Graffiti Paper Continued...
The Transit Authority’s actions- repeatedly repainting all of the trains and buffing them with chemical solvent- presented piecers such as LEE, SEEN, and JSon with a large problem, as their favored type of graffiti were slowly eradicated from the subways. Their responses are complicated, as they react to the bombing on subways in the same way as they do the buffing of the trains. However, it is discernable, especially within LEE’s “Epitaph,” that these writers did not view tagging as ‘art,’ whereas they saw their own actions as being within the realm of style.
The almost complete divorce of style and ‘getting up’ that occurred as a response to the city’s attack on graffiti exemplifies a rift that occurred within the graffiti community itself, as the difference between taggers and piecers became even more pronounced than it had previously been. CAP exemplifies this growing division, as he states:
I am not a graffiti artist. I’m a graffiti bomber. There are two styles of graffiti that are trying to, you know, coexist with each other. But it ain’t gonna work like that.
Taggers did not collaborate as much as piecers, and were more interested in getting as much area covered as possible than in getting to know other writers. Therefore, the community of writers ‘getting up’ on the subway was one of small groups. MIN- a writer who began in Brooklyn in the late 1970s- suggests that the focus of community within bombing shifted away from city-wide groups [1] to small ‘crews.’ [2]
Also, due to the actions taken by the police force, mainly during the second ‘war on graffiti,’ both of these communities were further broken down. The writers’ benches, [3] which were the main means of communication within the community in the early 1970s, were defunct after constant harassment of writers led them to discontinue their daily meetings. With a lack of pieces on the subway traveling to all parts of the city, communities of these types of writers became focused within boroughs, and ‘style masters’ [4] were thus more limited in scope.
Even as it seems that this breakdown of community among graffiti artists acted in line with the intentions of the city, as they meant to stop graffiti by eliminating the element of fame, the response of the graffiti community acts in line with the overall evolution of graffiti within the city, and thus also with Gonos, et al’s assertion that graffiti acts inversely to the popular sentiment. In terms of bombers, the breakdown of community allowed them to gain a greater geographic range, and also fostered a greater sense of competition between writers, which had not existed prior to the city’s ‘wars.’ [5] CAP’s throw-up, for example, could have been seen all over the city when he was active. His style of acting out graffiti fostered a huge amount of competition between himself and other bombers, as he continually ‘went over’ other writers. [6]
[1] Paul 107, 93.
[2] ‘Crews’ are groups of writers. Their bond, and their members, are generally quite fluid, and a writer can belong to more than one writing ‘crew.’
[3] Meeting places where artists gathered, within subway stations, in order to view and critique the work of others.
[4] A term used to denote a writer with city-wide renown for his skill and style in creating pieces. Notable ‘style masters’ are LEE and DONDI.
[5] “By the summer of 1980, competition had reached a fever pitch.” Charles Ahearn, quoted Ehrlich, et al.
[6] Information from CAP’s interview in “Style Wars.” See figure 8 for an example of his throw-up.
Piecing in Neighborhoods
The situation of pieces on walls, and the breakdown of the writers’ corners, led to a more inconspicuous form of communication for piecers; new media, mainly in the form of independent ‘zines’ and videos became prominent. [1] These new forms of communication once again allowed writers to gain city-wide prestige (and, with the further circulation of the media, even nationwide or worldwide fame), and allowed them to judge one another’s work and gain new ideas. Carl Weston, a filmmaker for Video Graf Productions, for example, exemplifies the new function of videos in the community, as he states that he is constantly bombarded with graffiti writers calling to be filmed- [2] the new media became the main means of gaining fame.
The circulation of new media in support of graffiti also led a major counterattack on the mass media’s interpretation of writing as vandalism; these media conveyed graffiti to those outside of the writers’ communities. The invisibility of ‘pieces’, as they moved out of the spaces being policed by the city, was transformed into a new level of visibility through these media. Further, the circulation of images in print and video media allowed for the viewer to see graffiti as an artistic form of expression rather than as petty crime, as they could be selective about the pieces included, and thus better determine the viewer’s experience of graffiti.
