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I Am The Guilty White Liberal Jean-Michel Basquiat Image by be_your_guru
Still not sure it’s finished. I might want to take it apart, space it out, but hell, I don’t have room so that can wait.

acrylics and glass, 60 by 100 cm

The text is:

I am the guilty white liberal
Jean-Michel Basquiat and I’m listening to you
as I paint these days and you’re whispering
that I’m uptight like an old virgin in my
dreams and I’ll never let go and let the
color flow me towards other sides of other—

—at the exhibition of your work held
in huge white rooms I wondered if you
would have enjoyed the label ‘wounded’ because
who is wounded here anyway. You are dead.

I talked to you while I painted this panel
and you talked back which is not a good sign
since you are dead. But I believe in this stuff
so fuck it, we kept talking—

—and you asked me what I was angry about
I said I don’t GO THERE, I need to paint these
pretty moons—be peaceful and loving
like a white middle-aged woman of privilege
should be, so as to give the world
the correct impression of

And you told me that I needed to paint what pissed me off
but THAT list is so long perhaps one or two items
would suffice to round out this menu—-remember

—at 24 I asked a famous black woman writer if my
black great-grandmother would qualify me
for some sisterhood among women of color—
the look she gave me was so dark with deep pity
that I’m hot pink remembering.

// From Flicker










