YET AGAIN.
Caila Blue
Graffiti is an art: it takes up many principles used in Classical or Renaissance art, including the use of shading, light, and value of negative and positive space. The shading and the lighting in a piece are very important. Without those two qualities graffiti would be just words on a wall, but, to the graffiti artists it is a way to express her self, just as Van Gogh’s painting Night Cafe expresses his frustration as he enters the cafe. There is also a political aspect to graffiti just as in art from the Paleolithic period and on, the purpose of graffiti is partly to harass the authority as much as show the talent of the artist. This is in contrast to than the Renaissance artists who painted for the authority, but not unlike some modern artists like Manet who were disliked by the rich and because they used art to show what the authority were doing wrong.
A gaff (graffiti) artist works with his crew, a group of fellow artists who are like members of a family. The graff artist is often at odds with the law with other crews; members of a crew keep one another out of trouble. It takes skill with the paint and a cool mind not to jump at every little sound; this is why graff artists always go with their crew. The crew will go to different places every time they go, but they go with their crew.
One of the graff artists whose work I was fascinated by last fall in New York City was Odie. Odie is the tag name of a graffiti artist who runs with the ICF. (I Can Fly.) Crew. Like other graff artists, he keeps his given name a secret. In fact, very little is known about Odie himself. What we do know is his unique style. He uses block- or bubble-like letters, and some times a mixture of the two. His pieces are beautiful and full of color but the point is to see how close he can get to the edge, that is, to frustrating the authority. The phrase “Yet Again.” and others like it are frequently added to Odie’s pieces to taunt the authority. One gets the idea that Odie likes pushing the edge because he seems to use as much gradation and shading as he can. That means that to complete a piece, he must come back to the same place night after night, thus increasing his chances of being caught. Like all other graff artists Odie likes to paint his pieces on places that are hard to get at. He did one piece on the side of a car. In fact some say that he has done a piece on every kind of vehicle except a plane. That is another way of pushing the edge.
It is too bad that graffiti artists cannot come out and talk about their pieces and what each one means to its creator. I bet we could learn a lot about art if we looked closely at the pieces that they do, and listen to their feedback on their own art. Even as Picasso used color effectively to show his emotion, so graff artists use color to show the world who they are. I think that every time someone paints over a beautiful piece of graffiti, we are losing the chance to discover a new gifted artist.
If you want to read more about graffiti as an art form, go to:
[link]
boy
Pain
