On current

From its origins as an illegal street activity to its acceptance among art galleries and museums, graffiti has developed as an original visual language. As a popular art form, graffiti has been commodified by its close association with hip-hop music and skate culture, and as a global genre of images circulated through the Internet. Today, it exerts powerful influence in art and design. This exhibition explores the art form’s origins and its evolution in fashion and graphics, with early jackets and clothing painted by original graffiti artists Haze, Cey, Phade and Lady Pink; artist collaborations, such as that between Stephen Sprouse and Louis Vuitton, and Keith Haring and Vivienne Westwood; and high fashion interpretations of the style by designers Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf, Moschino, Marc Jacobs and Walter van Bierendonck, among others. Over 20 rare examples of this colorful and original movement on loan from artists, stylists and collectors will be on view together for the first time.

McDowell Road & Central Avenue
1625 N. Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85004

The museum is open on Tuesday, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This is incredible! Sponsored by local businesses.

NAUGATUCK — Borough officials and police officers soon will be working to promote graffiti.

Mayor Mike Bronko is teaming up with police officers and local youth to design a graffiti wall that would allow spray paint artists to show their skills without fear of being arrested.

The borough is looking to build an 8-foot-tall, 75-foot-long graffiti wall near the skateboard park at Linden Park in the Union City section. Bronko said the project could cost from $5,000 to $10,000, and local businesses have said they will donate to the project. The borough also would seek funding from the state Office of Policy and Management’s police and youth program to offset the cost.

From the Republican-American.

I just found this blog, RailCar Graffiti (http://www.railcargraffiti.com/). He takes pictures in North Platte, the largest railyard in the world. Here are a couple of samples.

He also had this cool freight video linked up:

It looks like someone took all of their Twist photos and self-published a book and put it on ebay.

COME AND SUPPORT KET’S CASE!
opening monday d.4 feb. 2008 in copenhagen from 15-21 oclock.
Visit:
PLAIN GALLERY
linnesgade 25 kld. v. n.port
tlf: +45 50405491
http://www.myspace.com/plainart
http://www.supportket.org

Thanks to whatyourwrite.com

Mascots & Mugs Event - Book Release Party from Carl Weston on Vimeo.

Carl Weston, famed Graffiti producer, posted this video on his blog not long ago. It’s from the Mascot’s and Mugs book release party and has a great little interview with Henry Chalfant. Carl also mentions that he’s working with Mass Appeal on a new video channel and this is the first video for that. Carl and Mass Appeal! We can’t wait to see what comes of it.

I didn’t live in the Bronx in the 70’s, but I’ve heard it was a little different back then. This documentary was about gangs up there in the late 70’s, like the Savage Skulls and Nomads. “Swastikas and Salsa” might have been another name for it.

Part 2 is here.

Thanks to Chris Capuozzo for the link.

Thanks to Supertouch for pointing out this incredible comment on the blog of Paper mag about the famed wall found in the downtown loft space.

The emperor has no Graffiti

or perhaps

‘Writers’ of the lost ark

Is anyone really interested in the ‘mystery’ behind this ugly and hilarious artifact? Because there’s no mystery at all. Everyone who scrawled on it is alive and well and willing to talk - but few of us are (or ever were) graffiti artists. The 80’s were an era of ‘fake it till you make it’, so we might give 1 or 2 poseurs a pass here, but the only legitimate exception on the ‘151 Wooster Street Mural’ is Lenny (futura 2000), who got up (note the clean background) well before any of us came over to Edit Deak’s and pretended to be ‘writers’ for an evening or two.

If a legend exists concerning this mess it is one that’s been actively hyped by a number of respectable people, no doubt with the best of intentions. Since hype is the dope of today, we might forgive a group halucination, at first. But I know that an email naming each artist and spilling the beans on Jean-Michel’s perfect absence was forwarded to Lisa Denisson at the Gugenheim well in time to head off the howlers that are now everywhere in print. What hapened to those beans? And what do we actually have here? Fragment’s of a lost Basquiat? Francesco Clemente’s only graffiti? The birth of Graffiti itself? Why not the lost Amber Room of Catherine the Great? Certainly the truth will devalue this treasure.

For one thing, Basquiat never touched it. Though he was partially present when it ‘happened’ over one or two smashed soirées, he wouldn’t have laid a finger on any wall in that period. By then he was making ‘art’ exclusively, and he drew furiously with colored pens on paper, on the floor, ignoring us all. Anything that looks like his letters (and nothing does) was written by Chris Parker, including Bug Out!, Wild Style!, Nesto! (after my pen-name ‘S.Neto’), Oh Fab!, and plenty more. In fact ‘Little Crispy’ created 60 percent of this relic at least. Nobody in their right mind will take credit for the huge and hideous FRED, not even Fab 5. The DJ Johnny Dynel sprayed a giant chicken pox version of his name weeks later, and he’s been unfairly blamed for the hideous table and lamp, the only ‘piece’ whose authorship is in doubt. Even the tiny RAM was not writen by the great RamelZee but by myself, ‘representing’ a master whose hand was sorely missed that night. Yes, Fred Braithwaite dropped a bomb and a plane, literally and figuratively, on the whole thing because that’s what he does, boost himself big time, and we loved him for it, then as now. The rest of us were just immitating our aquaintances and getting wrecked. The black spray attempt at true ‘wild style’ was an awful group ‘toy’, duly bombed over by Chris, who went on to counterfeit ‘Fabulous 5′ over Edit’s birthday hat. The pencil scrawling of hearts with bullet holes is again mine and I would never admit to it, but I feel I have to defend Fred from the vile accusation that it is his. Francesco Clemente never breathed on this plaster as was reported in New York Magazine. In short, little history is here beyond a record of Edit’s genius for attracting anyone who showed exuberance, and maybe the quality of the drugs we had that week (so, so, judging by the crappy art).

But will this storied ‘artifiction’ now stand in for actual grafitti history? Could this afterbirth in fact pass as a ’seminal oeuvre’ and show up in a museum? Not if we intervene. Why bother? Why spoil such a happy jam for everyone? Because it is lame to say this wall was the birthplace of anything, much less ‘all that remains of a great period’. Only an interested party would make such a claim, and only someone blinded by enthusiasm would endorse it. Certainly it will bring ridicule to any institution that shows it as such. The great ‘writers’ like SEEN, Dash, TAKI, Phase 2, Julio, Stay High, Zeph… had nothing to do with this and had in fact been writing for a decade by then, on trains, where grafitti happens, and not on art critic’s walls. They’ll have the artifacts worth showing. I realize that those ’sites’ are not framed by a loft development so who would spend six figures on their rescue? Perhaps a museum with a reputation for historical integrity and impecable provenance? It would be alot cheaper than buying the 151 Wooster Street Mural. Meanwhile the exact value of this masterpiece will rely, as ever, on the authentication of experts, experts whose pronouncements take wing when they are unencumbered by facts. On the rare occasion when we can balast these flights of fancy, we should. It is a salutory excrcise, beside being a pure goof, to see our respected historians revealed as occasional clowns. On the other hand it’s no joke to read Hal Meltzer baldly state that Basquiat’s tags ‘Wild Style!’ Dead or Alive’ and Bug Out!’ were done in his classic hot pink…etc “. Jean never wrote anything like those words, not anywhere, ever, and I don’t recall him using that color either. So who cares? And who benefits? Are the interested parties so hard to find? Once again. No mystery at all.

Seth Tillett