Graffiti Art Elusive and Beyond Categorization
"Beautiful Losers," a museum show of graffiti art, opened in Cincinnati in 2004, and was exhibited later at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and other places. It was scheduled to go to Europe, but its concepts and images were turned into a website and movie instead.
I attended a Beautiful Losers opening an event that was almost bedlam. Thousands of people crammed into the museum to see art influenced by mid 20th century graffiti writing. The works, often primitive and childlike, were also clearly polished due to the formal art school training many artists received. The exhibition featured paintings, drawings, cartoons, sculpture, photography and video installations.
The crowd, from skateboarders to art aficionados, teenagers and octogenarians, was so thick, it was often difficult to see the works. Some viewers commented that the seeming crude-looking art might be as groundbreaking as Cubism, 100 years ago, or as original as Pop Art.
The next day, I toured the show with curators Aaron Rose and Christian Strike. Both have worked with street artists since their teens, lived on both coasts, owned alternative galleries exhibiting graffiti art, and managed skating magazines. As Rose and Strike talked, I realized that the subway-at-rush-hour style opening is suited for the works in the show. The pair talked about hip hop and graffiti subcultures and about the people who make art with little influence from established art worlds.
Artists on the Run
Graffiti in its earliest days was born of the street, from people on the fringes of society. As Rose says in the show's catalog, 'Beautiful Losers,' "All the artists included have at some point broken the law in order to express themselves." He also says, "People have called it Disobedient Art, Skate Art, neo-Graffiti, Mission School, The New Folk, whatever...it is in perfect keeping with the attitudes of the artists included here to remain elusive, beyond categorization and on the run."
The catalog explains that graffiti art is a, "commitment within the soul," and is, "something to be lived." It adds that graffiti writing - illegal writing or spray-painting on public spaces - is done to be noticed, not to vandalize. The "writers" are speaking to a world gone amuck that has disenfranchised them.
Beautiful Losers is a work of art as a whole. But there are highlights. There is 'Andre the Giant Has a Posse' sticker (1989) by art star (and recently arrested) Shepard Fairey. There is Faireys 'Obey Icon' poster (1996), in the show I attended and simultaneously stuck on to fences, walls and vacant buildings in surrounding towns - and on this page.
There is 'Untitled (Subway Drawing)' (1984) by Keith Haring, a rare chalk on black paper graffiti work, created in a subway car. An older piece is an album cover (1984) by Jean Michel Basquiat that comes from the artist's anguished soul, appearing to have mythological roots. Among the many other artists are Os Gemeos, Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee.
Conspicuous Milestone
Graffiti art is much more than just another youth-oriented fad. In 1913, there was the ground-breaking New York Armory art exhibition. Of that show, Kenyon Cox wrote in The New York Times in 1913, "Have these 'progressives' really outstripped...us, glimpsed the future, and used a form of artistic expression that is simply esoteric to the great laggard public? Is their work a conspicuous milestone in the progress of art? Or is it junk?"
The cubism and conceptual art exhibited in 1913 did represent a conspicuous milestone. Similarly, Beautiful Losers is fresh, organic, non-derivative and prophetic. The show has thousands of works - if you count the painted skateboards and sneakers, magazine covers, posters and photographs.
Graffiti's Roots
The history of graffiti art can be traced back to prehistoric cave paintings, and later to Pompeii, where guidebooks provide information about the ancient scrawls.
Eadweard York is also an artist with deep roots. He is a grown-up graffiti artist who has worked in this style nearly all of his life and professionally for the last 20 years. His story is of a formerly disenfranchised youth who is creating significant art while transcending his personal demons.
"My Dad was a corporate guy who kept being transferred," Eadweard explains. "By the time I was in the ninth grade, I had been in 14 schools, and every time I got to a new school, I got into a fight."
Always an Outsider
"I started drawing as a little kid - [odd, sometimes mythological and tribal-looking] works that looked like graffiti art, before I even knew what it was - drawings that aren't very different from what I do now. I was always an outsider, drawing weird faces and primitive people." As a child, Eadweard made African-inspired masks and still does. Later, he incorporated mask images into his paintings.
Eadweard has lived on the streets, in punk houses, in cities and towns all over the country and has travelled abroad widely. He has opened galleries, shot fashion photography for Rolling Stone and other publications and played in bands. He has often painted on the streets and onto gallery fronts. On a few galleries in the Midwest that would not show his works, he spray painted, 'Dead Art, Dead People.' He has been written up in Harper's magazine, the Los Angeles Times, American Art Review and many other publications.
His most audacious act was mounting a show in Omaha, exhibiting works of a fake German artist he called 'Scherzkopf.' Before the locals got wind of his prank, he received major publicity.
Eadweard now lives in Southern California, where he enjoys the camaraderie and opportunity to exhibit with other outrageous artists. A future page on this website will be about the art of Eadweard York.
Beautiful Losers was originally a book by folksinger, Leonard Cohen, published in 1966. It addresses sex, politics and religion - topics we all love to read about!
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, the movie, celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In the early 1990s a loose-knit group of like-minded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the "establishment" art world, this group and the subcultures they sprang from have now become a movement that has been transforming pop culture.Starring a selection of artists who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories. It speaks to themes of what happens when the outside becomes "in" as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today's youth.
