Credit: Image by inboundREM
1. “Most young kings get their heads cut off.”
Black excellence, both celebrated and hunted.
With his stark and poetic declaration, Jean-Michel Basquiat captures the tragic cycle of ascension and erasure that plagued many young, talented Black men in 1980s American culture.
Society lionized young Black men—only to discard them just as quickly.
Basketball legend Len Bias died in 1986 of a cocaine overdose just two days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics, sparking a moral panic that led to harsher drug laws disproportionately targeting Black communities.
Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., both of whom rose to prominence near the end of the decade and into the early ’90s, were hailed as kings of hip-hop. Both were dead before 26.
By 1988, at just 27 years old, Basquiat himself was dead from a heroin overdose—joining the so-called “27 Club” and fulfilling the very prophecy he had etched into his art.
This quote, scrawled in his 1982 painting Charles the First, was a tribute to jazz icon Charlie Parker, another brilliant Black artist whose life was cut short by addiction and systemic neglect.
Basquiat saw these patterns not as abstract tragedies but as a recurring, violent structure—one that crowned young Black men only to crush them under the weight of expectation, commodification, and cultural fear.
Behind the crown lies a guillotine.
2. “Sometimes I wish I had a mute button on life.”
Relatable.
3. “I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.”
He valued authenticity and raw expression, which he felt was often lost in the work of trained artists.
Expert Commentary: Art educator Kathy White noted that Basquiat’s appreciation for children’s art “reflects his desire to capture the unfiltered essence of creativity.”
4. “Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat was as much a musician as he was a painter. In 1979, he co-founded the experimental band Gray, named after Gray’s Anatomy, a book that also influenced his visual art.
The group performed at legendary downtown venues like the Mudd Club and CBGB, contributing to New York’s No Wave scene. Their sound was raw, ambient, and intentionally rough—Basquiat described it as “incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful.”
Music was central to his creative process. He often painted with jazz or classical records playing, drawing inspiration from legends like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.
Works like Horn Players pay tribute to jazz heroes, while many paintings feature song titles, musician names, and improvisational rhythms.
Basquiat didn’t just listen to music—he participated in shaping the culture. He produced the hip-hop track Beat Bop by Rammellzee and K-Rob, funded the recording, and designed the cover art. That 1983 single became a cult classic, bridging hip-hop, fine art, and the downtown New York scene.
For Basquiat, art and music weren’t separate—they were parallel languages. His work has often been described as “visual bebop,” capturing the chaotic beauty of sound through image.
If you’d like to decorate your space with Basquiat screenprints, check out our collection here.
5. “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”
Source: This quote is documented in the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” which features Basquiat’s handwritten notes and sketches.
Explanation: By obscuring text, he engaged viewers in a deeper exploration of meaning, challenging them to uncover hidden messages.
However, he has also been quoted saying, “I use text to mislead and reveal.”
The idea that he uses text to sometimes mislead people certainly revises how you view his work.
Expert Commentary: Curator Dieter Buchhart explained that Basquiat’s use of crossed-out words “forces the viewer to look closer, to engage more deeply with the work.”
6. “I think I make art for myself, but ultimately I think I make it for the world.”
7. “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.”
Source: This quote is documented in the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” which features Basquiat’s handwritten notes and sketches. (Brooklyn Museum)
This statement articulates one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s most urgent artistic imperatives: the centering of Black identity within a visual tradition that had historically rendered it invisible.
His work does not merely include Black figures—it insists upon their prominence.
In canvas after canvas, the Black body becomes both subject and symbol: crowned, annotated, and anatomized, occupying space with undeniable presence.
Figures such as Charlie Parker, Jesse Owens, and unidentified yet monumental Black men appear not as background characters but as avatars of resistance, intellect, and excellence.
Basquiat’s decision to foreground Black protagonists was both personal and political. Confronting an art historical canon dominated by white European ideals, he sought to correct the absence he observed from a young age.
