Postmodern Art and Graffiti - Essay Example

Contents Introduction 2 Early Graffiti 3 Graffiti in the 1980s 4 Neo-Expressionism 8 Briart 8 Graffiti in the 1990s 9 Neo-Pop or Post-Pop 10 Stuckism 11 Keith Haring 11 Jean-Michel Basquit 14 Conclusion 16 References 19 Bibliography 20 Postmodern art and Graffiti Introduction Postmodern art developed after modernism and is believed to have developed in contradiction to modernism. Postmodern art includes art forms like Neo-Expressionism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and Graffiti. Many critics believed that postmodern art emerged out of modern art. Postmodern art is also known as contemporary art. However, it is said that not all postmodern art in contemporary art. Postmodern art describes movements which arise from reactions and trends against modernism. One of the characteristic features of postmodern art is that it uses High and Low Cultures through pop culture imagery and industrial material. Simply put, post modern art can be defined as one that rejects modernism’s artistic direction and eliminates the limits between high and low forms of art, and an unruly genre’s reunion with fragmentation, collage, and convention. Postmodern art is also described as being discontinued and spoof, rather than being spontaneous and direct. Essential movement that led to and I influenced postmodern art evolved around World War I and its outcome. Many different movements and art forms came into existence during the postmodern era. Some of these include Neo-Expressionism, Surrealism, Briart, Fluxus, and the like. Some of the movements that were a part of the postmodern era were New Classicism, Conceptual Art, Lowbrow Art, Installation Art, and the like. Early Graffiti In 1980’s painting was rediscovered in modern art. It was a reaction to the uninteresting conceptual art movements of 1960’s and 1970’s. In 80’s spray paint cans were used to express the strong wish for uniqueness. Egos were involved and artists thought everything was possible. “Based on the Italian word for “scratch,” graffiti are scribbled words or doodles on walls. Even found in ancient Egyptian tombs, graffiti first appeared in the artist’s studio with American painter Cy Twombly, Frenchman Jean Dubuffet, and the Spaniard Antoni Tapies.” (Strickland et all, 2007, p. 193) At the time of Martin Luther King, March in 1960’s the Graffiti Art Movement had come into existence and after his murder in 1968 youngsters started to bombard the trains with their autographs. The exteriors of the trains offered a surface for the young graffiti artists to exhibit their art, and express their desire for individuality and acknowledgment as an artist. As Graffiti was banned from 1972, the Graffiti artist had to work in the middle of the night and had to be swift with their spray painting as the trains started before dawn. As a result of this the artists started to make introductory drawings of their designs and started to take photos of the trains. Due to the large train exterior surface the graffiti artists had to work in collaboration with other graffiti artists. The artists were being recognized for their respective styles. The renowned artists had their students, toys to help them and were called king or prince of graffiti. It was like a medieval system in itself. However the third generation graffiti artists like Blade, Futura 2000, Koor, Dondi white, Rammelizee , Crash, A- One and Quik started painting on canvas by the 80s. This aided them with their own studios. The previous Graffiti Kings became very popular especially in the European Galleries and Museums with highly crowded exhibitions. Graffiti developed into a vast art movement with social concerns, in which skating, fashion, hip hop, break dance and rap music formed an art movement. These art forms expressed the new identity and libration of the young people. The movement evolved as a revolution against the system for the worldwide fight for the freedom of minorities. “Graffiti is not a movement of vandals trying to make peoples lives impossible. It is an outburst of creative culture that spread as a Gesamtkunstwerk through the history of art” (Essink, 2007, para 8) The New York mayor in 1972 approved an anti graffiti law which stated that any graffiti artist could be arrested and sentenced to jail. Even owning unsealed paint cans was made an offence. Between 1972 and 1977 almost 1500 people were arrested under this law. Special teams of dogs and policemen were formed to catch the graffiti artists. Many artists were hurt to the extent of breaking a leg in the quest to escape the police. Later, in 1977 the Metropolitan Transport Authority or the MTA set up automatic train cleaning systems with strong chemicals to clean up graffiti on trains. Train shed or yards, where trains were kept when not in use were enclosed by bard wire. New York City spent a total of 100 million dollars trying to combat graffiti. Due to this many graffiti artists had to look for other places to portray their art. Many graffiti artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring had their own studious. Some artists took to