Posts from the “Graffiti” Category

Cey Adams: Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap

Posted on August 20, 2021

*Photograph by Jamel Shabazz. Four young men posing. This image was made on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the famous Delancey Street & Orchard Street in 1980, a major shopping hub.*

“Like a kid that’s always dreaming about going to the NBA and then you get the call, I was dreaming of this project even before I knew I was going to work on it,” says artist Cey Adams, the founding creative director of Def Jam. Adams art directed the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, which is released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings today (20 August 2021).

Tracing hip hop’s evolution from 1979 to 2013, the anthology brings together nine CDs with 129 tracks and a 300-page illustrated book published to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Featuring photographs by Janette Beckman, Charlie Ahearn, Anthony Barboza, Adrian Boot, Jamel Shabazz, and Glen E. Friedman, it offers a panoramic history of a culture born on the streets of the Bronx, that has since become a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon.

The anthology’s creators eschew the notion of a canon and instead envision the project as a foundation upon which to build. “I was on a call with LL Cool J and Chuck D, and we talked about not only making this book, but our journey as a people,” says Adams, who got his start as a graffiti writer in the 1970s.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*MC Sha-Rock, The Valley, NYC, June 1980, photo by Charlie Ahearn*

*Female Rappers, Class of ’88, 1988, photo by Janette Beckman*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Huck, Music, Photography

Janette Beckman: The MashUp 2: Punk Photographs Remixed

Posted on December 14, 2020

Tim Kerr – Don’t let your heroes get your kicks for you © Janette Beckman

Many people associate graffiti with hip hop because of Charlie Ahearn’s 1982 film,Wild Style, which brought the underground art to the global stage for the very first time. Fab 5 Freddy, who starred in the film, understood the importance of introducing a codified culture to the world. In a series of vibrant tableaux, Wild Style presents what is now referred to as the “four elements of hip hop”: DJs (music), MCs (literature), B-boy (dance), and graffiti writers (visual art).

But true graffiti heads know the art predates the advent of hip-hop by half a decade, developing in tandem with but often times separate from rap music, Early graffiti writers were huge fans of rock and funk music. Some fell in love with the emerging punk scene of the mid-70s, as it encapsulated the same raw, anti-establishment ethos that graffiti required of its practitioners.

By the late 1970s, graffiti transformed the New York City landscape as writers painted masterpieces across the side of an entire subway car, simultaneously filing the insides with marker tags, turning every bare surface into a page from an autograph book. Meanwhile across the pond, British photographer Janette Beckman was getting her start at the Kingsway Princeton School for Further Education, teaching photography to a group of teen just a few years younger than she was. The year was 1976 and a student named John Lydon had just left the school and joined the Sex Pistols. Change was in the air.

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Graffiti, Music, Photography

Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures

Posted on October 14, 2020

*Dondi’s Room Brooklyn, NYC 1979 © Martha Cooper*

Under the cover of night, Martha Cooper crept into train yards to document some of New York’s most legendary graffiti writers as they brandished spray cans, unfurling masterpieces on the outside of subway trains in 1981 and ‘82. The petite photographer slipped through a hole cute into the chain link fence, agilely maneuvering her way between the massive steel cars, quick to duck under one if a train worker came by, taking tremendous care not to touch the third rail, through which 600 volts of live electricity steadily coursed.

Cooper carefully took aim as writers like DONDI, DEZ, DAZE SKEME, MIN, SHY, and LADY PINK worked feverishly through the night, painting their names on the exterior of a single subway car, a “canvas” that was 50 feet long by 12 feet high. “It was so dark they couldn’t even see what color the paints were,” Cooper says. “They were lighting matches — where the whole can could explode — to see the color of the paint.”

To call graffiti “death defying” would not be an overstatement, for many writers have died or been badly injured in their quest to “get up.” Often teenagers, writers were willing to risk it all for what they loved. Though Cooper was nearing 40, she was no less daring. She just quit her job as the first woman staff photographer at the New York Post in 1980 so that she could have more time to document graffiti.

