SAMO© Graffiti

SAMO is a graffiti tag used on the streets of New York City from 1977 to early 1980. It accompanied short phrases, in turns poetic and sarcastic, mainly painted on the streets of downtown Manhattan.

The tag, written with a copyright symbol as "SAMO©", and pronounced Same-Oh has been primarily associated with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, but was developed mainly as a collaboration between Basquiat and Al Diaz, with help from a few friends. Diaz had previously been part of the New York graffiti scene (he knew the first writer of sayings, FLINT.i..For Those Who Dare when they both attended the High School Of Art and Design) using the tag "Bomb I". Later Basquiat took on the tag himself, creating some non-graffiti work on paper and canvas using that tag, just before and after killing off the SAMO graffiti by painting "SAMO© IS DEAD" around the streets of downtown in early 1980.

Basquiat claims the name was first developed in a stoned conversation with high school friend Al Diaz, calling the marijuana they smoked "the same old shit," then shortening the phrase to "Same Old", then "SAMO". The character of SAMO was first developed by Basquiat and Diaz, while they were fellow students at City As School high school. Basquiat took the lead in creating a character called SAMO, selling a false religion, in comics made in high school. The concept was further developed in a theatre-as-therapy course in Upper Manhattan (called "Family Life") that was used by the trio as part of the City As School program. "Jean started elaborating on the idea and I began putting my thoughts into it," remembered Diaz. Basquiat, Diaz, Shannon Dawson and Matt Kelly worked on a comic style endorsement of the false religion, photocopied as a pamphlet "Based on an original concept by Jean Basquiat and Al Diaz."

The City As School 1977/78 Yearbook includes a photo of the SAMO graffiti: SAMO@ AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO PLASTIC FOOD STANDS.

"It started ... as a private joke and then grew" Diaz and Basquiat would later tell The Village Voice in an interview. They took the joke out of the school, giving out small stickers with SAMO aphorisms or the SAMO pamphlet on paper on the subway, and writing down the phrases with marker pens as graffiti, often with an ironic copyright symbol attached. In 1977, while they were still students, Basquiat and Diaz started to put up the first SAMO© Graffiti in Manhattan.

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