Jean-Michel Basquiat Quotes

I cross out words so you will see them more

My first job in Brazil was actually to develop a way to improve the readability of billboards, and based on speed, angle of approach and actually blocks of text. It was very - actually, it was a very good study, and got me a job in an ad agency. And they also decided that I had to - to give me a very ugly Plexiglas trophy for it.

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice. "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light."

The less there was to see, the harder he looked, the more he saw. (Point Omega)

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

Graphic Design, which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups, is not good design if it is irrelevant.

The dark is light enough.

The thing is that pictures are everywhere. The question is what we don't see, and why don't we see so much. I just see it.

How are things visible? Can you see an egg against a white background? Not by drawing a line around it can you make it evident.

Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.

How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing.

A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.

In the dark, all cats are black.

A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows

Dont confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesnt mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesnt mean it communicates the right thing.

The star shines for everyone in the world, but in reality, it itself is surrounded in darkness.

Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness.

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.

There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.