For the past year or so, special twenty-fifth anniversary editions of documentary projects devoted to New York subway graffiti have been popping up, perhaps most notably Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art, the go-to book on transit graffiti, and the re-release of Style Wars, Chalfant and Tony Silver’s eye-opening film on the same subject. At the time, these studies made no claims of having captured an art form in the bud; the artists who were the focus of the book and film were young, but working in an environment with established heroes and monuments. In fact, the primary challenge to New York City graffiti artists in 1983-1984 seemed to be finding places for their expressions that had not already been taken, rather than inventing new things to say or ways to say them.
In the mid-1980s, folklore was hospitable to graffiti art and artists. As it neared its centennial, the American Folklore Society made room in its annual meeting program for a screening of Style Wars, and a steady stream of films, papers, and articles have followed in its wake. Folklore did not exactly embrace graffiti, given the legal and ethical issues that attended to its vandalistic aspects, but the discipline recognized in the art form characteristics in common with well-established traditional expressions, and made room for graffiti art and artists in the theater of urban folk culture.
But the twenty-fifth anniversary has turned out not to be wholly celebratory. On June 29 of this year, the New York Times ran William Grimes’s lengthy obituary for Michael Martin, age 50, a New York City subway graffiti artist whose public signature was “Iz the Wiz,” a phrase/name that had appeared on thousands of signs and subway cars during the late 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Martin and his handiwork had contributed to Subway Art and Style Wars, as well as many other studies and news treatments of New York City subway art. Mr. Martin’s exposure to the aerosol propellant in spray-paint cans was identified as a factor in the kidney disease that contributed to his death.
At a time when this varied notice is being given to subway graffiti and the people who produce it, Gregory J. Snyder’s Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground is most welcome. Snyder’s point of view on the phenomenon of graffiti is firmly rooted in anthropology and sociology, from the identification of the impetus to paint to the decoding and interpretation of the messages contained in specific examples of contemporary work. The author appears to have devoted himself to an on-the-ground study of New York City graffiti writers beginning in the mid-1990s, and reports his findings from a substantial number of interviews with graffiti artists and first-hand observation of the creation of work from quick, simple “tags” that document the writer’s presence to major works that cover entire subway cars and storefront grates.
As the title promises, Graffiti Lives does go beyond the tag. In text and color and black and white photographs, detailed information is provided on a number of artists and their work, most notably “ESPO,” a contemporary artist whose work has captured the attention of artists and curators above and beyond the subway system. Graffiti Lives documents the efforts of the current generation of artists to move their work from illegal to legal venues without sacrificing its reach and immediacy—a challenge that appears to have stymied artists for at least the twenty-five years since Chalfant.
What is missing from Snyder’s work is just that—a measurement of generational time that could identify how today’s artists adhere to or differ from those who have come before them. The efforts made by transit and law enforcement officials to limit - if not control - the presence of graffiti artists are well-documented here, but there appears to be little difference between what graffiti artists of the early twenty-first century have to say about their work and their world and the statements of artists like Michael Martin that appear in Style Wars and other documents from the mid-1980s.
Perhaps that is the nature of the phenomenon—a self-prompting one that literally and necessarily conceals its past beneath a fresh coat of paint—that makes much of Graffiti Lives so consistent with studies now more than twenty-five years old. But the absence of a historical consciousness limits the utility of Graffiti Lives as an account of an art form that reaches across several generations of artists and audiences. The art, amply illustrated here, continues to compel our attention. What we make of it must continue to change with new questions, new observations, and a heightened consciousness of consistency and change that is folklore’s and the social sciences’ contribution to the study of graffiti art.
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[Review length: 788 words • Review posted on September 22, 2009]