County community has made a big effort to help fight the heroin epidemic, but despite these efforts the county is clearly still struggling with over 60 overdose deaths last year. Some of the efforts York County is making include the use of NARCAN, drug drop boxes, the Good Samaritan law and treatment courts.

So within the context of the movie Basquait the story emerges of a Haitian-American kid, who has 'seen the streets' and lived on the hard side of the tracks. Carrying his copy of 'Greys Anatomy' he dissects the streets, dissects and illustrates what he finds beneath and this dissects society and his own fractured place in it. His art even looks a bit like the anatomical drawings of Greys Anatomy and it is this ferocious dissection that formed the basis of a lot of his work. Although Mayer said “Basquiat speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador. We can read his pictures without strenuous effort—the words, the images, the colors and the construction—but we cannot quite fathom the point they belabor” it is maybe through the lens of thinking about his background as a child who had a challenging childhood that we can figure out what was going on (2205 50). His painting of an African-American policeman with its huge size and broken body may give a further clue with the cultural / race identity confusion of his childhood in the 1960's and 1970's very evident. It is these pressures combined with the pressures of the corporate money-focused art-as-currency/investment discourse that must surely impact on an artist such as Basquiat: painting from within the establishment and making money from it a mechanism that can only

PBS’s documentary entitled, Chasing Heroin, highlights the detrimental effects that drug addiction has on individuals in America. Throughout the film, the stories of specific Americans who have experience battling drug addiction presented. Moreover, the film introduces some solutions that have been proposed to combat the drug epidemic that has spread all over the nation. While some methods have seen some success stories, relapse rates are still at fifty percent. As drug addictions have taken over and even ended the lives of people from all classes, backgrounds, and age groups, the country needs to take serious measures in order to combat the issues associated with drug usage.

Lopez will currently be facing a number of federal drug charges on the basis of attempted drug trafficking and distribution. His alleged crime is a very serious felony as heroin is a Schedule I drug (http://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ftp3.shtml). Though sentencing varies with each case, with this particular schedule of drugs and amount, Lopez may be facing a minimum mandatory sentence for 10 years imprisonment for each felony count of trafficking.

Opiates are derivatives of the Poppy plant or better known as Opium, but are sometimes chemically reproduced scientifically in labs as products that assume the same chemical make-up. Opium is made up of two main pain relieving drugs, Morphine and Codeine, which are used in the treatment of many stages of pain. There are many different forms of Opiates, or Opioids, such as Heroin, Oxycodone, and Hydrocodone.

In the short documentary Heroin and the War on Drugs, produced by Jill Rosenbaum, informs everyone about the heroin and drug problem. Sadly, The United States’ heroin problem started in the 1960s and still goes on today. While there was a long rest period of about 50 years, heroin has been reintroduced and the problem is back. The two heroin hot spot in the 1960s was New York City. Washington eventually used methadone in hopes of helping people. And they did, they cut the amount of crimes in half. At this time, Baltimore had a major AIDS problem as well. So, since AIDS was caused by either having sexual intercourse or sharing needles, the mayor of Baltimore, Kurt

Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged from the punk scene in New York as a street-smart graffiti artist. He successfully crossed over his downtown origins to the international art gallery circuit. Basquiat’s work is one of the few examples of how an early 1980’s American graffiti-based could become a fully recognized artist. Despite his work’s unstudied appearance, Basquiat very skillfully and purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions, practices and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage. His work is an example of how American artists of the 1980’s could reintroduce the human figure in their work after the wide success of minimalism and conceptualism.

In order to stop the major drug crisis in the country programs such as LEAD is a form of a help to the drug addicts. It gives the people which are doing drugs a resource for help. Its somewhere where they can feel safe and can share how they feel. They are allowed to progress at their own rate, not having to be pressured by everyone when they already have a lot of pressure on themselves with all they are going through while taking the drugs.

The Netflix original film Heroin(e) opens to Deputy Chief Jan Rader of Huntington fire department responding to a death caused by an overdose on heroine. The death occurred in Cabell County in a bathroom of a pub neighboring apartments, a bank and a Subway. The film follows Deputy Chief Rader, Necia Freeman of the Brown Bag Ministry and Cabell county drug clerk Judge Patricia Keler in their efforts to fight what Deputy Chief Rader describes as epidemic sweeping the nation. As the film progresses it analyses the drug and the addictions associated while expressing the social effects, crime and recovery attempts.

Client story are as follow (with new information): Client abuse with Heroin and Dormicam in that night. Client walkthrough the street and hear a woman voice from power station. Client take a close look in a small window at the door and saw a blue dresses lady is on the floor. Client immediate broke the glass and call 999. The Regional Command and Control Centre told client to stay in the bus station nearby and wait for the police. Meanwhile, client did not contact with the blue dresses lady in any form. After the police patrol car arrived, around 5-7 police officers with uniform get off the car and all of them are male. Two police officers get close to the client and order him to leave, but client did not do so. Meanwhile, the police officer

In short, from Basquiat's work, I would say the man is brilliant, but the movie's interpretation I would think otherwise. In the beginning of the movie, young Basquiat was presented with a crown on his head to symbolize the greatness he had in store. Through out the movie, he mad amazing art, but the character portrayed was not what I saw on his canvases. The film's interpretation made him seem like a child (which is fairly represented in his work). Basquiat in the film made many dumb decisions such as using drugs, being unfaithful to his girlfriend, and loosing out on a friend because of an article in a tabloid. And this version of him makes me question, does he really create art? Or just scribbles of an intoxicated "man-child" And I come