Jean Michel Basquiat Quotes On Success In Life

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, a graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. These Jean Michel Basquiat quotes will motivate you.

Best Jean Michel Basquiat Quotes

1. “Every single line means something.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
2. “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
3. “I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
4. “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
5. “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

6. “Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

7. “I don’t think about art when I’m working. I think about life.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
8. “I am not a black artist, I am an artist.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
9. “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
10. “Fire will attract more attention than any other cry for help.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
11. “The more I paint the more I like everything.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
12. “I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

13. “I cross out words so you will see them more” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

14. “I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
15. “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
16. “Believe it or not, I can actually draw.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
17. “SAMO as an end to to mindwash religion, nowhere politics and bogus philosophy.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
18. “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
19. “The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
20. “There are about 30 words around you all the time, like ‘thread’ or ‘exit.'” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

21. “I wanted to build up a name for myself.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

22. “Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I’ll do some great, awful painting about her.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
23. “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
24. “I have a painting where somebody’s holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody’s head.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
25. “My favorite Twombly is ‘Apollo and the Artist,’ with the big ‘Apollo’ written across it.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
26. “I start a picture and I finish it.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

27. “If I’m away from painting for a week, I get bored.” ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

28. “My basic influence had probably been Peter Max”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
29. “I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
30. “I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young”.~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
31. “I was a cute kid.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

32. “I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

33. “I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park”.~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
34. “Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
35. “For a while, I was drawing on good paper, but now I’ve gone back to the bad stuff. I put matte medium on it. If you put matte medium on it, it seals up, so it doesn’t really matter”.~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
36. “Medicine men live in caves.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat
37. “The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.”~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

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