CityRealty Insider > The Way We Were: Graffiti, Tagging and Street Art

The Way We Were: Graffiti, Tagging and Street Art

AUGUST 25, 2009

Today's street art stars take their cue from '70s subway cars.

Born in the Bronx—along with rapping and breakdancing—graffiti or tagging was, in 1970s New York City, becoming one of the main elements of hip hop culture. Early writers like TAKI 183, Tracy 168 and Fab 5 Freddy would "bomb" subway trains with their unmistakable signatures, capturing the admiration of their peers for their artwork and their daring and rising to legend status.

Charlie Ahearn's seminal film Wild Style and the original PBS documentary Style Wars offer a great view into the world of early graffiti and hip hop culture. In the '80s, "post-graffiti" street art had become more accepted as pop culture and began to be celebrated as "real" art, with its influences finding their way into the work of downtown artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

As the decade rolled on, the subways were scrubbed of their tags, while the illicit element that had once been at the core of street art began to give way to indulgent tolerance. Shepard Fairey and Banksy were represented in top galleries and art museums throughout the world—acknowledging the level of popularity that street art had enjoyed for years in Europe.

More about today's New York City street art can be found on Streetsy and Wooster Collective.

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