It was a hot summer evening in 1991 on Staten Island and my friends and I were enjoying the freedom of our youth. I was 15 years old, and that is when I first encountered the rattle and hiss and the sticky-sweet smell of a spray-paint can being used against the wall of a building in my neighborhood. As a group of us sat on the ground playing cards beneath a street light, two others were spraying letters the size of me in one fluid motion. I paused to watch, and realized that I had seen graffiti on the subway cars and everywhere I turned growing up in the 1980s in New York City - but I had never stopped to think about how it got there. And, now, here it was, happening just 5 feet away from me. As I watched these colors come alive...these squiggles transform into a word - a name - I was unmindful to the fact that I was witnessing an illegal act. I was simply awed by the imagination & creativity of what was before me. Art or vandalism: You make the choice with the information that I will present to you tonight.
Graffiti, as we know it today, began in the late 1960s when a teenage named Julio, who lived on 204th Street (borough unknown), began writing his name all over the city. Buildings, subway station walls, and especially subway cars were all riddled with "Julio 204." A few years later, in 1971, graffiti was given a face when The New York Times published the article "Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals." No doubt that the notoriety that young Demitrios ("tag" or nickname Taki 183) had received throughout the city sparked other graffiti writers to seek the same fame. Thus began a period of what was known as an urban crisis in New York City.
During the 1970s, Mayor John Lindsay began the first anti-graffiti task force. Labeling graffiti writing as a "fad" and stating that unauthorized public writings were illegal, Mayor Lindsay sought to rid the city trains of the "tags" and slogans of the graffiti writers of the day. But the best that he could do under law was order the offenders to manually remove their work from the subway walls and cars. Then, in the fall of 1973, the MTA chose to repaint its entire fleet of subway cars, citing that this was part of the scheduled maintenance and was clever enough in its timing that this deterred graffiti writers from any new projects during the cold winter months. But it didn't last long. This was just a new canvas for the writers to work on.
As the fight continued throughout Mayor Ed Koch's administration in the 1980s, graffiti was being embraced with open arms as one of the elements of hip hop - forged from rap music, DJing, and breakdancing. Rap artists and hip hop celebrities could be seen sporting clothing with graffiti writing on it, while films such as "Wild Style", "Beat Street", "Style Wars", and "Turk 182" paid homage to the graffiti writers of the times, and even sneaker conglomerate Nike created a special shoe, called "Vandal", for the specific use of graffiti writers. As graffiti's popularity rose, so did the graffiti on subway cars, as you see in the graph I have here. According to City Journal.org, the number of subway cars that were covered in graffiti rose from 75% in the 1970s to 95% in the 1980s. Finally, through extensive efforts from the MTA, the last graffiti-covered subway car rolled off in May of 1989. Graffiti was gone from the subway cars but not from the city.
Yet, there I was, 2 years later in 1991, watching someone cover a wall with what would be considered graffiti, yet I felt that I was observing an artist at work. Was it an act of vandalism? Certainly. Was it an expression of art? Certainly. Just ask graffiti writer/artist Dems is he a vandal or an artist? Counter that with artist Mike Alvarez's statement: "Its an apples and oranges debate. You're defacing property that is not yours for the purpose of advertising your name and to show that you are better than the next writer - not because you are creating something to express yourself. If that was really the case, then it wouldn't be your name up there. I won't deny that they are artists, because it does take a certain amount of talent to create the things that graffiti writers create. But it is an act of vandalism and of saying 'f*ck the the world' when you do it in the middle of the night on something that someone else owns. What if I were to come into your bedroom and do it to you? Isn't that the same principle?"
This is a never-ending debate among artists and non-artists alike. Most influential on the topic is the media. Articles reflecting on graffiti arrests, such as The New York Times' April 2007 piece titled "Graffiti Figure Admired as Artist Now Faces Vandalism Charges", by Thomas J. Lueck, which offers an objective view on the unconventional way in which Alain Maridueña, also known as Alan Ket, was arrested for crimes such as trespass, criminal mischief, and making graffiti, to name a few. These are just a handful of the 14 charges that have him facing an unprecedented amount of years in prison and extremely large fines. A renowned artist who now works with the likes of Mark Ecko, a former graffiti writer turned fashion entrepreneur, Mr. Maridueña claims that he has retired from public graffiti and works as an artistic consultant to such companies as Ecko Unlimited (owned by Mark Ecko), Atari, MTV and Moet & Chandon. So whether or not Mr. Maridueña is a vandal or not, I do not know since it is yet to be determined in a court of law. What I do know is that he has a talent as an artist, just like many of the graffiti writers of my generation. I will let you judge for yourself by taking a look at a piece from Dems' black book...
*Special thanks to my boys Mikey & Dems for their help.*
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