The History of Grafitti: Style Wars(1983)

This ninety minute documentary from 1983, thirty-one years ago, about writers in NYC, influenced the entire planet earth.

A is for Acid

 

Acid etches glass.  

What kind of acid? 

Hydroflouric.

Gee, what would it be like to come to work and see this on your window?  Nothing can remove it, just replace the glass.  Freakin expensive.  

 

Here is an article on Worksafe about the risks of using hydroflouric acid to tag.  Watch your skin,  your lungs, etching goes on for days.  There are other products one can use.  Check out art supply stores.  

Is this vandalism?

Tags like this are everywhere but we sort of don't see them. They are on phone booths, mail boxes, subway windows. You name it.

Here is an article in the NY times dating from 2006 about acid tag-etching in the metro.

Paris is the place for street art. Read it here on Bloomberg. 

TH is for throw up

 

Recently I went to Les Docks  on the quai (the banks) of the Seine to see the super hero exibit of Marvel comics at the Musée de l'Art Ludique.  Don't ask me to translate it just click on the link, ok?  Unfortunately we didn't make the exhibition because tickets for that hour were sold out.  Definitely book ahead. We queued up, hoping to enter, but when a lady came out and told us there we'd have to wait at least an hour we moved on and under.

We descended the plank stairs and found an amazing gallery of urban art. 

 

This is a simple throw up or throwie which looks like it was painted over another work, or several.

 

Here are some others.  FCK happens over and over....

see the wino?

So does DERUB.

 

Notice the tags in red underneath, could this be the crew members who frequent the place?  Who knows.

 I like the wild style on the left but the following was the best in the "gallery".

 

It looks lide FCK was part of this.  The whole throw up is not shown because there was a fashion model doing a shoot to the right. 

Most of the cement pillars were painted as well.

 

I guess that this was done not with "bomb" (spray paints) but with acrylic applied with brushes.  LOVE was abundant and so were debutant roller bladers.

 

There were also some guys practicing hip hop.

Judging by the throw ups there is a specific crew of graffuer which inhabits this this place.

Grafrank, Jef Aerosol and Invader

One of my favorite street artists in Paris is Jef Aerosol.  Here's a montage of Gainsbourg pochoirs that inhabit Butte aux Cailles a hood in the 13th arrondissement.

 

photo courtesy of web

But check out Grafrank  (redacted: this website was active but no longer is available, too bad. It was cool.) It's a global graffiti ranking site.  Looks like Invader is more popular than Jef.