“I was ambitious and the Post wasn’t enough. I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer,” says Cooper, who was also the first woman photographer to intern for the fabled photo magazine in 1968. Cooper envisioned her portrait of New York’s artistic underground would catapult her to the top of the documentary photography scene but things didn’t work out quite like she planned.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Skeme, Bronx, NYC, 1982 © Martha Cooper*

Categories: 1980s, Art, Blind, Graffiti, Photography

Martha: A Picture Story

Posted on October 15, 2019

Selina Miles’ new documentary film – Martha: A Picture Story

When Martha Cooper quit her job as a New York Post staff photographer to photograph graffiti full time, she did what all true believers must do: she sacrificed financial stability, status, and recognition from the establishment. All to pursue a passion rooted in the love and understanding for that which is universal and transcendent. When her first book, Subway Art (Henry Holt, 1984), co-authored with Henry Chalfant tanked upon release, Cooper was disappointed to discover her gamble did not pay off.

“I was shooting up until Subway Art got published, and I imagined it was going to be — maybe not a bestseller, but I did think there would be more of a reaction, but there was virtually no reaction,” Cooper says. “The trains kind of died off right then. They had cracked down right at that moment. Maybe it had to do with the book? I didn’t think so then.”

Unbeknownst to Cooper, the book took on a life of its own as it found its way into the hands of graffiti writers in every corner of the globe. It had become the “Graffiti Bible,” inspiring generations of artists to pick up a can of spray paint and leave their mark on society. Over the years, countless artists have studied the book with reverence, Cooper’s photographs providing not only a template of style but also a wealth of knowledge about the underground culture that birthed it.

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

Martha Cooper’s first book: Subway Art, with Henty Chalfant (Henry Holt, 1984)

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Graffiti, Photography

Roger Gastman: Beyond the Streets

Posted on June 20, 2019

Lil’ Crazy Legs during shoot for Wild Style. Riverside Park NY, 1983. Photo Martha Cooper

Graffiti first emerged on the streets of New York and Philadelphia half a century ago as marker tags by young teens with a desire to make their mark. A new art form emerged, and from it styles bloomed, transforming the age-old desire to mark our territory in the most literal way.

Graffiti hit like a bomb, leaving cities covered with the most electric kind of public art: one done for love, not money, at the risk of arrest, fines, and imprisonment. It spread from city to city like a virus through movies like Wild Style and Style Wars, books like Subway Art, and art exhibitions dating back to 1973. It inspired generations of artists from all around the globe to create, innovate, and leave their mark on society in a manner that was nothing short of in your face.

Although New York has largely been scrubbed clean of the art form it unleashed upon the world, “it is still considered the number one graffiti tourism destination,” says Roger Gastman, curator of Beyond the Streets. The exhibition features hundreds of large scale works by over 150 contemporary artists, including Charlie Ahearn, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, the Guerilla Girls, Eric HAZE, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, and Dash Snow.

Read he Full Story at Huck Online

Style Wars car by NOC 167 with door open, man reading newspaper. 96th Street Station, New York, NY, 1981. Photo Martha Cooper

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Huck, Photography

Janette Beckman & Cey Adams: The Mash-Up

Posted on November 27, 2018

Top: Janette Beckman | LADY PINK. Queen Latifah, New York City, 1990/2016

In the years leading up to the birth of hip hop, graffiti was sweeping the streets of New York and Philadelphia, reinventing itself on the cusp of a new millennium. No longer was it mere inscriptions from anonymous hands, but an emerging world filled with charismatic characters who took style to a level never before seen.

As tags hit the street and masterpieces appeared on the trains, graffiti’s vibrant style, innovative aesthetics, and transgressive nature made it the natural visual expression of a new DIY culture coming into its own. In the 45 years since Kool Herc began spinning breaks, graffiti and hip hop have linked up to collaborate in countless ways; perhaps most famously in the culture first feature film, Wild Style. The film starred some of the scene’s most influential writers at the time, including Lee Quinoñes, LADY PINK, ZEPHYR, and CRASH – each of whom were recently invited by artist and graphic designer Cey Adams to bring their talents to The Mash Up: Hip-Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists (Hat and Beard Press).

