Writing’s on the Wall (Art Is, Too, for Now)

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

CURATOR Jonathan Cohen is the primary guardian of 5Pointz Arts Center. More Photos »

By ROBIN FINN

Published: August 27, 2011

THREE heavyset guys armed with aerosol canisters have their boombox tuned to a ribald talk-radio show as they transform a grungy section of wall in Long Island City, Queens, from a peeling mess to a psychedelic swirl of letters spelling out their names. The opposite of furtive, these tattooed artisans laugh as they brandish spraypaint cans for an audience of curious passers-by. Tagging may be illegal in New York, but not on this extraordinarily colorful industrial block beneath the shriek of the No. 7 subway line.

History Of Graffiti Part 1 by Eric aka Deal CIA & Spar One TFP of At149st.com

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Spraycan Art

Crackdown On Train Graffiti Still A Priority For NYPD

NYC Transit’s Eagle Team focuses on railyards, allowing the NYPD to focus on stretches of elevated and underground track where trains are stored during off-peak hours. The successful effort has cut graffiti-removal costs. The tab was nearly $340,000 in 2007. The cost was nearly $140,000 last year.

Ed Koch and Graffiti

The Usual Suspects 2: Vintage Graffiti Show Opens

Urban Folk Art Gallery puts up a significant exhibition of graffiti art.

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Add your photos & videosAdam Suerte likens “The Usual Suspects 2,” the upcoming graffiti group show at Smith Street'sUrban Folk Art Gallery, to “a vintage rock t-shirt."

“It’s very vintage-style NYC graffiti," he said.

“Graffiti came above ground in a lot of ways in the 80s,” explained Suerte, sitting in Brooklyn Tattoo, which sits adjacent to the gallery.

The exhibition features widely celebrated graffiti artists from that time – DANCE, REBEL, NEST, KEO, POET and SNATCH to name a few – many of whom began in Brooklyn, and whose work defined the style of 80s graffiti – an era which Suerte calls a “second renaissance.”

Decades before graffiti became widely accepted and art-world legitimized, it was, primarily, deemed vandalism. In the 80s, New York City began cracking down on this “underground” graffiti (when it had been all about the artist getting into subway tunnels), and consequently graffiti began rising to the streets - to city handball courts and to rooftops.