walls and storefront gates. Graffiti in the 1980s Graffiti is described as the right to be a free artist; this statement is accepted by the High Art World as the right to be a Graffiti Creator. Graffiti was thus symbolic both in politics and arts for the global libration movement in the 1980’s. One of the most important graffiti drawings was made by Blade in 1985. It can be seen in Blade’s work that he had a number of scars from the way that he had lived. In December 1980 an exhibition was held in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam of the Transavantgarde, which surprised everyone in art world. The exhibition was held by an Italian group of artists including Chia, Cucchi, Clemente, and others. Everyone was much exited about the exhibition as a new trend was about to begin. This meant it would be the end of conceptual art. It was important for this new form of art to use personal myths and stories and to make life concrete. The key concept of this art was subjectivity. It did not have one general style but different styles with eclecticism or quotations. The concept of this art was exit; artists here had to express their ideas by the use of their hands. There is a direct relation between the sixties and eighties of the 20thcentury. The struggle for freedom that existed in the sixties was transferred to the eighties in many aspects. This was due to the fight for freedom of different countries like Yugoslavia, Russia, South Africa, and the like. This pursuit for freedom was also seen in the East European countries during the 1980s and the 1990s. During the eighties the desire for freedom of the black people continued when they claimed their rights to be artists. Never before did the history of art see the rise of new styles of electric boogie, rap, tags and hiphop, and graffiti style wars which started of on trains and finally moved to paintings on canvas. Graffiti is thought to be merely a form of vandalism; this idea has to change in the minds of American people. Graffiti artists are considered to be crusaders; they are artists who express their intense desire to be free, a desire which was built up through centuries of slavery. “To hell with Creation – as far as I’m concerned, man himself is his own Creator. All I mean by that is that I’m not dependent on my Creator, though I may have been at one time, but now he’s dependant on me.“ ..We’ve emancipated ourselves by means of all kinds of changes and develop­ments, in the structure of human consciousness and in the physiological processes that go along with them.” (Beuys et all, 1979, p. 95) The New York Graffiti movement had a huge impact on the art world. The movement attracted a lot of media attention when compared to other art forms. Many books, films, articles, and art reviews have been a part of the debate. In 1983 the Graffiti movement was seen in Europe when the first graffiti pictures were displayed at the Yaki Kornblidt Gallery. Many graffiti works by artists like Blade, Futura 200, Bill Blast, Seen, Zypher, Dondi White, and Rammellzee, were bought by well known Dutch collectors. Many collectors fought over the best pictures. All the exhibitions conducted the 1983 and 1984 were sold out. At this time many museums began to take more and more interest in graffiti. Wim Beerens, director of Rotterdam Boymans-van Beuningen museum bought various graffiti works along with Frans Haks, director of the Groningen Museum. The first official large-scale graffiti exhibition was organized by Wim Beeren in 1983. It was about the New York graffti movement at the Boymans museums. The exhibitions attracted 25,000 visitors. The exhibition tickets and catalogues were sold out and the public was delighted by the twinkling and vibrant colors, the visual and the rhythm of the meaningful graffiti paintings. Another show organized at the Groninger Museum attracted more than 40,000 visitors. Later the enthusiasm spread to Germany, when graffiti made a tour of the German museums when a well-known collector Ludwig bought many graffiti works. The first exhibition dedicated to Rammellzee was organized on 1986 at the Groninger Museum and attracted about 3,000 visitors at the begining. The exhibition was such a success that some paintings had to be temporarily withdrawn. The exhibition was on for four weeks and attracted almost 10,000 people. Though graffiti was a huge success, there were many discussions behind the subject. The conservatives and progressives attacked each other with enthusiasm in various publications. The important thing about all these criticisms is that the quality of artists is not spoken about. It was the movement that drew the attention and not the individual artists. The interest in the art world began to come down after 1985 and hit rock bottom in 1988. Many explanations came up for this drop of interest. American art was always mistrustful towards graffiti. People found graffiti on trains threatening. Also customers of art galleries were usually white and white people did not like black art. From 1987 to 1989 Europe witnessed stagnation in the interest of graffiti. The only exception to this was