Samo as an artistic “I” by Jean-Michel Basquiat

This article is based on the biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat using the historicalbiographical and inductive method and proves the decisive importance of the early, pre-gallery stage of the artist’s work for the formation and further development of the uniqueness of his style. The origins of the artist’s work are in street art and his artistic “I” was influenced not so much by the graffiti period of his biography with the attributes accompanying the graffiti movement (the choice of the nickname SAMO, going out on the streets of the city for the purpose of dialogue with the urban community), as by other factors also characteristic of graffiti and street art. Firstly, a close connection with everyday life (words or phrases from an ordinary context, which seemed significant to the artist, inspired him to create artworks). Secondly, the tendency to autobiography (the creation of images extracted from personal experience). Thirdly, the attitude to the word as an image and a source of creativity (mixing images and texts in equal terms or even the dominance of text in paintings). It is also noted that Basquiat’s works were greatly influenced by the principle of “copy paste”, derived from a combination of techniques: the “cut-up” technique by Brian Gysin and William Burroughs, focusing on linguistic material characteristic of “concrete poetry”, and the spoken hip-hop genre that was formed in the 1980s.