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LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTIST
Jean Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Gerard Basquiat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and his mother, Matilde Andradas was born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents. At an early age, Basquiat displayed an aptitude for art and was encouraged by his mother to draw, paint, and to participate in other art-related activities.
In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti art on slum buildings in lower Manhattan, adding the infamous signature of "SAMO" (their graffiti “tag” which stood for “same old shit”). The graphics were pithy messages such as "Plush safe he think”, “Pay for Soup”, Set it on Fire” and "SAMO is an escape clause". SAMO’s social message was critical of mainstream culture; the style was poetic with an intellectual edge. In December 1978, the Village Voice published an article about the writings. The SAMO project ended with the epitaph......

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Approximate Word Count: 1000
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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