/* ======================== SCRIPTS DEVELOPED BY: PAUL GARDNER codemonkey@backpacker.com ======================== */ button_num="&button_num=4" button_text1="&button_text1=Plush" button_text2="&button_text2=Boom for Real" button_text3="&button_text3=The Letter E" button_text4="&button_text4=Jimmy" popup_num="&popup_num=11" popup_text1="&popup_text1=ADDTITLE1:
The contrast of the words ''plush safe he think'' with the image of a car crash evokes a world of uncertainties and, perhaps, injustice." popup_text2="&popup_text2=Basquiat's graffiti tag was SAMO (which stood for ''same old, same old'' or ''same old shit''). When he started showing his work in galleries, he went with his birth name, Jean-Michel Basquiat (his family name is pronounced bas-kyah)." popup_text3="&popup_text3= $\"Image$
SAMO graffiti, New York, no date. Photograph |copy Paul Laster" popup_text4="&popup_text4=Basquiat appeared in the film Downtown 81 (New York Beat), 1980-81, directed by Edo Bertoglio." popup_text5="&popup_text5=ADDTITLE2:
At the age of seven, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing ball in the street and was hospitalized for weeks. Early in his career as an artist, he painted many car crashes. Reflecting his interest in street life, they suggest both the danger and the allure of the streets." popup_text6="&popup_text6=ADDTITLE3:
Basquiat did not consider his graffiti to be art, yet he also said that he used words like brushstrokes. One friend called the writing in Basquiat's work ''some visual type of poetry.''

Basquiat's style of writing was different from other graffiti writers of the time. He used a straightforward kind of printed line, easily read by a passerby, yet elegant in its unique way of marking the vertical and horizontal lines. For example, in drawing the capital letter E, he liked to leave out the vertical stroke and use only the three horizontal lines, making something striking and unusual out of an ordinary letter." popup_text7="&popup_text7=Basquiat's art has inspired poets such as Kevin Young. Here is Young's poem ''Cadillac Moon {1981}.'' Add your own poem in the What Do You Think? section, and read poems by other visitors to this site." popup_text8="&popup_text8=Listen to Young read his poem." popup_text9="&popup_text9=Cadillac Moon {1981}" popup_text10="&popup_text10=Crashing
again--Basquiat
sends fenders

| letters headlong
into each other
the future. Fusion

AAAAAAAAAAA.

Big Bang. The Big
Apple, Atom's
behind him--

no sirens
In sight. His career
of careening

since--at six--
playing stickball
a car stole

his spleen. Blind
sided. Move
along folks--nothing

to see here. Driven,
does two Caddys
colliding, biting

the dust he's begun
to snort. Hit
| run Red

Cross--the pill-pale
ambulance, inside
out, he hitched

to the hospital.
Joy ride. Hot
wired. O the rush

before the wreck--

each Cadillac
a Titanic,
an iceberg that's met

its match--cabin
flooded
like an engine,

drawing even
dark Shine
from below deck.

FLATS FIX. Chop

shop. Body work
while-u-wait. In situ
the spleen

Or lien, anterior view--
removed. Given
Gray's Anatomy

by his mother for recovery--

151. Reflexion of spleen
turned forwards
| to the right, like

pages of a book--
Basquiat pulled
into orbit

with tide, the moon
gold as a tooth
a hubcap gleaming,

gleaned--Shine
swimming for land,
somewhere solid

to spin his own obit.

--Kevin Young" popup_text11="&popup_text11=ADDTITLE4:
One art critic discussed the words in the painting this way:

''As anyone who has spent time in the Riverhead Penitentiary can tell you, the handsomest, strongest, most ambitious, intelligent, and tallest black and Latino men have been systematically deactivated and discredited by hefty prison terms. The idea is to get you while you're young. Jimmy (the best) will never be allowed to forget his incarceration (suckerpunch) as a juvenile offender (childhood files), his life destroyed by the self-referential prison system. This is the black man's first taste of white justice.''

--Rene Ricard" image_num="&image_num=1" image_title1="&image_title1=Jimmy Best... " image_caption1="&image_caption1=1981. Spray paint and oil paintstick on metal panel. Collection Tsong-Zung Chang

Although Jimmy Best... is painted on a piece of metal, it is similar to some of the graffiti that Basquiat wrote on city walls. Throughout his career, Basquiat often painted on everyday objects that were near at hand, such as old doors and windows, pieces of picket fences, and even football helmets. " image_url1="&image_url1=jimmybest.jpg" image_width1="&image_width1=696" image_height1="&image_height1=720" what_think="&what_think=What do you think?" popup_info="&popup_info=Pop-up text" popup_on="&popup_on=ON" popup_off="&popup_off=OFF" more_paintings="&more_paintings=More Paintings in
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