Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

Drawing, for [Basquiat], was something you did rather than something done, an activity rather than a medium. The seemingly throw-away sheets that carpeted his studio might appear little more than warm-ups for painting, except that the artist, a shrewd connoisseur of his own off-hand and under foot inventions, did not in fact throw them away, but instead kept the best for constant reference and re-use. Or, kept them because they were, quite simply, indestructibly vivid.
—R. Storr, “Two Hundred Beats Per Min”, in Basquiat Drawings, exh. cat., New York, Robert Miller Gallery, 1990, n.p.