The Mash-Up is the brainchild of Adams, the former Creative Director of Def Jam, and British photographer J anette Beckman, whose portraits of hip hop’s greatest stars have graced countless album covers, magazines, and newspapers since she first encountered the artists in 1982. Here, some of the finest to ever wield spray can and marker remake Beckman’s classic images of everyone from Run DMC, Slick Rick, and Salt-N-Pepa to Grandmaster Flash, Queen Latifah, and Big Daddy Kane.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Janette Beckman | Claw Money. Salt-N-Pepa, New York City, 1987/2014

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Graffiti, Huck, Music, Photography

The 35 Anniversary Wild Style Reunion Concert

Posted on August 8, 2018

Kase 2, Busy Bee, Fab 5 Freddy, and friends at the cheeba spot, 1980. Photo © Charlie Ahearn.

Back in 1978, artist Charlie Ahearn saw a couple of vibrant murals in the handball courts of the Smith Projects in New York’s Lower East Side. The word “LEE” appeared across them in big bold letters. Ahearn was intrigued, and quickly realised it was the work of Lee Quinones, one of graffiti’s greatest writers.

A year later, Ahearn met Lee and Fab 5 Freddy during the historic Times Square Show. The trio immediately started collaborating. At the time, the words “wild style” were on everybody’s lips – it was the name for the colorful, hyper-stylised letterforms dominating graffiti that most people could not read.

Simultaneously, hip hop music was sizzling in the clubs and parks, as the first generation of DJs spun breakbeats while MCs tore up the mic and b-boys rocked the floor. As all of this was happening on his doorstep in New York, Ahearn decided to turn it into Wild Style – the first ever hip hop feature film.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Animation drawing by Zephyr, 1982. Courtesy of Charlie Ahearn.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Graffiti, Huck, Manhattan, Music

Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder

Posted on May 2, 2018

RAMMΣLLZΣΣ. Photography Keetja Allard

Hailing from the outer limits of New York City and maybe even the earth itself, Rammellzee (1960-2010) arrived on the downtown scene aged 19, fully realised, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, clad in armour, ready to take on all comers.

A singular figure in the early years of graffiti and hip hop who stood apart in a world filled with charismatic talents and revolutionary pioneers, Rammellzee introduced his philosophies of Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism in his artwork and performances. He donned characters and costumes as extensions of himself, comfortably shrouding himself in mysticism, mythology, and legends.

Did he go to jail in the 70s for robbing a bank? The world may never know – but now a new exhibition titled RAMMΣLLZΣΣ: Racing for Thunder tells the story of the elusive artist through those who knew him best. Organised by Red Bull Arts New York Chief Curator Max Wolf and cultural critic Carlo McCormick, the artist’s largest survey to date presents an inclusive selection of work from the icon throughout his three-decade career along with oral histories told by those who knew him best. Here, friends and colleagues share memories of Rammellzee, the man behind the mask.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

RAMMΣLLZΣΣ. Photography Brian Williams

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting

Charlie Ahearn: The Wild Style 35th Anniversary

Posted on March 16, 2018

Wild Style mural, 1981. © Charlie Ahearn.

In 1983, Wild Style debuted in Times Square and Tokyo, introducing the world to what would soon be called hip hop like the rush of an oncoming subway. Breakdancing, graffiti, and rap—this was the youth culture of the Bronx captured in a semi-scripted feature by a Manhattan filmmaker named Charlie Ahearn.

Wild Style introduced Fab Five Freddy, the Cold Crush Brothers, and graffiti legends like Lee Quinones. It went on to become a sacred text for graffiti writers and aspiring DJs, inspiring art and music from Banksy and the Beastie Boys to Nas and Missy Elliott. “As soon as I began to work with Fred on the film,” Ahearn says, “I felt certain that it was going to go out around the world to represent this new culture.”

On the film’s 35th Anniversary, an occasion marked by a screening at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., we talked to the director about the movie that put hip hop on the map.

Read the Full Story at Ceros Originals

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Graffiti, Music

City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection

Posted on October 27, 2017

The Death of Graffiti by LADY PINK, 1982, acrylic on masonite, 19×22.” Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

DUMP KOCH painted by Spin, photograph by Martha Cooper, 1982.