the Groninger Museum which continued to display graffiti paintings of various graffiti artists and was never influenced by criticisms. The continued interest of the Groninger Museum resulted in the American Norman Dubrow donating 30 important graffiti paintings to the museum in 1989. Neo-Expressionism Another post-modern art form that came to light in the 1980s was Neo-Expressionism. Around 1980 Neo- Expressionism appeared in response to the stagnation of Conceptual act and Minimalism, which had dominated the 1970s, however it had started to worry many artists, Neo- Expressionism was a broad movement. These artists used the so called dead practice of fine arts and acknowledged everything that the Modernist disregarded, for example, emotion, figuration, symbolism and narrative. They used aesthetic colors in their art. Their themes involved many historical styles and movements like Mannerism, the Renaissance, Fauvism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and Pop-Art. “It was termed Neo-Expressionism because it revived the angular distortions and strong emotional content of German Expressionism. Neo-expressionism brought back such banished features as recognizable content, historical reference, subjectivity, and social comment. It resurrected imagery, the easel painting, carved or cast sculpture, and the violent, personalized brushstroke” (Strickland et all, ed. 2, 1992 p. 188) Briart Briart was another form of art that evolved in the 1980s, but it gained recognition in 1997, at the ‘Sensation’ exhibition. They were also called the Young British Artists. The group consisted of a number of sculptors, painters, and conceptual artists. Artists belonging to these groups and others were considered heroes who turned the 1980s into years of entertainment. Graffiti artists were not included in this list. The prices paid for their works reached unmatched heights. Graffiti in the 1990s The most obvious example of failure to appreciate and recognize graffiti artist was when the Museum of Modern Art in New York conducted an exhibition dedicated to High and Low Culture, this exhibition did not contain any of the graffiti artist works. This resulted in a huge scandal and it was very embarrassing for the museum. This also showed how difficult it was for the art world to accept graffiti. Then the first exhibition was held at the Corcoran in Washington USA in June 1991. “Graffiti were a result of a plot by the Gods. Why may I admire Kiefer for his German ‘Geisteshelden’ and not those heroes of Futura 2000, Quik and Blade? They enthused us and we are curious to see what history will say about their art. They were booked off. There were also commercial reasons involved. The art market was growing fast and it probably felt threatened by the quantity and quality of the graffiti. This was terribly amusing. It is also typical that it is precisely white intellectuals who survived the graffiti wave, such as Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf.” (Metrpolis M, 1990, p. 18) In the 1990s terms like logo jamming and the use of stencils came into existence. Stenciling became very famous by the late 1990s, and it coincided with the rising interest in political comment which was driven by globalization. The 1990s was a decade that saw the rise of the dot-com boom. The art of this period witnessed a new global phase and an increasingly blurred line grew between realism and the virtual. During this electronic age of the dot-com culture graffiti also went electronic. It moved from the walls of subways and trains to the electronic media. It migrated from canvas to electronic art. Graffiti art not only existed on the streets but moved to a wider audience. It did not remain restricted to the streets; people beyond boundaries could see this art form. A large historical exhibition was organized which focused on the development of the graffiti movement over the past ten years. This show attracted 10,000s of visitors and plenty of press. This helped in keeping graffiti alive. “The collective processes that formerly took place outside of the subculture now occur primarily within it, directed primarily by those who have practiced the form. This development allowed graffiti writers in the 1990s to insulate themselves somewhat from complete exploitation and appropriation by corporations” (Snyder, 2009, p.169) Neo-Pop or Post-Pop One famous contemporary art form was Post-Pop or Neo-Pop. These terms represent the revival in the interest of American is themes and methods of 1950s and 1960s. It is considered to be an updated form of Pop Art. It drew its inspiration from Dada and modern Conceptual Art. Neo-Pop was a bold form of art and usually questioned precious assumptions made by the society. It also made fun of celebrities and stars like its parent form. Artists of Neo-Pop mainly used images of celebrities, recognizable objects, and symbols and icons from the popular culture of 1980s and 1990s. Typical examples of Neo-Pop are sculpture ‘Michael Jackson and Bubbles’ by Jeff Koons and a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch called ‘Rat-King’. Koons himself achieved