Graffiti New York 80ʼs — Jérôme de Noirmont Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 27 → July 20, 2011

Graffiti New York 80ʼs presents a collection of works by the pioneers of this art movement that gathered momentum in the streets of New York at the beginning of the 70s to become a worldwide phenomenon in the 80s. More than 10 years after the anniversary retrospectives dedicated to Andy Warhol (1996/19971), Jean-Michel Basquiat (1998), and Keith Haring (1999) whose Estate we represent in France, the gallery is now showcasing an art movement that fed into the creative exuberance of New York in the 1980s: the graffiti movement and its precursors.

The exhibition presents the different founding schools of New York graffiti art in the 1980s. With Bladeʼs letter pieces through to the figurative abstract works on canvas by Dondi, as well as Basquiatʼs “SaMo©”, Keith Haringʼs chalk drawings and Futuraʼs or Rammellzeeʼs lyricism of anticipation, this collection spanning 1978 to 1987 communicates the artistic vitality of a fundamental decade in contemporary art history.

If the origins of graffiti were considered from an etymological perspective, the movementʼs beginnings could date back to the Lascaux cave paintings or the wall writings observed in Roman latrines. Leaving a signature on a public wall is, beyond the subversive and illegal nature of such an act, above all a testimony of identity and recognition. This is the very essence of graffiti. The two elements that set the New York movement apart however are its visual aspiration and its stylistic diversity. Graffiti, or street art, has been a progressive phenomenon ever since the very first "tags” (the artistʼs street name) appeared at the end of the 1960s, first in marker pen and then in spray paint. This continual evolution has been marked by many formal innovations. Graffiti was thus legitimized as an art form and became part of the fine art world early in the 1980s.