This is TAKI 183's only work up on the website (I enlarged a lot in hopes of reading some of the smaller text). Most artists linked only two or three.
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| A modern work by TAKI 183 (made in 2010), selling for $350. Highly ironic that the piece is "signed on reverse," as if that it is the signature that really counts for something. |
Whereas TAKI 183's here looks like it is tagging-focused, SEEN seems as if he is trying to have his work appear as a close-up of a more traditionally-artistic, complicated, bright, complex signature that he might have once painted on a train (also for $350):
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Both SEEN and TAKI 183 do sort of defy standards by listing the colors of the work as his title, for ex., "red and black." And TAKI 183 titles his "Taki183"...a self-portrait?
Also interesting is that SEEN opened a tattoo parlor (Tattoo Seen) that became one of the most successful in NY, and that he now has an exhibit on display in Paris.
Haha but look what I found?
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| BLADE specifically lists in his "materials" for this that he made it on an "NYC Subway Map" :) Can you see the lines behind the signature? |
It also looks like many of these guys ended up at the same high school: High School of Art & Design. And yet it was the ones who majored in art and conformed a little more to the "norms" or art are the ones whose works are being sold for higher prices. This one is selling for $5000, by an artist who had a solo show at an art gallery in the Bronx by 1982.
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| Crafted in 2010 by DAZE, this is on canvas, with perhaps a more standard title: "Nightshade." Not to say that DAZE is trying at all to fit any expectations or not fit them but for some reason his works just strike me as a bit more mainstream. (Wait...which are graffiti artists trying to do now? Do they have to by definition redefine expectations to continue being "graffiti" artists? But how is the same genre if they change styles too much?!!) P.S. I feel like Howie with such a long caption. |
Also, STAYHIGH 149's collection is seriously cool:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.graffitiartnewyork.com/stayhigh.shtml
This is really cool Chelsea! Do you remember if these were some of the artists who were shown to agree to do their work on canvas? I do remember some artists, particularly Skeme, who objected to turning their work 'mainstream'. It's really interesting to see these artists on a different medium and might answer some of the questions we talked about in class today about whether the illegality of graffiti is part of what makes it art(if it is art). From these works, it's undebatable that these artists have great talent, but from my impressions from the film, it seems that they may be considered 'sell-outs' for converting their natural art into something more mainstream. Interestingly, two of these artists pretty much stick to their graffiti style on these works, but DAZE takes a completely different path, branching out from the graffiti-style. Does this make it more like art and less selling out? I don't know, but either way, nice find!
ReplyDeleteI don't remember which artists were so against canvas...it would be interesting. But, yes, it sort of seems to me that departing from the original graffiti style while painting on canvas and using some of the original "tropes" so that it can still be called "graffiti art" has probably been detrimental to train-painting reputations. This way, canvas-art is different enough from train-art that they can both be in the same category while still being separate enough to allow for people who work in the studio to call the others' work vandalism...after enough time...
DeleteAnd given that in terms of its content, rap music is probably the most unabashedly materialistic genre there has ever been, this whole question of "selling out" gets really complicated. There's always been an internal debate about what constitutes "real hip-hop"--rappers who claim they'd be doing what they're doing with or without a record contract, and those who clearly seem to shape their entire style around appealing to popular tastes. It's always been both an "underground" or "organic" art form AND one deeply concerned with popular appeal. (Rappers aren't brooding poets pouring forth their private thoughts into a journal--they're trying to rock the crowd!) So the trajectory of graffiti is interesting to think of in this context: why NOT use an "apprenticeship" as a street artist in order to open up other opportunities? How much graphic design (the quintessential "sellout" art, in so far as it's used to sell things, most of the time) has been influenced by graffiti anyway? And yet, it's hard not to maintain respect for the artist who insists on anonymity and working under the radar, and the portrait of young kids in _Style Wars_ doing their art for its own sake remains really inspiring and even heroic to me.
ReplyDeleteYes. I think some of the issue might be that these kids want to keep doing what they love to do. But now that they have to support themselves financially, so some of them "sell out" immediately, while others use their talents in another area (like tattooing) that is related but won't deface the original art of graffiti. But then once graffiti becomes a profitable pastime, then people will become graffiti artists for the profit itself. In my weird mind-connections this reminds me of what Plato says in terms of 3 types of "goods." Some things are good in and of themselves (graffiti originally), while others are good for only their effects, and others are good for both at the same time. The original graffiti artists probably only respect those who make money from the graffiti if they are also doing graffiti as graffiti in and of itself. The same would apply to rappers.
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