It began in the stacks. Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, came across a collection of black books Martin Wong had donated to the Museum in 1994, just five years before he would die from AIDS in San Francisco. The black books were the site of sketches and drawings, works on paper that were passed from head to head, giving writers a look at what their contemporaries were doing with marker in hand and giving them a space to contribute to the conversation.

In total, Martin Wong (1946-1999) donated 55 black books and more than 300 mixed media paintings on canvas, cardboard, paper, and plywood. The work Wong collected includes early permutations of designs that would later appear on trains and buildings throughout New York City. And though those paintings are long gone, their legacy lives on.

Opening February 4 at the Museum of the City of New York, City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection presents 105 works by legendary writers DAZE. DONDI, FUTURA 200, Keith Haring, LADY PINK, LEE, and SHARP among others, alongside historical photographs by Charlie Ahearn, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Jon Naar, and Jack Stewart. Paired together, the paintings, drawings, and photographs take us back to a time and a place that, though not far away at all, no longer exists in our daily lives.

It is the photographs that create the context, a context that may be difficult to imagine for those who did not live it. Trains were bombed with spray paint and marker both inside and out, as masterpieces ran the entire length of whole cars and tags decorating the interiors. This was the era of an artistic impulse made manifest as by any means necessary, of going down to the yards after dark or walking through live and dead tunnels to paint. This period in New York City history marks the creation of a style and a culture that has swept the world with anti-authoritarian delight. It was here in these black books and paintings that a new world was born, and it is here in these photographs that this world remains forever more.

Corcoran observes, “We decided to show the Martin Wong Collection because we thought it had real cultural significance to New York’s story over the last thirty, forty years. Graffiti was such an omnipresent part of life in New York. It was loved and hated, there was no in between. Whatever you thought of it, theirs is not doubt it had an affect on the culture in general. Style writing as it is known today was born in New York and became a worldwide phenomenon.”

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of the same name, published by Skira Rizzoli with the Museum of the City of New York, featuring essays by Charle Ahearn, Carlo McCormick, Sacha Jenkins, Lee Quiñones, Chris “Daze” Ellis, Aaron “Sharp” Goodstone, and Sean Corcoran. The essays create a context for Wong’s obsession for the art, an obsession that adds intimacy and understanding to his need to collect, to document, to preserve. Twenty years ago, Wong knew, intuitively, that neither he nor the graffiti of the era would be with us today. And it is in this way that “City as Canvas” is more than an exhibition of art, but it stands as a monument to an era that has come and has gone. And era that is preserved forevermore in the photographs that show what had come of these preparations for masterpieces that once dotted the subway lines and crowned Kings.

For those who once witnessed the world that lives in these photographs, City as Canvas is like a teleportation device into the past. The raw, live energy of the letterform set against a backdrop of freedom at an cost beings us back to that old school D.I.Y. vibe of the 1970s and 80s New York. And for those who missed it, the Museum exists, as a place of honor and veneration to the legacy we as New Yorkers carry forth.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 20, 2014

Howard the Duck Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Lion’s Den Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Martin Wong, photograph by Peter Bellamy, 1985.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Photography

Remembering Jean-Michel Basquiat

Posted on September 21, 2017

Photo:Jean-Michel Basquiat on set of Downtown 81, written by Glenn O’Brien, Directed by Edo Bertoglio, Produced by Maripol Photo By Edo Bertoglio© New York Beat Films LLC, by permission of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat all rights reserved

Jean-Michel Basquiat joined the 27 Club on August 12, 1988. He died young, at the height of his success, breaking through boundaries that had marginalised countless African-American artists from establishing their rightful place in museums, galleries, and history books. With the $110.5 million sale of his painting at auction earlier this year, Basquiat once again was established at the pinnacle of American art, with his work setting records and putting him in the company of Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon.

But who was the man behind the work, the Brooklyn native of Puerto Rican and Haitian lineage whose singular style set him apart and has influenced generations of artists worldwide since his death? As the Barbican opens Boom for Real – the first large-scale exhibition in the UK about the American artist – we speak with those who knew and worked with him over a period of ten years, to paint a portrait of the artist as a young man.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. A frame from the ART/new york video “Young Expressionists.”Credit Paul Tschinkel.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Brooklyn, Dazed, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Manhattan, Painting, Photography