Graffiti Lives
Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground
by Gregory J. Snyder
NYU Press
Graffiti lives! proclaims author Gregory Snyder in this new, vaguely academic account of graffiti in the urban underground – particularly New York. But as today’s subway riders know all too well, what “lives” are not the handsome murals – or “pieces,” short for masterpieces – of yore (1970s through late 1990s) but rather ugly, illiterate scratchings on train windows and walls that are sheer vandalism. This is partly because in 1989 MTA officials began keeping painted trains out of service. The “subway could no longer be used as a medium of communication,” writes Snyder, in all seriousness.
Yes, the MTA decision meant no more “window downs,” the term from the early 1970s, when graffiti writers painted lavish designs beneath train windows. But it also meant no more repulsive vandalism on top of the window downs. For despite the weird romanticism of public intellectuals such as Norman Mailer and Richard Goldstein, who discussed the creative sensibilities of Taki and Superkool as if they were Leonardo and Michelangelo, graffitists did vandalize one another’s works. Even if a piece were indeed beautiful to begin with, it was unlikely to stay that way, as the train made its way through different neighborhoods.
Many of the loveliest pieces in this book have been vandalized, in fact. Snyder writes that “beef – disputes between writers that arise from intense competition – is a big part of the culture of graffiti and the issue that interests idealistic researchers the least. Beef results in crossing out other writersé names, going over pieces, lots of stories about violence and sometimes actual violence.”
Indeed, according to Snyder, the whole point of graffiti is fame and respect. Graffiti is different from other “quality-of-life” crimes (Snyder’s quotation marks) because it doesn’t “exist exclusively or even primarily in poor neighborhoods.” On the contrary, not only do graffiti writers shun poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods, they prefer neighborhoods frequented by their “intended demographic,” namely, attractive young people and affluent tourists. Thus the East Village, Lower East Side and SoHo are especially bombed while some impoverished neighborhoods stay relatively graffi ti-free. The downside of better neighborhoods: residents and police keep an eye on the street, which means that vandals get caught and landlords and property owners clean the buildings regularly, which means the works disappear.
It’s possible for a reader to be so annoyed by all of this that any sympathy for the actual art work will be in short supply. Nonetheless, some of the art is indeed splendid. There is, for example, ESPO, whose huge “Greetings from ESPOLAND Where the Quality of Life is Offensive,” covers part of a wall that can be seen from the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. Looking much like expensive advertising – even with a humorous touch of a phone number for a graffiti magazine, called “On the Go” – each letter contains an iconographic drawing of a quality-of-life offense, everything from selling marijuana to snatching purses.
But the spectacular pieces painted illegally on subway trains, railroad bridges, park buildings, in tunnels, etc. were doomed once New York decided to clean itself up. Now the best that artists can hope for is to paint on “legal walls,”whose owners grant permission. This eliminates the outlaw element but does permit the art to live. All in all, a not-bad ending to the tale.
Julia Vitullo-Martin is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.