![]() The ubiquity of Jean-Michel’s Samo and Haring’s baby Tags has the same effect as advertising so famous now is that baby button that Haring was mugged by four 13-year-olds for the buttons he was carrying (as well as for his Sony Walkman.) The Radiant Child on the button is Haring’s Tag. There are also fake Samos and Harings as well as a counter-Haring graffitist who goes around erasing him. There’s prestige in not being bombed over. This demonstrates respect for the artist as not just a graffitist but as an individual, the worth of whose Tag is recognized. Jean-Michel is proud of his large Samo Tag in a schoolyard, surrounded by other Tags on top of Tags, yet not marked over. This is a Keith Haring.īoth these artists are a success in the street where the most critical evaluation of a graffito takes place. This is no graffito, this is no train, this is a Jean-Michel Basquiat. Say what you will about group shows and collaborative enterprise: Das Kapital was written by one man. Therefore, the obvious was to raise oneself by the supreme effort of will from the block, from the subway, to the Mudd, to the relative safety and hygiene of the gallery. ( Crash is still bombing.) But trains get buffed (the damnatio memoriae of the Transit Authority), and with the need for identity comes the artist’s need for identification with the work, and to support oneself by the work is the absolute distinction between the amateur and the pro. Blade, Lady Pink, Pray, Sex, Taki, Cliff 159, Futura 2000, Dondi, Zephyr, Izzy, Haze, Daze, Fred, Kool, Stan 153, Samo, Crash. Graffiti refutes the idea of anonymous art where we know everything about a work except who made it: who made it is the whole Tag. In these autographs is the inherent pathos of the archaeological site, the cry down the vast endless track of time that “I am somebody,” on a wall in Pompeii, on a rock at Piraeus, in the subway graveyard at some future archaeological dig, we ask, “Who was Taki?” ![]() Any Tag by any teenager on any train on any line is fairly heartbreaking. There is an instant appeal in the way spray paint looks, ditto markers. ![]() It’s amazing that something so old can be made so new. The graffiti style, so much a part of this town, New York, is in our blood now. The most accessible and immediately contagious productions in these shows were those of the graffiti stylists. These are vast communal enterprises as amazing that they got off the ground as the space shuttle and even more, fly-by-night, that they landed on solid ground. Colab, Fashion Moda, etc., have created a definite populist ambience, and like all such organizations, from the dawn of modern, have dug a base to launch new work. 1, have made us accustomed to looking at art in a group, so much so that an exhibit of an individual’s work seems almost antisocial. The communal exhibitions of the last year and a half or so, from the Times Square Show, the Mudd Club shows, the Monumental Show, to the New York/New Wave Show at P.S. Perhaps it is the critic’s job to sort out from the melee of popular style the individuals who define the style, who perhaps inaugurated it (where is Taki) and to bring them to public attention. This is why the individuals ( Crazy Legs) must distinguish themselves.Īrtists have a responsibility to their work to raise it above the vernacular. Distinct to the ’70s, graffiti, in particular, was the institutionalization of the idiosyncratic that has led to the need for individuation within this anonymous vernacular. What we can finally see from the ’70s buried among the revivals and now surfacing (Tagging, Breaking, Rapping) was at least one academy without program. I know the names, but are the names important? Where is Taki? Perhaps because I have seen graffiti, then seen something else, thrown myself on the dance floor, then gone on to dance another way, I say that the reason for abandoning so much during the ’70s was that each fad became an institution. ![]() I REMEMBER THE FIRST Tags (where is Taki?), Breaking (where you spin on your head), Rapping (where I first heard it). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |