Some call it “The United Nations of Graffiti.” Its semi-official title, spelled out in giant letters on its main wall, is “The Institute of Higher Burnin,” though you’ll also find it described as “the world’s premiere ‘graffiti Mecca’” on its website. Now there are questions about how long it will last.
Known as the self-declared King of Style despite losing an arm and a leg in a childhood accident, early graffiti writer KASE 2 passed away last weekend, adding another famous name to the roster of graffiti artists’ deaths that go nearly unnoticed by the art world press.
A church in Yuma, Arizona, is getting in trouble with the local city government because of an innovative way to reach out to the local population, an art wall. [Yuma Sun]
Some Danes just beat up commercial propagandist street artist Shepard Fairey outside a nightclub calling him an “Obama illuminati” and telling him to “go back to America.”
BEWARE! If you just got laid off you may be at high risk for OGD: Obsessive Graffiti Disorder. According to a recent New York Times article graffiti is sprouting up like bad acne in cities all over the country and the recession is partly to blame. The article narrowly treats graffiti as a pathological pastime of a depressed nation, or a symptom of social turmoil at large. Yet after reading this biased report filled with mostly disgruntled quotes from city officials, I wonder what else the Times could have addressed in order to offer a bigger picture on graffiti and street art rather than the usual concerns it brings of urban apocalypse.
Almost completely left out of the Jeffrey Deitch-organized Art in The Streets at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art and minimally referenced in its exhibition catalogue and other recently published surveys of graffiti and street art, the historical importance of Fashion 时装 Moda МОДА has been lost to a generation of artists and graffiti-lovers. It’s time for that to change.
Forget the streets: If you want to find some of New York’s best graffiti art, you have to dig a little deeper. While much of the city’s graffiti has been washed away, some of the more provocative tags still exist miles beneath the sidewalks, in nooks and crannies invisible to the pedestrian eye. I discovered these spray-painted secrets on a recent trip to the Freedom Tunnel, a legend among street art aficionados and underground urban explorers alike.
The Brooklyn Museum has issued a press release stating that it will no longer be hosting LA MOCA’s Art in the Streets exhibition, which was scheduled to appear in Brooklyn next spring.
In classic Chairman Mao fashion, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had his face plastered everywhere in the country as pro-government propaganda. In cities overtaken by Libyan rebels, artists are turning those same images against Gaddafi in works of street art.
Despite a very public unveiling of his sculpture in NYC, Ai Weiwei remains missing. A commercial solo show of the artist’s work will go on display at Lisson Gallery in London while protesting graffiti artists were arrested in Hong Kong. Ai’s case still doesn’t look good, says Peter Foster.
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