Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

"Although Basquiat's drawings are in no sense specifically preparatory to the paintings, they do constitute the laboratory in which spontaneity and invention have freest range. What is true of the drawings applies to the poems-or poetic fragments-that one finds in his early (1980) notebooks. Little stories are told in telegraphed mode-only to be essentialized still further a few pages on. Jean's working method seems always to move from the full to the indicated, from the complex to its essence" (H. Geldzahler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Notebooks, New York, 1993).