Al Diaz on the Real Meaning Behind SAMO With Basquiat

For Al Diaz, the history of SAMO© has never been as simple as the story that followed it. Created with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the late 1970s, SAMO© has since been folded into the mythology surrounding Basquiat, often described as an alias, a conventional graffiti tag or shorthand for “Same Old Shit.” Diaz sees it differently. What the two teenagers developed was closer to an invented product: a series of cryptic, satirical messages written for anyone walking the streets of downtown New York, not just other graffiti writers.

Nearly five decades later, Diaz is still pushing back against the simplified version of that history. “I’m not going to stand around and listen to a history that you’re part of being told incorrectly,” he says. “I’m not one to sit there quietly.”

That conversation carries into ‘SAMO: TRANSATLANTICATION,’ Diaz’s first solo exhibition in London, which opened September 25 at D’Stassi Art. Alongside new SAMO© canvases, the exhibition presents works from his ongoing subway-signage series and mixed-media practice, offering a broader picture of an artist whose relationship with language has continued to evolve well beyond the project he created as a teenager.

We spoke with Diaz about the real origins of SAMO©, working with Basquiat before the mythology took over, why “Same Old Shit” misses the point, and what it means to revisit that history nearly 50 years later.

How did this exhibition come about, and what’s your relationship with the gallery?
I think I met one of the guys from the gallery, Michael Howes, maybe in 2019 or ’20, about six years ago. And we did a collaboration with an artist that we were representing.

And then after that, we ran an edition of two images of prints. And we did that, and then we stayed in touch over the last few years. And they’d been talking about doing a show primarily focusing on the SAMO stuff, which is something I did with Basquiat back in 1978.

You revived SAMO in 2016. What made you return to it after so many years?
The whole thing was motivated by the fact that SAMO had become this globally recognized graffiti because of the association with Basquiat. But the story had been skewed over the decades, the fact that I was the other half of SAMO, and the fact that I was the actual graffiti artist. Because Basquiat, okay, he did some writing on the walls and stuff like that, but he was not part of what people assume when one says “graffiti artist,” the New York City subway, that whole movement. He was not really part of that.

And SAMO was not subway graffiti, nor was it really a tag per se. It was not part of that subculture. It was something coming from a completely different place. It was more conceptual art, really conceptual writing.

Was part of that return about correcting the history around SAMO and your role in it?
I wanted to clarify what it was, to actually do actual SAMOs so that people could see and read and understand that it wasn’t what they thought it was, for the most part. Because of bad information, the internet, copy-paste information from dubious sources, etc., etc. That’s how a lot of our history is obtained and proliferated, and that’s just wrong.

So it was my obligation to clarify it. And that’s why in 2016 I revived SAMO. It’s not that I was trying to jump on the bus, jump on the bandwagon or anything. It was because it was something that was 50 percent mine. The point is that if it was being celebrated, then you would have to celebrate the entire story, and me as well.

I’m not going to stand around and listen to a history that you’re part of being told incorrectly. I can’t do that. I’m not one to sit there quietly.

“People always think that it somehow stands for, or translates to, ‘same old shit,’ but it’s not that.”

Who was Al Diaz before SAMO?
Well, I was born in the Lower East Side, and I’m bilingual, Puerto Rican. So language became something of value from a very young age. When you speak two languages, from my experience, you develop a value for it, because you can do all sorts of different things with the language. You kind of shift in thinking and dreaming; you have to shift in and out of a linguistic format. And then you can combine the two.

I grew up in the Lower East Side in a housing project during the ’60s and ’70s. I also spent some time up in Washington Heights, which is arguably the spawning ground for New York City graffiti culture. Around the age of 12, in 1971, I became really attracted to that. It wasn’t something that was seen much in the neighborhood I grew up in, in the Lower East Side, so I sort of imported it.

I was seeking an identity, I guess, at the age of 12. And I became a graffiti artist.

How did you end up meeting Basquiat?
I was always involved in art since I was a kid, so I ended up going to the High School of Art and Design. But I was there for three years during the strongest parts of my involvement in graffiti culture, and as a result I kind of flunked out, because I was more focused on doing graffiti than on trying to finish school.

By the 11th grade, I was asked to leave, and they suggested an alternative, experimental school. And that’s where I met Jean-Michel. That’s when I met Jean-Michel Basquiat at City-As-School, the experimental alternative school I mentioned. We became friends. And then the SAMO graffiti would come about a year after we had known each other.

You’ve called SAMO an “imaginary product.” What was the idea behind that?
People always think that it somehow stands for, or translates to, “same old shit,” but it’s not that. The word itself was derived from “same old, same old,” but it could have been anything. It just became SAMO because it was a word we were using. It was part of our vernacular, our lexicon, within a group of friends. So we gave it a different meaning.

Jean-Michel wrote a story for our school newspaper, which we were both part of. It was a fantasy about some guy who had a kiosk that sold religions. And the special of the day, the religion he was trying to sell to this person who came in asking about religions, was called SAMO. So this word we were using amongst our friends had now transformed into this religion.

Then we took it one step further. We made these pamphlets with drawings of people who had experienced SAMO. It was like testimonies. What we were trying to do was create a cult or religion, something that offered life-changing results. We never explained what it did exactly, but somehow it was gonna change your life. It was a parody on the whole cult and religion thing. It could even be a drug.

What do you remember most about working with Basquiat before all the fame and mythology?
Well, he was kind of a soft-spoken person, but he was very deliberate and very certain about what he wanted to do. He was also super articulate, so his sentences in terms of what we were doing together were always pretty good. On that particular project, we worked pretty well together.

He was still young, about a year and a half younger than me, so I had kind of a big-brother relationship with him. But he was quite mature, and he had great ideas, and he was funny. He was super, piercingly intelligent. Really sharp.

“Graffiti is a very insular community. Graffiti artists basically write graffiti for other graffiti artists.”

How did that turn into the SAMO statements people saw on the street?
We started writing these descriptions: “SAMO as an alternative to God.” “SAMO for you.” “SAMO as an end to mind-wash religion, nowhere politics, and bogus philosophy.” “SAMO as an end to mass-produced individuality.”

All these nicely worded phrases that would catch people’s attention, and they would be like, “What is this?” That’s how it started, and that’s where we took off with it. We would write them together and edit each other, reject some, and keep a format of very draftsman-type handwriting so that it looked like block print, nothing like a tag.

Graffiti is a very insular community. Graffiti artists basically write graffiti for other graffiti artists. What we were doing was different. We were doing it for the general public, hence the block lettering. Like I said, it was not a tag; it was a message. That’s what really made it completely distinct.

Where does ‘Transatlantication’ come from?
I made it up. It was kind of challenging coming up with a title. I wanted to do something that was directional, something that states something about the actual location. So “transatlantic,” this being my first show in London. I thought it was a good play on words, and they went for it.

What else are you showing alongside the SAMO works?
The signage, what I refer to as my text signage or subway signage, there are three of those pieces that are actually hand-painted. I generally do a lot of printing with these, but these are on canvas and I actually painted the letters. I use stencils to get the basic form of the letter, but these are hand-painted. And then I have a few of my mixed-media pieces that I’m offering.

It has a street art kind of edge to it, but there’s a certain street art motif or cliché that I try to run away from, like the 10 million Mickey Mouses and all that stuff. It’s not that interesting. So it’s a little more mature than straight street art.