Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiatwas an American artist. He first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s, he was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth22 December 1960
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.
I don't think about art when I'm working. I think about life.
I like kids' work more than work by real artists any day.
Believe it or not, I can actually draw.
I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.
My favorite Twombly is 'Apollo and the Artist,' with the big 'Apollo' written across it.
I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.
I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.
I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.
Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.
I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.
I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.
I start a picture and I finish it.