The move away from the subway train, and the subsequent loss of the momentum gained by placing one’s graffiti on a moving canvas, was seen by some artists in a negative way. MIN, for example, states:
The stuff that I see on the street now sickens me… Because to me, one thin that made graffiti so exciting was that it was a moving art form. That’s why you never saw many tags of mine in the streets…Because the thing that gave me excitement about graffiti was watching one of my whole cars like race through the station at like forty-five miles an hour, with streams of colors, and it would be like rolling thunder, you know-the noise, the color, the excitement of seeing it flash by, trying to focus in on it, and by the time you try to focus in, it’s gone. [3]
Many scholars writing on the subject also locate this movement to walls as a sort of defeat of graffiti-art overall. Austin, for example, called walls “a space of retreat for the style masters.” [4]
However, As Jeff Chang suggests, “The MTA’s attempts to whitewash the trains only further intensified the process of stylistic change.” [5] Even as pieces were still prevalent on subway trains, the stylistic evolution of graffiti was being inspired by every move the city made to eradicate graffiti. As Cooper insists, style first became an important factor in graffiti when the space on walls and trains became so sparse that writers had to somehow distinguish themselves from others; [6] the next push for style, arguably, came during the first “war on graffiti.” Each subsequent ‘war’ led to some form of change, and overall led to an evolving refinement of style and technique among piecers.
The main difference, in terms of style, between graffiti on walls and those on subways is their interaction with audience. Whereas subway graffiti determined the audience through the style of the work, graffiti on walls- as they were fixed within a certain area- already had a determined audience. This audience, arguably, was the graffiti community within the area, as the overall community was unlikely to travel into the areas where graffiti was primarily situated. [7] Thus, writers found more stylistic freedom in wall graffiti, and many experimented with abstracting their letter-styles. The backgrounds became more stylistically developed as well, as writers were able to focus on details within their works.
In terms of both the stylistic evolution and the movement of graffiti to a stationary space, it seems that the movement of graffiti to walls assisted in legitimizing graffiti-art as an artform. The lack of policing by the city in the ghetto neighborhoods in which graffiti were now placed allowed writers, as I mentioned, to achieve a new level of skill, putting much more work into their pieces than they were able to do on subway trains. [8] A good example of this is SEEN’s piece, acted out on a wall for the movie “Style Wars”; watching the writers working- during the day, sitting on ladders to reach higher on the wall- their ability to focus on the piece is made apparent. [9]
Further, the movement of these graffiti pieces into the ghetto neighborhoods of the city responded to the treatment of the inner-city as unwanted space. By placing their urban artworks in areas that were not included in the city’s cultural construction, writers strived to legitimize the surrounding environment by proving their graffiti (the voice of the ‘urban Other’) to be art (a valid form of expression within the city). A mural on a handball court, noted by Charles Ahearn, for example, was able to both lend credibility and aesthetic pleasure to the area in which it was painted, as well as give the residents themselves a sense of pride. [10]
As Austin stated, in relating pieces to their new space:
Many New Yorkers think that masterpieces are no longer being produced at all, since they are now located in unseen or “dangerous” areas of the city, where their appreciative audience and the countercultural media (such as it is) is unlikely to travel. [11]
The conclusion that these neighborhoods are dangerous and are simply not to be traveled was perhaps challenged, for some, by the new placement of graffiti-art done by artists who were also, in the mid to late-80s, being shown in art galleries. As LEE stated, “In a way, the crackdown couldn’t have come at a better time. Things had reached the peak of achievement artistically. The fine-arts world was embracing it.” [12]
In terms of my argument, however, the response of the art world to graffiti had more to do with the legitimization of the medium in response to the city’s assertions of power. Whereas LEE states that the crackdown came at the same time as the interest of art galleries, I would argue that the city’s actions against graffiti were, in fact, more or less the cause of the art world’s interest in graffiti. The art world’s interest in graffiti peaked as the city further pushed pieces off of trains, and as the technical skill of writers hit new highs through both new technology [13] and stylistic developments, such as new writing styles and new ways of manipulating the spray paint.
