Graffiti and Street Art

About

Modern graffiti took shape in Philadelphia and New York around 1970, when teenagers began writing their tags across walls and subway cars. Over the next decade writers turned names into elaborate, interlocking letters and painted entire trains; Lee Quiñones and Dondi White were among the most admired. By the early 1980s graffiti had reached canvas, while Jean-Michel Basquiat's cryptic SAMO© phrases and Keith Haring's chalk drawings in subway stations tied downtown painting to the street.

Street art broadened the methods. In Paris from the early 1980s Blek le Rat sprayed stencilled rats, a technique Banksy later popularised with satirical images in Bristol and London. Shepard Fairey spread his Obey Giant stickers from 1989 and designed the Hope poster for Barack Obama in 2008. JR mounts enormous photographic portraits on buildings, and Swoon pastes up cut-paper figures. Much of it is temporary and unauthorised, so photographs often become its lasting record.