Jean-Michel Basquiat


JMB text piece

circa 1982
Private Collection


< Artists + Writers


Jean-Michel Basquiat, (1960-1988)

“Surely part of the point of the crossed-out lines and erasing hurricanes of colour is that Basquiat is attesting to the mutability of language, the way it twists and turns according to the power status of the speaker. Crimée is not the same as criminal, negro alters in different mouths, cotton might stand literally for slavery but also for fixed hierarchies of meaning and the way people get caged inside them.”

– Olivia Lang, The Guardian, September 8, 2017