Also titled «Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,» the catalog documents the traveling exhibition, while «The Notebooks» offers a facsimile edition of the words and
images the artist jotted down, reproducing for the first time pages from eight of his rarely seen notebooks.
He wrote (in all caps) and drew in the books between 1980 and 1987,
jotting down fragments of poetry, doodles, and random thoughts about race, culture and society — many of the words,
images, and symbols later appeared in the
artist's paintings.