ARE YOU A TAGGER?

juin 27, 2015

Many of our museums or galleries are closed on Tuesday, others on Monday. I always seem to get mixed up between the two so finally made out a list of what was what. Much to my surprise, after all these years, I noted that there were more museums closed on Monday than on Tuesday.

Despite a fierce wind I decided to walk over to the Pinacothèque at the Madeleine. Graffiti art is not top of my priorities. Gianni had taught me a lot but this was the first time there was a retrospective of such work . A new world, a new school. Pressionism. I guess I’m like a large dose of the population. I usually find it disfigures walls more than beautify them. The other question in my mind was, once these artists were well known, they moved from the street to the galleries. Can it still be defined as Street Graffiti art?

The exhibition

« Pressionism, the Masterpieces of Graffiti on Canvas from Basquiat to Bando »,

There were nearly one hundred paintings, carried out between the 1970s and 1990s by the greatest masters of graffiti on canvas.These masterpieces highlight the hidden history of that movement, unfairly linked, so they say, to tagging and incorrectly identified by official Art history. I had read that on Internet. I still needed to be convinced.

There was no-one around. Good sign for me. Then an attendant looked at my Icom card, waved me through telling me at the same time « no photos are allowed, Madame » Apart from 2 other spectators, there was no-one around.

If the recent paintings of urban art are obvious to the large public who sees them in the galleries, very few people know that, since the 1970s, the graffiti artists created in studios a genuine production on canvas, far from the street and from Street Art, to which they are nowadays relegated. From the very start, graffiti artists, among whom were Coco and Phase 2, gathered around Hugo Martinez within the UGA (Union of Graffiti Artists) in order to exhibit their works in galleries. You’ve guessed, apart from Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat (both artists I quite like as you know), I knew no-one.

The I read that Andy Warhol approached and linked to his own story two artists taken from the world of graffiti : Keith Haring( 1958-1990)

http://discovmaggsie.blogspot.com/2013/06/be-prepared.html

and Jean-Michel Basquiat,(December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) covering the 1970s through the 1990s. In actual fact, neither of them became members of the group and soon after Basquiat died, the group split up.

Basquiat is not easy to enter into as so much of his work is scribbling and writing protesting about inequalities....

Madonna - Jean Michel Basquiat 1985

The theme of the Madonna was developpe by Basquiat as he wanted to become Le Vinci of art and became friends with Rammellzee whose roots were Italian.

Others of Basquiat, were untitled

Basquiat - 1981

So, I did take photos but my hesitation was such that they are not too good and rarely was I quick enough to take photos of the artist’s name

54 Daze, "Angry Youth" 1991

Quite like the movement in this....

Rammellzee "Peril", 1992

Rammellzee (who apparently was the « group leader ») first became known in graffiti circles in the late 1970s for hitting the A train and other lines around Queens with his signature spiky lettering. Naturally, I didn't know that.

A little about him....

« He appeared in one of the most important graffiti and hip-hop films, Charlie Ahearn’s “Wild Style.” In 1983 his on-again-off-again friend, the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, was involved in the production of “Beat Bop,” a 12-inch single by Rammellzee and K-Rob that became one of Rammellzee’s best-known performances and is widely considered a hip-hop touchstone; Basquiat also illustrated the record’s cover. The song plays over the closing credits in Henry Chalfant and Tony Silver’s graffiti documentary, “Style Wars.”

There was a long list of names - but all of them pseudo’s I would think.

There were « paintings » I like immensely and probably would not even have thought of them as graffiti if it had not been explained ….