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"When I went to the Trocadero it was disgusting. The Flea Market. The smell. I was alone. I wanted to get away. But I didn't leave. I stayed. I understood that it was very important: that something was happening to me. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all. There were magic things...The negro pieces were intercessors, mediators...But all the fetishes were used for the same things. They were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influence of spirits...I inderstood why I was a painter. All alone in that awful museum, with masks, dolls by redskins, dusty mannequins. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon must have come to me that very day. Because it was my first exorcism painting." (Jean-Michel Basquiat in T. Shafrazi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York 1999, p. 11)