By Rebecca Milzoff
May 2–June 11: Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York
It’s called semantic satiation: Repeat a word enough times and it will begin to lose its meaning. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s powerful list-centric paintings from the mid-’80s, subject of the exhibition “Words Are All We Have,” at Nahmad Contemporary, in New York, produce a visual equivalent of that effect. “He uses words like brushstrokes,” says curator Dieter Buchhart. “And when you speak them aloud, you can hear a kind of sound poem.”
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