Posted from The Citrus Report
Nice to see some classic NYC graffiti on the front page of the NY Times without some question of legal or vandalism. So what is exactly going on? Well, its not really vandalism or political as it was in the early 1980s, but then again, there is something interesting about honoring and re-emphasizing one of the major American art movements in one of the central cities of that particular movement in the latter quarter of the 2oth century. Regardless of its legality, graffiti is part of the American art canon, no lying there. So in NYC right now is the Subway Art History Project.
So what we read from the NY Times article is that “in New York the idea is to use the pieces to try to teach a two-part history lesson. The first is about the glories (as the collective sees it) of the early days of graffiti and the invention of a vernacular art form that has swept the world. The second lesson is about world history itself, in neighborhoods where education remains low on the list of priorities for many struggling teenagers.”
And Henry Chalfant, who with Martha Cooper created the seminal Subway Art, added, “I think it’s a wonderful reverse of what usually happens, which is that these people whose shoulders everyone has stood on don’t get any credit.”
