Category: Features
Graffiti in NYC is not a static, monolithic entity in 2022. From the rudimentary beginnings of the pioneers to the golden era and its present day infusion of inroads into corporate, art world and commercial entities; what still matters the most is the street. Where, and just as important, how you get up is of […]
The art and marketing collective known as MSCHF opened an exhibit of new work at the Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side called “No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It.” “Spot’s Revenge”According to MSCHF, @bostondynamicsofficial deactivated their Spot robo-dog using an “undisclosed backdoor,” after the collective armed it with a paintball gun, put in a […]
Union Square was the meeting grounds for New York City’s Halloween celebrations, as crowds gathered to smoke weed, vibe-out, and get sturdy. Not even rain could stop the constant stream of costume-wearing revelers from flooding the area. Here’s a small sample of who crossed our paths. […]
In our “Armageddon” issue—it was published in 2004 and featured an epic cover illustration by Steve Marcus—ANIMAL co-founder Matt “DSENSE” Trumino and I, decided to include a “questionnaire / workspace” to see how interactive our readership was and to gather some critical demographic information in our uphill battle to land advertisers. Our funding, derived mostly […]
📷: (L) Slick Rick by Sophie Bramly (R) Slick Rick by Janette Beckman | Courtesy of TASCHEN Picture it: Detroit, the late 1980s. High school student Vikki Tobak awaited her turn to speak as the teacher asked the class: “What do you want to do when you grow up?” The teen, who first arrived in […]
Graffiti made its entrée into the art world in 1972, when the United Graffiti Artists held their first group show, “Floor To Ceiling,” at City College. A year later, UGA made more history, with the first ever exhibition of their work at an established art space—the Razor Gallery in Soho. For the next twenty years, […]
📷: ART IS THE WORD by ALIVE 5 (1981) © Martha Cooper For some, the prestige of working at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History might be a lifelong goal, but Martha Cooper felt cooped up working behind a desk cataloging artifacts day in, day out. She yearned for freedom, action, and adventure — the […]
RIFF 170 expanding the boundaries of what piecing could be in 1973. 📷: Erik Calonius “Everything is connected to everything else. Urban clutter is connected to air pollution, to noise, to foul water. Agri-business is connected to the use of pesticides. Lifestyles are connected to solid wastes. And, so on.” Those were the guidelines the […]
Above: Tony Hawk’s first skateboard. (📷: National Museum of American History) In the newish Tony Hawk documentary, the often-spotted but identity-mistaken skater casually mentions how he donated his first skateboard to the Smithsonian. It was a “Bahne skateboard with red Stoker urethane wheels on metal trucks” according to its listing in the government’s colossal collection […]
📷: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Decades ago, when American kids started engaging in wildly interesting and fun new activities such as skateboarding, graffiti, rapping, breakdancing and gaming, the media struggled in its attempt to define these emerging subcultures. Many of the vintage articles on these subjects share some common threads: they’re typically condescending, alarmist, and […]
