The Notebooks: Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was one of the most important artists of the 1980s. A key figure on the New York art scene, he inventively explored the interplay between words and images throughout his career, first as a member of SAMO, a group of graffiti artists active on the Lower East Side in the late 1970s, and then as a painter acclaimed for his inimitable neo-expressionist style.

From 1980 to 1987, Basquiat filled numerous work notebooks. Drawings and pictograms of wreaths, teepees and labelled hearts share space with handwritten texts, including notes, observations and poems that often deal with culture, race, class and life in New York.

This facsimile edition reproduces for the first time the pages of eight of these rarely seen notebooks. Like his other works, the notebooks reflect Basquiat's deep interest in comics, street and pop art, hip-hop, politics and the ephemera of urban life, and offer an intimate look into the working process of one of the most creative forces in contemporary American art.