The Bridges of Graffiti: A Story in Street Art
A show at the Venice Biennale takes us on a journey through the story of street art – here we present our five graffiti highlights from World War II to now.
Art or vandalism? Violent expression or expressing yourself? Basquiat or Banksy? Even in the ever contentious world of art, the heated debate surrounding graffiti is more scalding than most. So as a new show, The Bridges of Graffiti, opens in Venice to celebrate both the history of the form and the newest, most exciting voices working within it, we trace back through more than 60 years of the spray can, remembering the pioneers and tags who have shaped its story.
WWII: Kilroy Was Here
Graffiti had a modest beginning. Looking back, beyond its associations with New York City subways and position as a central tenet to an emerging hip-hop culture, it first came to public attention in the 1940s in the form of Kilroy – a cartoon face with a large comical nose peering from behind a wall, alongside the text ‘Kilroy Was Here’.
Throughout the 40s the popularity of this icon increased, as Kilroy became associated with American soldiers during WWII, appearing at barracks and on military equipment. The origins of its titular character was the cause of much speculation – in December 1946, the New York Times ran an article on the emblem, trying to attribute it to the spraycan of a shipyard employee who was using ‘Kilroy Was Here’ as a means of proving to his employers that Mr Kilroy had performed his duties. No one really knows but the image of Kilroy was so prolific it became a transatlantic phenomenon, taking on the name of Mr Chad in the UK, but from the 1950s the appearance of this graphic icon lessened as more diverse forms graffiti started to appear.
1960s New York Beginnings
In New York, TAKI183 started appearing on subway cars from 1971. It was the abbreviation of the writer’s name – Demetraki – and his address, 183rd Street in Washington Heights. Taki was 17 at the time the article was published and had been working as a foot messenger, a job which gave him access to subway cars and streets all over New York City. The trend proliferated, and in 1974, Norman Mailer wrote an essay titled The Faith of Graffiti, published in book form alongside images by Jon Naar, in which he aligned the likes of CAY161 and TAKI183 with Giotto and Michelangelo, de Kooning and Rauschenberg – “What a quintessential marriage of cool and style to write your name in giant separate living letters, large as animals, lithe as snakes, mysterious as Arabic and Chinese curls of alphabet.”
1980s boom
The graffiti boom during the 1980s is mostly thought of as a countercultural phenomenon synonymous with the New York City subways and streets. Born in New York in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat began inscribing SAMO© on buildings in Lower Manhattan from as early as 1976. The tag, which Basquiat said emerged from a stoned conversation with his friend and collaborator Al Diaz talking about the marijuana they were smoking being “the same old shit”, caught on, and evolved into longer, more poetic sentences. But in 1979, after an altercation between Diaz and Basquiat, Basquiat started to write ‘SAMO IS DEAD’ signalling the end of the principal movement. By the 1980s his solo work had been exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe. Yet, regardless of its location, whether on the street or in the gallery, Basquiat’s art continued to critique social systems and power structures, with art critic Jeffrey Deitch describing Basquiat’s work as “disjointed street poetry.”