Subway Graffiti Art articles and such

October 18, 2010 - 10:51 pm Comments Off

Wild Style is not a documentary, despite what it may look like from packaging or even camerawork. It’s a pretty slow-moving story of a man who writes on walls and his girlfriend’s alleged infidelity with another man who writes on walls. While this love triangle is being played out, there is a journalist woman who wants to find out about a new sub-culture that is happening in the Bronx. There is also a musical event being planned in the amphitheatre in the park to showcase the local musical talent.If you were reading the synopsis to this film anywhere, it would probably read something like that. But Wild Style isn’t about the story. It’s not about the acting, the direction or even the camerawork or sound recording (although the soundtrack is important).It is a film that has shaped a generation, purely with the members of the cast and the records used in the soundtrack. Wild Style is a historical document. It perfectly captures a time and place – the Bronx, New York 1982 – and most of

could someone tell me what is this article about?? because im really confused..plzz help meee?
m trying to write a summary for my eng 101 class bt i have no freaking clue .. heres the article plz guys i need ur help. i need some cluess plzzzA PROFESSOR’S LOOK At Graffiti ArtistsGregory J. Snyder, a Baruch College anthropologist, spent years hanging out with graffiti writers, earning their trust and conducting scores of interviews. The new book based on his studies, ”Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground,” reveals that he became more than an observer in that decade and a half: on a few occasions he wrote graffiti himself, scrawling his tag perhaps seven times.Graffiti writers, the book argues, are not merely practitioners of vandalism and social disorder but are members of a diverse subculture. It was as a graduate student at the New School that Professor Snyder built relationships with graffiti writers, carrying around a hardbound sketchbook. At the bottom of each page he wrote a word, then asked graffiti writers to visually represent it above. Professor Snyder, 40, argues that while graffiti Subway Graffiti Art culture emerged around the same time as hip-hop, in the early 1970s, graffiti in fact comes from a variety of cultural sources. ”Writers define themselves not by what they look like, or what language they speak, or what clothes they wear, but by what they do,” he wrote. ”Their identities are as writers first, and as members of ethnic, religious and other subgroups second.”He adds, ”In its purest form, graffiti is a democratic art form that revels in the American dream.”The book, just published by New York University Press, argues that graffiti culture has, in some ways, been uniquely democratic. ”What is lost sometimes in the cacophony of the debate over whether graffiti is art or vandalism is that when it’s art, it is free art,” he writes. ”And yet, Professor Snyder notes that graffiti has been associated with crime and disorder since the social scientists George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson introduced their broken windows theory, which holds that low-level crimes, if not addressed, create an atmosphere conductive to more serious offenses. ”I’m not trying to make an argument that graffiti is art and not vandalism,” Professor Snyder said in an interview. ”I hope I’ve made it clear that it’s both.”For many New Yorkers, the word graffiti connotes the giant murals that covered subway cars and stations from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. That era ”officially came to a close in 1989, when city officials began refusing to put painted trains into service,” Professor Snyder writes. But efforts to crack down continue. In 2006, the City Council passed a law banning the sale of graffiti instruments, including aerosol paint and broad-tipped markers, to anyone under 21. The law was challenged as too broad.A provocative map in the book points out that unlike other quality of life crimes, graffiti does not tend to be focused in poor neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime. ”Graffiti writers write in order to get fame and respect for their deeds, and therefore they write in places where their work is more likely to be seen by their intended demographic,” Professor Snyder writes. Indeed, he adds, ”Despite all of the negativity associated with graffiti, it remains one of SoHo’s selling points, literally.” SEWELL CHAN
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