My basic influence had probably been Peter Max.
— 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.
I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.
Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.
I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.
I like kids' work more than work by real artists any day.
The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.
I wanted to build up a name for myself.
I start a picture and I finish it.
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.
I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
I was a cute kid.
Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.
I'm not a real person. I'm a legend.
My favorite Twombly is 'Apollo and the Artist,' with the big 'Apollo' written across it.
I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.
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.
Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.
I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.
I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.
I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.
I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.
I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.
I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.
Medicine men live in caves.
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.
If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.
There are about 30 words around you all the time, like 'thread' or 'exit.'
The more I paint the more I like everything.
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.
I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.
Believe it or not, I can actually draw.
