Top 35 Michel Basquiat Quotes
#1. I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.
Keith Haring
#2. I had all these tapes in my closet that I had shot years ago with my friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was working on a film about him when he died, and then I just put everything away. It was too sad.
Tamra Davis
#3. In 1983, I was working at an art gallery in Los Angeles and going to film school at Los Angeles City College. At that time, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young painter and was visiting L.A. for his first show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery.
Tamra Davis
#4. In general, you have great artists who have died far too early and who have left great cultural impact. If you look at people like Vincent van Gogh or Jean-Michel Basquiat-there's a long, long list of artists who have died in tragic circumstances, and far, far too early.
Simon De Pury
#5. I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#8. I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#9. Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix ... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#13. The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#17. I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#20. The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#23. 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.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#24. 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.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#25. There are about 30 words around you all the time, like 'thread' or 'exit.'
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#27. I had some money, I made the best paintings ever. I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#28. My favorite Twombly is 'Apollo and the Artist,' with the big 'Apollo' written across it.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#30. Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#32. SAMO as an end to to mindwash religion, nowhere politics and bogus philosophy.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#33. I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
#35. Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