substantial disrepute for his altitude of brashness into high art. This is described in his sculpture ‘Balloon Dog,’ whose detailed form contrasts the nature of its subject. Some other famous contributors to this art form called Neo-Pop were Cady Noland and Daniel Edwards, Jenny Holzer, Michael Craig-Martin, Vitali Komar, Lisa Milroy, Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk, and Gary Hume. Stuckism Another art form that came into existence in the late 1990s was Stuckism. It was founded by Billy Childish, Charles Thomson and eleven other artists. Stuckism was of British origin and was considered controversial just like graffiti. This art form got its name when Billy Childish was insulted by a British artist Tracy Amin, who described his art work as ‘Stuck.’ Artists who belonged to this form of art disregarded the barrenness of Conceptual Art, Performance Art, Installation Art, and Briart, as they believed it was devoid of artistic value. Stuckist artists favored more painterly characteristics as illustrated in representational art and figuratiove paintings. By the early 2000s the group conducted many exhibitions. This included ‘the first Art Show of the new Millennium’ which was held on January 1st 2000. The Stuckist artists have spread to Paris, New Jersey, Melbourne, Hamburg, and many other places. Central London saw the opening of a Stuckist Gallery. Some other famous Stuckist artists are Philip Absolon, Bill Lewis, Sheila Clark, Sancha Lewis, Ella Guru, and Joe Machine. There are many famous graffiti artists who contributed to making this art form famous and popularly known around the world. Some of these include as Dondi, MinOne, Skeme, and Zephyr. Keith Haring Keith hearing was brought up near Kutztown, Pennsylvania and developed a taste for painting and drawing at an early age. He learnt the basics of drawing and painting from his father and was also influenced by pop culture like Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss that was around him in his childhood. Keith was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on May 4th, 1958. In 1976 after graduating from high school, he joined a commercial arts school in Pittsburgh called the Ivy School Professional Art. Soon Haring quit as he did not want to be a commercial graphic artist, he continued to work and study on his own and at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center, and he had a solo exhibition of his art work the same year. Later in 1978 he moved to New York City where he registered with the School of Visual Arts. He also discovered a blooming alternative art society which was not in the museums or galleries but in subways, downtown streets and former dance halls. Here he met musicians, graffiti writers, performance artists and artists like Jean-Michel Basquit and Kenny Scharf. Haring felt encouraged and began to organize and participate in exhibitions. “Keith Haring used a graffiti style, sometimes combined with comicbook technique, that grew out of his child hood experiences in New York City, when he created graffiti images and messages on subway trains and the sides of buildings on the way home from school” (Craven, 2003, p. 583) Haring was highly inspired by the work of artists like William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Alechinsky and Robert Heri’s manifesto The Art Sprit, which established the liberation of an artist. He was additionally impressed by the energy and creativity of his fellow artists. Haring was inspired with such influences which enabled him to pursue his own interests and take them further towards a unidimensional and focused graphic expression which was based on the primacy of the line. Haring got interested in producing public art dueto the influence of Christo’s participatory and public nature of art in Running Fence, and also he was impressed by the unique style of Andy Warhol. At SVA Haring was committed to drawing but he also experimented with video, collage, installation and performance. As Haring desired to communicate with a vast audience, he found an effective medium to that would give his work a wider audience when compared to galleries or museums, when in a subway station he noticed unused advertising panels covered with matte black paper. Through out the subway system Haring began to draw with white chalk on these panels. Haring created several of such drawings, sometimes exceeding more than 40 of these ‘subway drawings,’ between 1980 to 1985, most of these public drawings were written in a rhythmic manner. His work had become popular amongst the usual New York commuters and they started to recognize Haring, they would usually stop and engage the artist when they met him at work. The subway almost acted like a laboratory for him to experiment his ideas and art. Keith Haring’s career flourished in the 1980’s. During 1982 to 1989, he created around fifty public artworks for charity, children’s day care centers, hospitals and also some of them carried social messages. His work was featured in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions and articles were written about him in more than forty