His paintings, densely layered with historical references, anatomical sketches, text, and graffiti-like gestures, construct a new mythology—one in which Black figures are rendered as saints, boxers, heroes, and intellectuals.
These works do more than address visibility; they reassert authorship. Basquiat’s protagonists are not passive subjects of representation—they are agents of narrative, resisting erasure through a visual language that is as assertive as it is innovative.
By positioning Black identity at the core of his practice, Basquiat challenged the conventions of Western art and reframed who belongs at the center of its story.
8. “Sometimes I make something I don’t even understand until later.”
Basquiat often created art spontaneously, allowing subconscious flow to guide his work.
Many artists, writers, and creatives will find this idea highly relatable. Once you enter a flow state, the space between your subconscious and your work evaporates.
It’s a form of holding a mirror up to the parts of your mind and heart that you can’t normally see. Later, once you’ve had time to process, you may connect the dots.
Expert Commentary: Art historians note that Basquiat’s method aligns with the practices of abstract expressionists, emphasizing emotion and instinct over deliberate planning. This strategy is more conducive to getting into a flow state.
9. “People always want to know what something means. Sometimes it just is.”
Basquiat often resisted over-analysis of his work, preferring viewers to experience it without seeking definitive meanings.
On the other hand, another famous Basquiat quote is, “I write in code. If you know, you know.” Similarly, he said, “Every single line means something.”
Art critic Rene Ricard noted that Basquiat’s lines “are not just lines; they are words, they are ideas, they are symbols.”
While these seem antithetical, it’s most likely that while he imbued his paintings with loads of meaning, the viewer would never arrive at them through a theoretical deconstruction of them.
You can’t just try and figure out what every little piece symbolizes and then add them together to “get it”. What you do have to understand is that he’s trying to say something that he can’t verbalize.
A trio of Basquiat quotes come to mind:
- “I paint what I can’t explain in words.”
- “You don’t have to understand everything to feel it.”
- “I hate people who try to analyze my paintings.”
Art historian Robert Farris Thompson described Basquiat’s work as “a cry from the heart,” emphasizing its raw and immediate nature.
You can see why he would feel insulted when people took such a flat, rational approach to such intimate expressions.
10. “I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.”
Source: Basquiat made this statement in a 1985 interview with The New York Times Magazine, expressing his dissatisfaction with being treated as a token artist rather than a serious talent. Artsy
Context: Basquiat was reflecting on his experience with a rapid-fire exhibition in Modena, Italy, where he felt exploited by the art dealers involved.
Explanation: This Basquiat quote underscores his desire for genuine recognition and his frustration with being commodified by the art establishment.
Expert Commentary: Art critic Fred Hoffman observed that Basquiat’s work was often misunderstood and that he struggled against being puppeteered by the art market, especially as a black “voice of the gutter”.
Read How The World Saw Basquiat’s Paintings for a deeper dive into this central complication of his career.
11. “Fire will attract more attention than any other cry for help.”
We’ll leave this Basquiat quote for you to ponder out yourself.
12. “I don‘t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.”
Source: This Jean-Michel Basquiat quote has been cited in various publications and exhibitions, including the Dallas Museum of Art’s virtual exhibition on Basquiat’s work. Virtual DMA.
This statement reflects Basquiat’s approach to art as an intuitive process, focusing on life’s immediacy over theoretical considerations.
Expert Commentary: Art critic Fred Hoffman noted that Basquiat’s work “was not about art history; it was about life and the world around him.”
13. “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.”
Source: Jean Michel Basquiat, Rudy Chiappini (2005). “Basquiat”, Museo D’Arte Moderna Citta Di Lugano.
To Basquiat, fame wasn’t just a goal.
It was a form of liberation, a way to transcend invisibility and claim a space in cultural history.
He admired how Parker and Hendrix pushed boundaries—not just in sound, but in how they navigated race, power, and artistic identity.
Both were prodigies who reshaped their fields, and both struggled with addiction, exploitation, and the pressures of being young, gifted, and Black in a world quick to consume them.
