"Art is an evolutionary act. The shape of art and its role in society is constantly changing. At no point is art static. There are no rules.”
Initially , Graffiti paintings were considered illegal as they defaced the public buildings, this triggered to sharp criticism from the public. 😰
This rapid spread of graffiti in the public space, greatly favoured by the mobility of trains, encouraged City Hall to take, towards the late seventies, a series of measures meant to curb graffiti and to find a remedy for the deterioration of the urban landscape it was held responsible for (Lachman, 336).
On the other hand, in New York City, innumerable costly measures were implemented, to fight this forest fire. Edward Koch, being the mayor launched a vast media campaign against graffiti with the support of high-profile athletes and entertainers. Boxers Hector Camacho and Alex Ramos underlined the pointlessness of graffiti with the slogan “Take it from the champs. Graffiti is for chumps.”
More than a hundred million dollars were spent by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to clean up the city of graffiti.
"The media coverage started with the New York Times article had attracted the attention of other journalists on graffiti, of academics and of the contemporary art milieu. As early as 1972, Hugo Martinez, a sociologist at the University of New York who particularly appreciated the aesthetic character of the first bombings organized, with the United Graffiti Artists, a crew of graffiti writers, the very first canvas exhibition at the Razor Gallery.
This exhibition, chronicled by Richard Goldstein in the New York Magazine, paved the way for the legitimating of graffiti as an art form. Young graffiti writers were suddenly in the limelight and were invited by downtown gallery owners to show their pieces on canvas.
The Fashion Moda gallery and the Fun Gallery, located, respectively, on 3rd avenue in the Bronx and in East Village, and specialized in graffiti only, greatly contributed to the artistic blossoming of graffiti in the early 80s.
They also played a determining role in its exportation to Europe where contemporary art sellers were equally receptive to this mode of expression in the process of becoming a legitimate art form."
It drew the attention of art lovers, journalists and art lovers moreover netwroks like ABC started nd CBS started to broadcast documentaries and reports on graffiti.
"This media coverage and the sudden change in status it entailed in addressing the question of the artistic value of graffiti gave rise to a central question, which, on its own, legitimated this practice as an art form.
From the moment it had been socially established as such by several media, acknowledged as an aesthetic practice by a new guard of gallery owners and contemporary artists, exhibited and sold in institutional sites of diffusion, graffiti entered the milieu of “legitimate” art."
-From the Street to Art Galleries : How Graffiti Became a Legitimate Art Form
David Diallo
No comments:
Post a Comment