It was a fill-in – huge letters near the top of a three- or four-story building, very visible from the street. “But,” he added, “the act of writing graffiti is always political.”Īnother graffiti artist I interviewed, “PEN1,” stood with me on a street in lower Manhattan, pointing out one of his many works. He explained that his writing had no concrete political messages. Some writers who became well known in the early 1970s, like Taki 183, scrawled their names and street numbers all over the city.ĭuring my research, I spoke with one New York graffiti artist whose work had garnered a lot of attention in the 1980s. Many graffiti writers tagged spaces to declare their existence, especially in a place like New York City, where it is easy to feel invisible. The carefully chosen names and their letters become the subject that writers use to practice their craft.īut I also wanted to know why people graffitied. The tradition of painting ornate graffiti names made me think of Paul Cézanne, who painted the same bowl of fruit over and over. “ Pieces” involve more colorful, complicated and stylized spray-painted letters. “ Fill-ins” or “throw-ups” are quickly painted fat letters or bubble letters, usually outlined. “Tags” are pseudonyms written in marker, sometimes with flourishes. In the early 2000s, when I started researching street graffiti, I learned that there are different names for different graffiti types. It elicited comparisons to 5Pointz, a collection of former factory buildings in the Queens borough of New York City that was covered with graffiti and became a landmark before being demolished in 2014. The response to the Miami bombing was more awe than outrage, perhaps because the building will soon be torn down. Over the course of a few days, graffiti artists – some of whom rappelled down the side of the building – tagged the brutalist, concrete structure with colorful bubble letters spelling their graffiti names: “EDBOX,” “SAUTE” and “1UP,” and hundreds more. So Miami was a natural gathering place for graffiti artists during Art Basel in December 2023, and One Bayfront Plaza became the canvas for taggers from around the world. There’s also a rich tradition of graffiti in the city.
Miami is known for its elaborate spray-painted murals. In November 2023, the city of Miami announced that a permit to demolish One Bayfront Plaza site, an abandoned former VITAS Healthcare building, had been filed. But it seemed to have been inspired by a similar project that took place in Miami during Art Basel, the city’s annual international art fair. It may never be publicly known how the idea was formed and by whom.
Hundreds of taggers were involved in the Los Angeles graffiti bombing. It’s located in one of the priciest parts of the city, right across the street from Arena, where the 2024 Grammy Awards were held. The Beijing-based developer was unable to pay contractors, and ongoing financing challenges forced the company to put the project on pause.
Since late 2019, Los Angeles’ billion-dollar Oceanwide Plaza – a mixed-use residential and retail complex consisting of three towers – has stood unfinished. They also get to the heart of how money and politics can make individuals feel powerless – and how art can reclaim some of that power.
31, 2024.Īs someone who has researched the intersection of graffiti and activism, I see these works as major milestones – and not just because the artists’ tags are perhaps more prominent than they’ve ever been, high above street level and visible from blocks away. KTLA 5 news highlights public outrage over a graffitied skyscraper in Los Angeles on Jan.