Basquiat wasn’t blind to their downfalls. He saw their brilliance and their fragility.
The dual allure and danger of fame became a recurring theme in his life and work.
By seventeen, Basquiat was already writing SAMO graffiti on the streets of Manhattan, dropping cryptic, poetic messages on walls in SoHo and the East Village.
Even then, his work carried the markings of someone who knew he had something rare. He believed in the power of his own voice and aligned himself with the pantheon of tortured, transcendent Black icons who had come before him.
But the romanticism he mentions was also a kind of prophecy. Like Parker and Hendrix, Basquiat’s rise was meteoric.
So was his fall.
He became a star, just as he imagined. And like his heroes, he didn’t live to see thirty. It’s a fact that leaves a dark shadow over another Basquiat quote:
“I don’t want to be a victim in my own story.”
14. “There’s no single message in any of my pieces.”
He suggests that his art resists singular narratives, instead offering a tapestry of meanings that reflect the multifaceted nature of human experience.
It echoes another famous Jean-Michel Basquiat quote, “There are about 30 different things in every painting.”
Expert Commentary: Scholars observe that this multiplicity invites viewers to engage with the artwork on a personal level, finding their own meanings within the chaos.
15. “I am not a black artist. I am an artist.”
Source: This quote is widely attributed to Jean-Michel Basquiat and has been cited in various publications, including Biography.com.
Basquiat expressed this sentiment to emphasize that while his identity as a Black man informed his perspective, he did not want to be confined to a racial category within the art world. GQ.
This statement reflects Basquiat’s desire to be recognized for his artistic talents and contributions, rather than being limited by racial labels.
In the movie Basquiat, someone asks Jean-Michel if he considers himself a black painter and he quips, “I’m not a black painter, I use all kinds of colors in my paintings.”
16. “I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.”
Art historian Kellie Jones noted that Basquiat’s early experiences of hardship deeply influenced his work and perspective.
17. “I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.”
With this statement, Jean-Michel Basquiat reveals a core principle of his visual philosophy: to reject academic polish in favor of raw, instinctive expression.
In aspiring to the unfiltered spontaneity of a child’s mark, Basquiat aimed to unlearn the constraints of formalism and access a more honest visual language—one driven by emotion, urgency, and directness.
His work, often described as chaotic or primitive by critics who failed to grasp its complexity, deliberately embraces asymmetry, repetition, and improvisation. But beneath this surface lies a sophisticated visual system, referencing anatomy, language, colonial history, and jazz.
The childlike aesthetic is not naïveté—it is a conscious refusal of aesthetic hierarchies, a challenge to the idea that refinement equates to value.
In Basquiat’s hands, the child’s line becomes a tool of resistance—disrupting tradition, reclaiming agency, and asserting that freedom in art lies not in technique, but in truth.
18. “Believe it or not, I can actually draw.”
Art historian Fred Hoffman emphasized Basquiat’s strong foundation in drawing, noting its significance in his overall artistic practice.
Though Basquiat also talks about failing art classes, he asserts that he has more “traditional” drawing talent.
19. “Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I’ll do some great, awful painting about her.” Printed Editions.
Source: This quote is featured on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s official website.
This line, laced with honesty and edge, reflects the emotional intensity Jean-Michel Basquiat brought to his relationships.
One of the most important figures was Suzanne Mallouk, an artist and aspiring doctor who financially supported Basquiat in his early days, paying rent and buying materials while he was still unknown.
Their relationship was volatile and passionate—deeply affectionate but marked by artistic competition and infidelity.
Mallouk was often the emotional anchor during his early years of instability and addiction, and their time together shaped some of his most formative experiences as an emerging artist.
Another key figure was Madonna, whom Basquiat dated in the early 1980s just before her ascent to pop stardom. Their relationship was brief but intense.
He reportedly painted for her and then, after they broke up, reclaimed the canvases and painted over them.
