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Hollywood Africans -1940-

by SEA OF VOICES

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1.
Sorry 03:29
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2.
Self portrait as a heel #3 03:12
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3.
N̶u̶t̶ (200 yen) 03:00
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4.
My first time (pop corn) 02:20
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5.
Crystal Fissure 03:50
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6.
Hero.ism (Gangsterism.) 02:30
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7.
7. Sugar Cane Inc © 02:46
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8.
8. Tobacco ̶(̶p̶a̶w̶ ̶p̶a̶w̶)̶ 03:33
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9.
̶L̶u̶l̶l̶a̶b̶y̶ 03:59
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10.
What is Bwana 03:21
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11.
Redbones 22.60-12 03:19
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12.
RMLZ ̶S̶E̶V̶E̶N̶ ̶S̶T̶A̶R̶S̶ 01:25
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about

OUT ON SEIKOMART
seikomart.bandcamp.com/album/hollywood-africans-1940



I have been studying piano for a lifetime.
My aim was to become a concert player, like my teacher was when he was young. He studied in Russia. He was a serious communist. And he loved modern art.
In front of one of his two pianos of his house, where I practiced, a picture hung.
A very strange picture, or so it seemed to me when I was 8.
There were barred writings and deformed faces. It scared me a lot at that time.
However, over time, the more I saw it, the more it became familiar, even friendly.
For years that picture watched me sweating and swearing on a keyboard. Every time I did a competition, I couldn't help thinking about that sort of pictorial delirium, especially if the competition went badly.
That canvas began to enclose intense and detestable moments of my life, sublime, disappointments, failures, loves. I became almost obsessed with it, so much that I bought several copies of it with different sizes, to put on the walls of my flat. I feel mad



I decided to create a programmatic music album, focused entirely on the painting in question. Each track is a different sensation or a moment translated towards the brush strokes

A lumpy bunch of ghosts

I put the link of the painting's true photo in the credits, so that even those who do not know it can have a better musical immersion. The real cover, on the other hand, is what remains of the canvas in my head, which absorbed, like a sponge, the effort and sweat of my studies.
Probably mostly my Chopin Sonatas



Jean-Michel Basquiat - Hollywood Africans -1940-

...

...

...

BJ: What else?
JMB: I have a Joseph Kosuth.
BJ: One of the old ones?
JMB: Yeah, a sixties one. And I got one Robert [inaudible]
painting and those [James] Van Der Zee photographs,
and I have a small Keith Haring.
TD: Did you ever trade art? Did you trade something with
Keith in order to get that?
JMB: Yeah, yeah. I traded with Andy. We used to trade all
the time so I have a few of his paintings.
TD: You used to leave paintings lying in places where you
were staying. Are you more conscious of not doing that?
JMB: Definitely, 'cause they've wound up at auction.
BJ: Yeah, I know people who've sold those things.
JMB: Like everybody I know has sold those things.
BJ: [ ... ] If you were suddenly told that you only had
twenty- four hours left to live, what would you do in those
twenty- four hours?
JMB: I don't know-go hang out with my mother and my
girlfriend, I guess.



INTERVIEW
Jean Michel Basquiat with Becky Johnston and Tamra
Davis

credits

released December 22, 2000

whitney.org/collection/works/453

license

all rights reserved

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