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Although modern graffiti was born in Philadelphia in the late 1960s when CORNBREAD and COOL EARL began bombing their names on streets and subways, New York City will always be graffiti’s home. Pioneers like TAKI 183 first made their miniature markings on New York’s subway cars in the early 1970s; by the mid-1970s, writers were covering the exteriors of entire trains with intricately lettered masterpieces (known as “pieces” or “top-to-bottoms”); and by the 1980s, FAB 5 FREDDY and others were exhibiting their murals in galleries in the U.S. and abroad.
This transformation from underground status to museum-worthy art is beautifully documented in Eric Felisbret's new book, Graffiti New York, which includes historical text and more than 1,000 images. Felisbret, himself a graffiti pioneer (his handle was DEAL CIA), began photographing writers’ work more than thirty years ago, inspired by the art form’s ephemeral nature — city officials often erased pieces within months or days.
As Felisbret points to in Graffiti, just as there were major turning points in graffiti substance and style (SUPER KOOL 223’s first top-to-bottom, STAY HIGH 149’s tag using an arrowed S and smoking joint H crossbar), there were seminal moments in the media’s coverage of graffiti during the early 1970s that helped redefine its status as an outsider act of vandalism. These included the New York Times becoming the first major paper to publish an article on graffiti, Norman Mailer and Jon Naar publishing Faith in Graffiti, New York magazine running a cover story on the movement, and Newsweek reporting on a group graffiti show at New York’s Razor Gallery.
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The two most influential works would come a decade letter: The 1983 documentary Style Wars and 1984 book Subway Art took graffiti to a worldwide audience and solidified its status as an art form. Since then, a long list of music videos, album covers, feature films, documentaries, glossy photo collections, and clothing lines have further established graffiti’s place in museums and galleries worldwide.
As to where the movement stands today, in a recent Gothamist interview, Felisbret cites the work of identical Brazilian twins Os Gemeosees as being “especially impressive,” and sees graffiti continuing to make its high-art mark in “countries across the world working with the stylistic foundation that New York provided.”
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