Despite the fallout, Basquiat was said to be deeply supportive of her ambitions and admired her focus.
20. “I‘m not a real person. I’m a legend.”
Watch any 30 seconds of an interview with him, and you’ll see this is probably not a self-aggrandizing declaration.
Instead, Basquiat commented on his rapid rise to fame and the mythologizing of his persona. The New Yorker.
It seems clear the art world did far more to further this narrative than he did.
Art critic Glenn O’Brien observed that Basquiat’s self-perception as a “legend” highlighted the performative aspects of his career.
21. “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.”
In an article from Vanity Fair, Basquiat’s descent into reclusiveness and drug use is discussed, emphasizing the impact of fame and pressure on his well-being. Vanity Fair
22. “I enjoy that they think I‘m a bad boy. I think it’s great.”
Funny.
23. “My drawings are about 80% anger.”
With this striking admission, Jean-Michel Basquiat cuts through the myth of the carefree art prodigy.
His work was not just spontaneous expression—it was a response to lived experience, a form of resistance shaped by rage. Basquiat’s anger stemmed from deep wells: racism, cultural erasure, exploitation, poverty, and grief.
Basquiat grew up a gifted, curious child of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent in a world that constantly tried to flatten or exoticize him.
As his fame rose, so did the microaggressions—from critics calling his work “primitive” to collectors commodifying his identity.
The art world wanted his edge but not his insight. His frustration with being tokenized as a “Black artist” rather than simply an “artist” was a constant undercurrent.
That fury is visible in his visual language: jagged lines, violent cross-outs, screaming skulls, repeated slurs, historical references marked like battle scars.
In Irony of Negro Policeman (1981), he mocks the absurdity of Black complicity within oppressive systems. In Untitled (History of the Black People), he rewrites colonial narratives with raw defiance. His figures don’t pose—they shout.
And yet, that 80% anger didn’t exclude the remaining 20%—grief, humor, tenderness, vulnerability. Basquiat’s art was never just about rage; it was about survival through expression.
His drawings weren’t an outlet—they were an act of confrontation. To look at them is to witness a young man fighting not only for recognition, but for truth.
24. “I’m not comfortable in the spotlight.”
Just like his close friend, Andy Warhol.
25. “Royalty, heroism, and the streets — that’s my subject matter.”
In this succinct statement, Jean-Michel Basquiat lays bare the mythos of his art: a fusion of nobility, struggle, and lived experience.
His subjects were not drawn from fantasy but from a reimagined reality—one in which Black men, so often erased or vilified in Western art, are re-cast as kings, warriors, saints, and survivors.
His figures wear crowns not as decoration, but as declarations.
“Royalty” refers not to inherited wealth but to spiritual and cultural power. Basquiat crowned athletes like Joe Louis, jazz giants like Charlie Parker, and anonymous Black men from city streets—elevating them with gold halos and emphatic text.
These weren’t caricatures; they were canonizations.
“Heroism” in his work is complex. It’s not clean or triumphant—it’s defiant, fractured, often tragic. Basquiat’s heroes bear the weight of history and oppression.
They are victorious not because they are untouched by struggle, but because they exist in spite of it.
And “the streets” were not just his backdrop—they were his foundation. From his early SAMO graffiti to his deep roots in New York’s downtown scene, Basquiat brought the raw energy of the street into the gallery.
He refused to separate high and low culture, mixing Latin, French, anatomy diagrams, rap lyrics, and West African references on the same canvas.
Together, royalty, heroism, and the streets formed a new language—one that spoke for those history left out, and one that made Basquiat not just a painter of his time, but a re-writer of
Basquiat Screenprints
Hamilton Selway provides high-quality screenprints of important Basquiat paintings. Currently we offer 50 Cent Piece, Phooey, and Jawbone of an Ass. At the time of this writing, all our editions are signed and stamped by the Basquiat estate.
Please click the links above to view the artworks and inquire about these pieces. Keep scrolling to discover more of the visionary and legendary paintings by Basquiat.
