“I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.” – Jean Michel Basquiat
Regarding his use of text in his paintings, he also is quoted as saying:
“There are about 30 words around you all the time, like ‘thread’ or ‘exit.’” — Jean-Michel Basquiat
This environmental inspiration is an interesting concept: Basquiat was pulling the words in his pieces directly from life as he painted. What words surround us? What did he keep? What did he scratch out and why?
Campbell’s Soup Train, 1980
Fab 5 Freddy’s Campbell’s Soup train, a collaboration with Lee Quiñones dates to 1980. A recent Artnews article interviews the two artists and discusses its significance – one of which is “Campbell’s Soup directly contradicted the racist assumption that graffiti art was unmoored from art history, proving that muralism on trains had its pulse on every corner of its metropolis: this train was rooted in myriad cultural and artistic influences, including but absolutely not limited to the canon of contemporary art, art history, comic book culture, and commercial design.” — Liz Munsell and Greg Tate
