Jean Michel Basquiat Quotes

Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.

Fire will attract more attention than any other cry for help.

Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off

I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Pay For Soup/Build A Fort/Set That On Fire

If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence. It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.

JIMMY BEST ON HIS BACK TO THE SUCKERPUNCH OF HIS CHILDHOOD FILES

Brian Wilson went to bed for three years. Jean-Michel Basquiat would spend all day in bed. Monica Ali, Charles Bukowski, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tracey Emin, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, Frida Kahlo, William Wordsworth, René Descartes, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, Kathy Acker, Derek Jarman and Patti Smith all worked or work from bed and they’re productive people. (Am I protesting too much?) Humans take to their beds for all sorts of reasons: because they’re overwhelmed by life, need to rest, think, recover from illness and trauma, because they’re cold, lonely, scared, depressed – sometimes I lie in bed for weeks with a puddle of depression in my sternum – to work, even to protest (Emily Dickinson, John and Yoko). Polar bears spend six months of the year sleeping, dormice too. Half their lives are spent asleep, no one calls them lazy. There’s a region in the South of France, near the Alps, where whole villages used to sleep through the seven months of winter – I might be descended from them. And in 1900, it was recorded that peasants from Pskov in northwest Russia would fall into a deep winter sleep called lotska for half the year: ‘for six whole months out of the twelve to be in the state of Nirvana longed for by Eastern sages, free from the stress of life, from the need to labour, from the multitudinous burdens, anxieties, and vexations of existence’.‡ Even when I’m well I like to lie in bed and think. It’s as if

1. sports 2. opera 3. weapons.

What most people don’t understand about Jean-Michel is that his crazy behavior had nothing to do with being an enfant terrible. Everything he did was an attack on racism and I loved him for this.

I don't believe in God. But I do believe that each of us has some sort of inner dynamic, that we are not always aware of, that guides us in life to witness certain profound things. These profound things change us forever and bring us closer to our ultimate selves. My relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat and the death of Michael Stewart were experiences of this nature.

eight different cities before he was sixteen years old. Georgia O’Keeffe lived in the shadow of her “perfect” older brother Francis. And Jean-Michel Basquiat triumphed over poverty to become one of the world’s most influential artists. Kid Artists tells their stories and more with full-color cartoon illustrations on nearly every page. Other subjects include Claude Monet, Jacob Lawrence, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Beatrix Potter, Yoko Ono, Dr. Seuss, Emily Carr, Keith Haring, Charles Schulz, and Louise Nevelson.

– Vous êtes comme Ardisson, vous délirez sur Warhol? Il se retourna sur un homme mince à la barbe poivre et sel taillée court façon papier de verre. – Je ne sais pas, dit Bernard en regardant à nouveau le tableau, c’est déjà un peu le passé, Warhol, non? affirma-t-il pour se donner une contenance. L’autre le regarda avec attention et Bernard lui raconta sa découverte des colonnes de Buren, de la pyramide du Louvre et de ces graffitis sur les palissades, ces formes neuves, cet hippopotame. Il se surprit lui-même en employant plusieurs fois le mot radical. Moi aussi, je vais faire mes grands travaux, conclut-it en vidant sa troisième coupe de champagne. – C’est Basquiat qu’il vous faut. L’homme à la barbe de trois jours avait lâché cette sentence d’une voix grave. Vous connaissez Jean-Michel Basquiat? Bernard hocha négativement la tête. Il est encore accessible, voici la carte de ma galerie. – Tu parles encore de Basquiat? le coupa un homme aussitôt rejoint par un autre qui faisait tanguer sa coupe d’un air moqueur. – Ne les écoutez pas, ce sont des gens des musées. La conversation fut vive, d’après ce que comprit Bernard, une exposition allait avoir lieu au Centre Pompidou, inititulée «L’époque, la mode, la morale, la passioné» afin de mettre en lumière les courants artistiques internationaux des années 1980 et personne n’avait cru bon d’y représenter des œuvres de ce Basquiat. – Honte sur vous! leur dit l’homme à la barbe papier de verre. Et tandis que les trois se tenaient tête sur ce mystérieux peintre, Bernard attrapa une nouvelle coupe de champagne et songea à son aïeul.

I just looked at a lot of things. And that’s how I learnt about art, by looking at it.