THE NOTEBOOKS

The notebooks are filled with images and words that recur in Basquiats paintings and other works. Iconic drawings and pictograms of crowns, teepees, and hatch-marked hearts share space with handwritten texts, including notes, observations, and poems that often touch on culture, race, class, and life in New York. Like his other work, the notebooks vividly demonstrate Basquiats deep interests in comic, street, and pop art, hip-hop, politics, and the ephemera of urban life.