Category: Art
During the summer of 1977, Andrew Witten started writing ZEPHYR as a nod of respect to Tony Alva and the Z-Boys who ran the West Coast skate scene. “I had already been doing little toy neighborhood tags for years by that time, with an unfortunate list of questionable names like ‘FRODO’ and ‘TREK’,” says ZEPHYR, […]
Opening night of Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection | MCNY 📷: Herman Yung “Everything I paint is within four blocks of where I live, and the people are the people I know and see all the time,” artist Martin Wong (1946–1999) once said. This quote reflects not only the sense of […]
Magistrate Roberto Scarpinato with his escort on the roofs of the Court. Palermo (1998) © Letizia Battaglia “I’m not a photographer, but I’ve always taken pictures,” said Letizia Battaglia (1935-2022), who used the camera as a weapon against the Mafia and helping the government put an end to the despotic reign of terror in the […]
An international cabal of anonymous creatives enlisted ANIMAL to help take out the trash in NYC for this very important Election Day by re-bagging hundreds of garbage bags printed with the orange menace’s face, and so we kindly obliged. It’s time to do the right thing, America. Vote! Shout out to Bear Meets Eagle On […]
FUTURA “Uncle” sculpture, Bronx Museum of Arts. Photo: Bucky Turco Five decades after Leonard Hilton McGurr took the name FUTURA 2000, his visionary approach to art, graffiti, fashion, and design has elevated the native New Yorker to a global icon. But McGurr, who turns 69 on November 17, takes it all in stride, forging a […]
Front cover of Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024); cover image: Louis Carlos Bernal, Dos Mujeres, Douglas, Arizona,1978. © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of Helen Unruh. In 1836, just one year before Mexico outlawed slavery, a province in the north went rogue and declared […]
IZ Aqueduct (1983), Photo by Tod Lange Pound for pound, Michael “IZ THE WIZ” Martin is the undisputed all-time, all-city king that made all the writers from Queens be extremely proud to come from this glorious borough. IZ’s shadow looms large in the annals of Graffiti in NYC and whatever far corners of the world […]
CBGB’s, Blondie, Flyer, 1976. Courtesy online Gallery 98. As the 1960s gave way to the ‘70s, a new generation of New York upstarts transformed the downtown nightlife scene forevermore with an inimitable blend of glamour, grit and DIY mythos. The arrival of Max’s Kansas City in Union Square signaled a change of guard; with Andy […]
In a city of radicals, innovators, and originals, there is only one Rammellzee: a visionary among men who left this earth in 2010 at the age of 50. Hailing from the trenches of Far Rockaway, Queens, Ramm came up as a writer just as graffiti meemerged as the voice of New York. Between 1974 and […]
Justin’s big fro (September 11, 2013) During the Korean War, photographer Hatnim Lee’s father left his home in the North for Busan, the second largest city in South Korea. There he met Lee’s mother, whose older sister had fallen in love with an American GI, married, and moved to Northern Virginia. “We got there in […]
