A lot of my friends are dead, a lot of people who were in that world are dead. And when Jean-Michel died, there was this slew of articles about 'Young black graffiti artist got lost in the fast lane of the Eighties art world,' and I thought that sounded so stupid, and so offensive. Jean Michel and I were in very similar situations in relation to the rest of the world. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of movies, but he really was a foreigner to this world, to something that was personal for me. Schnabel's Adieu, 1985.
Painters have something in common to other painters, especially if they know each other.
I became my brother's keeper. It was very personal. It was never an academic thing, it was more of a biological and an emotional problem that I was having that forced me to do it. I started to work with this man, to help him with this project he was doing, and time went on, and I realized that he and I saw it differently. I bought him out of the project, and he wound up with the credit.