Jean-Michel Basquiat

I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

Believe it or not, I can actually draw.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I start a picture and I finish it.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

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

Top 10
Jean-Michel Basquiat
QUOTES
I wanted to build up a name for myself.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

The more I paint the more I like everything.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I’ll do some great, awful painting about her.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

There are about 30 words around you all the time, like ‘thread’ or ‘exit.’
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I have a painting where somebody’s holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody’s head.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

My favorite Twombly is ‘Apollo and the Artist,’ with the big ‘Apollo’ written across it.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

Medicine men live in caves.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I’m not a real person. I’m a legend.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

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

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

I was a cute kid.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

My basic influence had probably been Peter Max.
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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