The inability to discern a linear evolution of style within graffiti is somewhat inhibiting in this study, as I am unable to truly exhibit the evolution of style within New York graffiti through formal analyses. Both the ethereal nature of the medium and the arbitrary nature of ‘style’ lead to the incapacity to truly compare subway pieces, prior to the city’s attacks on graffiti, with wall graffiti. In this case, I believe that framing this shift as a more general concept is more effective than attempting to prove it through individual examples.
[1] Austin, 249.
[2] Carl Weston, interviewed by Andrew Witten in “NYC’s Graffiti Crackdown, 1995: Injustice for All.”
[3] Paul 107, 102.
[4] Austin, 241.
[5] Jeff Chang, quoted by Ehrlich, et al.
[6] Cooper.
[7] Austin, 241.
[8] This is an elaboration on what Lachmann suggests, as he notes that walls “have the advantages of being large enough for elaborate murals yet situated in ghetto neighborhoods and therefore not guarded by the police or erased by a city government that is aroused only by those graffiti that pass before the eyes of its white and middle-class constituents.” P.244.
[9] Again, I could not find an image of SEEN’s piece, however, it is shown in detail in “Style Wars.”
[10] “The strongest memory I have is 1978, coming across all these handball courts north of the Brooklyn Bridge by Lee Quinones [a.k.a. LEE]. They were exploding with color. They had a lot of control. They had a great deal of comic sensibility. I would ask the kids, “Who made these?” And they would look at me incredulously, like, “LEE, you stupid ass! LEE is the most famous artist in the world!” Charles Ahearn, quoted by Ehrlich, et al.
[11] Austin, 241.
[12] LEE, quoted by Ehrlich, et al.
[13] This new technology mainly consisted of an ever-increasing variety of caps as well as improvements made in the quality of spray paint.
Conclusion
A concise description of the Phun Phactory in the Village Voice, which awarded it the title ‘Best Outdoor Graffiti Museum’ in 2001, informs would-be viewers that the building “is best seen from the elevated No. 7 train, if only for a fleeting second.” [1] Whereas it used to be that a writer would paint the outside of a train so that their message could be seen spontaneously by stationary viewers, graffiti have now become a stationary phenomenon, viewed briefly from the trains they once used to cover. Bastidas’ description of the Phun Phactory exemplifies the shift of graffiti from subway trains to walls perfectly; either way, however, the graffiti still retain their ethereal quality.
The disappearance of tags from the subway system in the 1990s has led many to proclaim that graffiti did, in fact, die. There is also a term for the graffiti since it went into, and came back out of, art galleries in the mid to late-80s, which is ‘post-graffiti.’ [2] Regardless of the meaning of this term, one thing is clear: graffiti has changed. No matter what actions are taken against graffiti, however, through resituating the argument of Gonos, et al, one can see that the city’s construction of itself plays a crucial role in determining the content of the graffiti which are painted on it.
The response of graffiti to the New York City’s attempts to suppress it as a form of communication is complicated, and the subsequent success or defeat of graffiti is arbitrary. By attempting to prove the ‘inverted’ response of graffiti to the societal pressures occurring around them (or in this case, directly on the graffiti itself), however, I cannot help but express a little bit of perceived success in the perseverance of graffiti within the city. As a form of mass communication that has existed since there has been a mass to communicate with, it seems that there truly is no stopping graffiti.
[1] Bastidas.
[2] ‘Post-graffiti’ is mentioned as a means that some writers use to distance themselves from the negative connotations conjured by ‘graffiti.’ Ganz, p.10.