How Graffiti Acquired An Artistic Status

Trust me, I had to research like a MANIAC, just to get a slight idea about what this art form is all about (no kidding)!💤
On 30th September 2006, an exhibition was organized by the prestigious Brooklyn Museum that presented the canvasses of the renowned graffiti artists who had contributed to the blossoming of this expressive art form. 

Through the works of Michael Tracy (Tracy 168), Melvin Samuels Jr. (NOC 167), Sandra Fabara (Lady Pink), Chris Ellis (Daze), and John Matos (Crash), the exhibition examined the artistic legitimacy of a mode of expression frequently presented as mere defacement of public space.  

The City Of Paris similarly paid homage to these in TAG: Tag And Graffiti. The artistic redefinition provoked by this transplantation became more pronounced in the Early 80s, with major exhibitions organized in prominent art museums which presented selection of works by artists such as Jean Micheal, Lady Pink, Daze, Zephyr.👻

Earlier the artists used their Pen Names on New York trains and stations to get greater visibility and so that their pieces could travel across the towns.

"After 1973, the cars of the urban transit system became the favourite medium of a competition where youths from New York’s five boroughs had to write their names on as many trains as possible. This period, ranging from the late 60s to the early 70s, marks the beginnings of graffiti writing as an organized and structured practice. The pioneers who had inscribed their pen names on the city walls defined its legitimacy standards."

A Bomber designing a Graffiti on the railway station

In the beginning, graffiti writing was loosely linked to a hip hop movement considerably marked with the street gang culture.

According to Charlie Ahearn, who was one of the first to document graffiti and its closely related practices in the docudrama Wildstyle, there is not the slightest doubt that graffiti was one of the first components of the hip hop movement.

"In addition, the fact that graffiti started in New York, a city that holds a prominent position in the American art markett, rapidly put graffiti on the way to institutional sanctification. As one art critic underlines in the documentary Style Wars (Chaflant and Silver, 1984), no other aesthetic movement since pop art had created such a commotion in the New York avant-garde. Graffiti, with its raw aesthetics and its daring appeared at the right place at the right time for art sellers seeking new aesthetics forms and practices. 
This interest was an opportunity for the progressive professionalizing of artists, regularly invited to show their pieces or to paint murals on canvas or for public or private institutions. It certainly increased the life span of pieces, and put graffiti at the centre of a sterile debate on its artistic value."
- From the Street to Art Galleries : How Graffiti Became a Legitimate Art Form
David Diallo