newspapers, in 1988 he was diagnosed with AIDS after which he established the Keith Haring Foundation to fund social organizations and children’s programs for AIDS, and also spread AIDS awareness, Keith Haring’s contribution to graffiti took the art movement to new heights. At the age of 31, on February 16th 1990, Haring died of AIDS related complication. Jean-Michel Basquit Another famous graffiti artist was Jean- Michel Basquit. He was born on 22nd December 1960 in Brooklyn, New York. Basquit was a very popular graffiti artist in New York City and also a Neo- Expressionist artist in the 1980’s. His worked highly influenced modern artist and fetched high price. Since childhood he was quit interested in art work and was encouraged by this mother to take part in art activities, drawing and painting. At the age of 17 he began to spray paint graffiti art on walls of buildings in the slums in lower Manhattan along with his friend Al Diaz adding the signature of “Same Old Shit” or “SAMO”. They wrote curt messages like “Plush safe he think.. SAMO.” Village Voice published an article on the writings in December 1978, and SAMO ended with “SAMO IS DEAD” written on the walls of the slum buildings. In 1978 he dropped out of high school and left home, he moved to the city and survived by selling post cards and t-shirts on the streets and lived with his friends. Due to his art work by 1979 he had acquired a certain celebrity status. He was known for his three broad, though overlapping styles. Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas from 1980 to 1982; often he depicted mask-like faces and skeletal figures that expressed his fascination with mortality. Also due to his painting on the streets other images described images like police, graffiti, automobiles, etc. Basquiat’s works portray a strong interest in his black identity and his identification with contemporary and historical events and black figures. The last phase of his life from 86 to 88 depicts a type of style inspired by new sources as it very clearly uses various symbols in the form of new content. This also influenced the artistes who admired him. Basquiat and pop artist Andy Warhol became friends in 1982 and have worked together on several projects. Both of them have also influenced each other’s work by painting together. It was noticed by many that Andy did not involve Basquiat for a few of his techniques and approach. They were friends until Warhol died in 1987, his death was very disturbing for Basquiat, and it was notied by Phoebe Hoban in her biography of the artist. After this Basquiat’s drug addiction and depression began increase and Warhol’s death is said to be a turning point in his life. Several of his art works have been exhibited in major art galleries and museums globally, after Basquiat’s death. From October 1992 to February 1993, his first exhibition was held at Whitney Museum of American Art, called “Jean-Michel Basquiat". The exhibition’s catalogue was edited by Richard Marshall and included several essays about different styles and is still considered one of the major sources. Another exhibition was held from March 2005 to June 2005 at the Brooklyn Museum was the “Basquiat” exhibition which highly influenced the audience and other artists. In 1981 an untitled Basquit’s work was sold for $ 14.6 million. He was an excellent graffiti artist and his era was a turning point for the movement. “Jean-Michel Basquit’s life and career as a painter are nearly paradigmatic for the riddles of the art world in the 1980s. His rise to prominence was without parallel. The graffiti sprayer, who left mysterious and witty statements on the walls of SoHo and the East Village using the pseudonym SAMO, became a celebrated star, holding court in the explosive art scenes of Zurich, New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles” (Emmerling & Basquiat, 2003, p.7) Conclusion Graffiti has a lengthy history. Graffiti has a subculture around it which has existed in history since decades which is still rather strong and supportive. The writers or artists who practice graffiti are extremely intense with a sensitive social consciousness which springs out of an involvement in communal affairs. Their sensitivity has been deeply contradicted in their depiction as criminals and hooligans. They were found to scratch or scribble inside the trains with different media like permanent markers but then paint and spray cans were made use of very quickly following the trend especially on the outside of trains. Graffiti came to stay and acquired importance as it transcended from plain tagging. The artist started to popularize their names as well as entered into competing each other in various styles. Different styles were displayed as the writers became more and more creative; to begin with their signatures and tags appeared to be differently styled compared to their contemporaries. For example the artists started to experiment with color and special effects and their names appeared to be outsized. They started getting creative from the simple tags on the insides of the trains to more and more skilled and effective with