Anecdotes

Was of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent.

In 1977, he and his friend Al Diaz began spray painting subway walls with cryptic sayings, always signing them "SAMO" ("Same Old Shit"). He always said SAMO was an end to mindwash religion, nowhere politics and bogus philosophy. His idea was to write anti-materialism in plain view of some of the worst materialists around. Painted on unconventional objects retrieved from the junkyard, he seemed to be attacking bourgeois society.

The movie Basquiat (1996) starring Jeffrey Wright is a biopic of his discovery by Andy Warhol, their intense friendship, the racism he endured in the art world, and the drug habit that eventually killed him.

Chosen by GQ magazine as one of the 50 most stylish men of the past 50 years.

Included in the "27 Club" because like Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones (The Rolling Stones), Jim Morrison (The Doors), Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Jonathan Brandis he too died at age 27.

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 30-32. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 71-72. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.