Basquiat’s SAMO© and the untold story of Albert Diaz.

Words by Edsard Driessen

Before he was a household name and known for his friendship with art royalty Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat started his artistic homecoming on the streets of New York with a somewhat unknown artistic collaborator in the form of Albert Diaz. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat (left) and Albert (Al) Diaz (Right)

Emerging out of the 1980s New York city graffiti subculture, which birthed legends such as Michael De Feo and Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat is an often heralded and pedestaled member of the art elite. His originals sell for millions to celebrity owners and his apartment recently went up for auction with respected auction house Christie’s. But before he was enshrined upon skateboards and t-shirts, Basquiat started his career not as a solo artist but as a duo. Forming the monogram SAMO© with long-time friend and collaborator Albert Diaz (Al for short). Unlike the hastily ensembled scribbles presented by Haring, or the traditional balloon font used by the city’s chief graffiti artists, Diaz and Basquiat presented their street art in a series of cryptic messages signed off with SAMO©:

“SAMO©,,, AS AN END TO THE 9 to 5 “I WENT TO COLLEGE” “NOT 2-NITE HONEY”, THINK,,,”

“SAMO©,,, 4 THE SO-CALLED AVANT-GARDE”

Basquiat and Diaz used the moniker to channel their teenage angst, approaching the carefully curated sentencing and lettering to present a youth-fuelled vision of the city and the future. Against the baseless street art deriding graffiti the city over, their approach was witty, confusing and confronting. This blend, mixed with their teenage lawlessness started grabbing people’s attention. Now long-gone, covered over and scrubbed away, SAMO©’s work was fundamental to making the Basquiat who he is today and for launching like artists such as Banksy and other written-word graffiti artists favouring the minimalistic, short-verse format. Considering that Basquiat is a household name, the other half of SAMO©, Al Diaz is notably absent from the annals of art history. 

SAMO© “AS A CONGLOMERATE OF DORMANT-GENIUOS”

Raised in a housing project on the Lower East Side, Diaz began writing graffiti on trains and buses at the age of twelve. At the start he used BOMB 1, which reflected the old-school graffiti style of using a nickname, then adding a number such as your block, street, or building. This act was a way to show where you were from, which enacted itself into the “turf-war” type of graffiti art which became so popular at the time. Diaz describes the aim in an interview with DAZED a few years ago: “it was a way to be different…no one had seen the phenomenon of going around writing your name on the wall as many times as you could, so people would notice it”. This was the central mission behind this primitive form of graffiti; to become someone that people knew. 

“BOMB ONE” by Al Diaz

Basquiat and Diaz met while at high school together, instantly hitting it off due to their common artistic and musical interests, as well as their Hispanic roots. At school they began exploring the use of language and words together, often going on tours of the MoMa or other artistic institutions which would cement their future within the art world. Conceiving SAMO© in the spring of 1977, as part of a school newspaper titled Basement Blues Press, the idea behind the SAMO© moniker was as an idealised, imaginary religion. Centred around the fictional tale of Harry Sneed and Quasimodo Jones (which is said to have inspired rapper Madlib’s alter-ego character of Quasimoto or Lord Quas) talking about a ”modern and stylish enlightenment”, “a guilt-free religion”. The moniker of SAMO© originally stood for “Same Old Shit” where it became a medium for them to vent frustration and personal jokes through graffiti. Inspired by a nameless artist who was popular at the time for writing “Pray and Jesus Saves” Diaz and Basquiat aimed to subvert this narrative under the SAMO© image, writing “SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD” on a church on West Broadway as their first outing. 

Commenting on consumerism, religion, politics and whatever was on the minds of a 17-year-old inner-city kid, the SAMO© tag was repeated all over New York. After a few months of the SAMO© message, Diaz and Basquiat turned to what they dubbed to be “Greco-Roman” graffiti, making commentaries on the world and what set them aside from the rest. Remaining anonymous until 1978, Diaz and Basquiat decided to give the game up and sell their story for $100 to the Village Voice for an article titled “SAMO© Graffiti: BOOSH-WAH or CIA?” written by Philip Faflick. The article received an outpour of negative criticism with members of the public taking it upon themselves to write responses to the moniker, with “DEATH TO SAMO©” appearing over the initial graffiti tags. 

SAMO© “FOR THOSE OF US WHO MERELY TOLERATE CIVILIZATION”

After the article, the two went distinctly different ways; Basquiat picked up the SAMO© name and issued it as his own, appearing on Glenn O’Brien’s TV PARTY with his head half-shaved and Diaz was not present. While Basquiat was picked up and heralded by the New York art scene, Diaz went downtown to pursue a music career. The two didn’t speak for almost two years, in that time Basquiat had achieved the spark to his international career and dropped the SAMO© name, instead signing his work under Jean-Michel Basquiat. By the early 80s, Basquiat was a phenom, with work being shown in New York’s PS1, the Larry Gagosian Gallery and the Whitney Museum while also dabbling in filmmaking. 

At the turn of 1986, Basquiat and Diaz had completely lost touch, with this period marked by one fateful visit by Jean to Diaz, giving him a diptych, which said “To SAMO© from SAMO©”. This would dictate the end of the duo and SAMO© itself, Al Diaz sold the painting a few months later and Jean-Michel Basquiat would pass away at his studio on Great Jones Street in Manhattan’s NoHo neighbourhood on the 12th of august 1988. What started as a jokingly conceived graffiti idea by two New York teenagers in the 1970s would spark one of the world’s greatest artistic careers and leave the other behind. The story of Albert Diaz is rarely told but integral to tell. In fact, after a decade’s long hiatus, Diaz restarted the SAMO© tag during Trump’s election campaign; both as an ode to his old friend but also to protest the shifting political landscape. 

Al Diaz today

Within today’s social media landscape, the essence of SAMO© started nearly 40 years ago rings as true as ever; things may change but it still consists of the “Same Old Shit”.