NY graffiti underworld writes its future

NEW YORK: Artists usually crave light. Robert, 25, chose the dead of night. ‘It's safer that way,’ he said.

Working on a rough Brooklyn street, he had only 10 minutes to paint before he fled, mistaking an approaching car for the police.

Left behind him on a brick wall: two large, dainty seahorses.

‘I think it's actually rather beautiful,’ Robert said.

Despite efforts by New York's gentrifying mayor, Michael Bloomberg, graffiti has not only survived, but is reinventing itself in the city that created the modern urban phenomenon.

The 1970s, 1980s era of subway trains flooded in spray paint may be over. Yet tags, as signatures are known, and paintings still cover bridges, rail platforms and storefronts. Graffiti chic is even making forays into the swanky Manhattan art scene.

Bloomberg, who stakes his reputation on preventing the city from returning to its grimy past, has declared war on the vandals. Every day, a task force equipped with 27 power-hose trucks attempts to force back the tide of aerosol paint.

Last year they cleared 8,496 pieces of graffiti, up from 5,990 the year before, a City Hall official said, asking not to be named. This year, the teams are on track to clear 8,500 items.

The law requires property owners either to clean graffiti themselves, call the city to clean it, or declare they want the painting to remain. Now, new legislation is planned to shorten the time between graffiti appearing and the power hoses being deployed.
‘We are very aggressive,’ the official said.

Yet the city is fighting an uphill battle. Even determining the extent of the problem is difficult, since graffiti pops up overnight.

‘We just keep trying our best,’ the official said. ‘No matter what the economy we're not letting the city go back to the '70s.’

Eric Felisbret, a veteran graffiti artist and historian, said the practice is too vibrant to wash away.

‘Graffiti's been around since the start of man. Soon as we could scratch on something we did,’ he said.

Felisbret, author of a book called ‘graffiti NEW YORK’ due out this year, reckons there's as much graffiti as ever, only spread across the city, instead of being concentrated on trains as it was 20 years ago.

‘When they cleaned up the trains, they didn't eliminate graffiti writers, but dispersed them,’ he said.

And in a globalised society, New York has even become a magnet for ambitious taggers from cities as far away as Berlin and Sao Paolo.

‘Many make pilgrimages,’ Felisbret, 46, said. ‘New York is very valuable for a writer's resume.’

New York officials consider graffiti a menace that lowers house prices and deters business. At best, many residents would agree, graffiti is a mess.

But behind that swirling, aerosol calligraphy hides an entire subculture.

Graffiti has its own laws, cliques and heroes — enigmatic figures like the late Iz the Whiz in New York, long elusive JA, or Britain's globe-trotting, incognito Banksy.

There is a separate language. ‘Tags’ are scrawled signatures that take a couple of seconds to execute. ‘Throw-ups’ are more complex, using coloured bubble letters and needing two to three minutes.

Then there are ‘pieces,’ shorthand for masterpieces, which are full blown murals and require hours to complete.

Some writers are only interested in ‘bombing,’ which means putting up as many tags as possible. Others have an artistic bent. ‘They might have been oil painters or sculptors,’ Felisbret said.

The greatest respect is traditionally earned by those spraying trains, subway tunnels, high bridges or walls — anywhere involving physical danger.

But the motive is always the same. ‘People do it for recognition, to become famous,’ Felisbret said.

Penalties are often light. Graffiti is mostly classed as a misdemeanour, punishable by fines of maximum 1,000 dollars or a year in jail. Possibly both.

And even serious felony charges aren't always considered the end of the world: hardened taggers adore the notoriety.

Kinder, gentler graffiti

Meanwhile, the same economic forces transforming crime-ridden, artistic hothouses like Chelsea into millionaire's retreats are creeping into the world of graffiti.

When Dash Snow, a hell-raising artist, died from a drug overdose this July, his memorial took place not at some fetid squat, but at Deitch Projects, a cutting edge gallery in SoHo.

Snow's tag, a curly, multi-coloured ‘SACER,’ was painted by one of the late artist's friends over the entire front of the building. But that was just part of the show, not vandalism.

Don Pablo Pedro, a gangly artist with coloured finger nails and the sides of his head shaved, said the memorial demonstrated how borders are blurring.

‘Graffiti's getting capitalised,’ he said, recounting how he'd just done a big mural — with the building owner's authorisation — to promote his upcoming art exhibition.

Others who started on the streets have gone on to lucrative collaboration with clothes designers, video game makers, and even big corporate advertising campaigns.

Hardcore writers mistrust the commercialisation and the growing practice of seeking permission to paint.

‘You would have absolutely no respect,’ Felisbret said. ‘You would be considered a toy, even if you were very talented at your craft.’

But attitudes are shifting, he said, as writers gain interest in the sheer aesthetics and the chance to break out of poverty.

‘They say, 'hey, I'm an artist and I'll paint when I can — illegally if I have to, but legally if it's easy.’

Robert, an art student, is part of that new generation.

He spent hours using a scalpel to cut a detailed stencil of his seahorse, before heading out at 03:00 a.m.

Then on a sidewalk littered with empty cans, broken car window glass and a discarded condom, he began spraying his ‘piece’.

Constantly he gave nervous looks over his shoulder and he had not quite finished the second seahorse when he panicked at the sight of an approaching car.

Police were his main concern. He'd also been mugged two weeks earlier in the same neighbourhood.

Yet away from the danger, the inexperienced rebel lapped up graffiti's enduring romance.

‘It's really a staple of New York. People come from all over the world to do that stuff,’ he said. ‘I want to see if I can come up with something that measures up.’