throwups and masterpieces which were scribbled around even in multiple subway cars. In short graffiti grew extremely popular. For the common man and specially the adolescents going through the phase of identity crises or identity formation felt a compulsion to express themselves as a proof of their individuality, existence and creativity to the society in which they existed at the same time asserting and pushing a point home that they had the motivation and objective which their social environment denied them. Graffiti was thought to be a very petty and cheap expression of the ghetto dwellers that were devoid of culture. The magnitude and dimension that graffiti, hip-hop culture, which include the graffiti writers, emcees, DJs, and B-Boys grew to an extent which was unimaginable. And therefore succeeded to prove the world wrong in contradiction they created things beautiful with a lot of specialized skill, focus and passion in turn contributing a lot to the common taste, entertainment and social awareness. The anonymity which was faced by the adolescents turned them into ‘creative’ rebels throwing light on social problems and issues which were ignored by the desensitized society. In 1980s Mayor Ed Koch had remarked as to why the New York City youth used their energies to keep the city clean if they be given sponges and brooms rather than scribble all over the city. He was obviously confused as to the difference between the office of a janitor and the expression of an artist. In the modern time the cultural self-expression is becoming extremely complicated and or sophisticated, graffiti plays a very important part in linking or transition from complex to regulated, and it signifies uninhibited manifestation of individuality and rebellion. Graffiti is classified as a unified art comprising of four elements which include Hiphop, DJing, Emceeing and B-Boying. These art forms of creativity came from the Bronx, New York and were propagated to the other parts of the world. B-Boying represented dance, emceeing and DJing produced music and graffiti symbolized the visual. In the beginning all these elements were interdependent, which were the early days of hiphop. The writers of Graffiti came from all ethnicities. In prominent parties one could find the B-Boys wrestling with each other on the dance floor, the emcees raving up the crowd, the DJ spinning and scratching and the writer scribbling on the wall. Graffiti artists were often also DJs, emcees and B-Boys. Mostly these were adolescents or young adults but it also included well established writers from 1970s were also going strong. Writing was more of talent enrooted specific skill, it did not depend on factors like nationality, race, religion, or color. As graffiti was irrespective of all the mentioned factors as these did not translate to the creative product. Graffiti came in as a wave and spread over across the globe and in its stride took over different cultures therefore becoming multicultural and containing ethnic diversity within itself as it had a universal appeal to the cross section, that is the common man globally. Graffiti came into being as a package of the urban environment which existed and still exists as a powerful medium of self-expression. Young rappers belonging to cities are still inspired by the graffiti that they see on the walls of the streets. When viewed critically, graffiti represents decay but for the pop culture it very strongly depicts the restive youth’s concerns, social issues, their resistance, sensitivity and creativity. Graffiti also inspires and encourages different forms of creative expression such as DJing, emceeing and B-Boying. References Beuys, Joseph, Bastian, Heiner, Simmen, Jeannot, 1979. Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, 2nd edn. Prestel-Verlag. Craven, Wayne, 2003. American Art: History and Culture. McGraw-Hill Professional. Emmerling, Leonhard and Basquiat, Jean Michel, 2003. Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988. Taschen. Essink, Frank. 2007, History of Garffiti, http://www.history-of-graffiti-art.com/history-of-graffiti-art|graffiti-street-art.html). Metrpolis M. 1990, January 1990 p. 18 Snyder, Gregory, 2009. Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New Yorks Urban Underground. New York University Press. Strickland, Carol and Boswell, John, 2007. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. 2nd edn, Andrews McMeel Publishing. Bibliography Craven, Wayne, 2003. American Art: History and Culture. McGraw-Hill Professional. Emmerling, Leonhard and Basquiat, Jean Michel, 2003. Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988. Taschen. Essink, Frank. 2007, History of Garffiti, http://www.history-of-graffiti-art.com/history-of-graffiti-art|graffiti-street-art.html). Haring, Kieth, 1997. Keith Haring, http://www.haring.com/about_haring/bio/index.html Snyder, Gregory, 2009. Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New Yorks Urban Underground. New York University Press. Strickland, Carol and Boswell, John, 2007. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. 2nd edn, Andrews McMeel Publishing. Read More