When Jean-Michel Basquiat first became visible, several other artists and myself formed a sort of graffiti group called Avant. The five of us painted on the open pages of the New York Times by day and posted our paintings with wheat paste at night around lower Manhattan. With Avant I began to develop a graphic style that communicated well from across a street and often included words or poetry. These are a few examples of Avant posters saved the wheat paste fate by the chunk of lead that sailed through my chest.