What do you think is the value of making these kinds of transhistorical comparisons, with this fluid historical model, for art today?
Ian Wallace, “Interview with Curator Dieter Buchhart on Schiele, Twombly, and Basquiat,” 2014
nickkahler reblogged
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Gun), 1981 (via nybb)
SAMO (for "same old shit") marked the witty sayings of a precocious and worldly teenage mind that, even at that early juncture, saw the world in shades of gray, fearlessly juxtaposing corporate commodity structures with the social milieu he wished to enter: the predominately white art world.
Franklin Sirmans, In the Cipher: Basquiat and Hip Hop Culture, 2005
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Poster for Noise Rock band Gray, c. 1979
Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Untitled (Skull)," 1984
'Throughout his career Basquiat focused on "suggestive dichotomies," such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. Basquiat's art utilized a synergy of appropriation, poetry, drawing and painting, which married text and image, abstraction and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Utilizing social commentary as a "springboard to deeper truths about the individual", Basquiat's paintings also attacked power structures and systems of racism, while his poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.'