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Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art

History
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Art in the Streets

Jacob Kimvall

Department of Art History , 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

Published online: 20 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Jacob Kimvall (2011) Art in the Streets, Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art
History, 80:4, 253-255, DOI: 10.1080/00233609.2011.639462
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2011.639462

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Exhibitions and Conferences

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Art in the Streets. Museum of Contemporary

Art, Los Angeles, 7 April
8 August 2011.
Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles is the
first graffiti and street art retrospective at a
major American art museum. Jeffrey Deitch,
MoCAs new director and head curator, and a
long time follower of street art, has described
Art in the Streets as his dream
the exhibition
hes wanted to curate for more than a decade.
Deitch, an art critic turned art dealer turned
museum director, prides himself on having
written the first art critical piece on JeanMichel Basquiat. As a gallery owner, his
Deitch Project venues in lower Manhattan
and Long Island City, Queens catalyzed the
emergence of many young artists with one
foot in art school and the other in street
culture.
In many ways, Art in the Streets really is the
first of its kind, and despite his own extensive
knowledge Deitch has gone outside his museum, and outside the museum world, to
recruit associate curators: street culture publicist Roger Gastman, and curator/documentary filmmaker Aaron Rose. The result of
their joint efforts is impressive, built on both
vast empirical knowledge and access to an
extensive network of artists and collectors.
Apart from featuring the obvious stars of
street art
Lee, Banksy, Keith Haring, Swoon,
Futura 2 000 , Shepard Fairey, and the aforementioned Basquiat
MoCA tells the history

#Taylor & Francis 2011 ISSN 0023-3609

of early taggers from the late 1 9 6 0s and early

1 9 7 0s like Taki 183 and Cornbread (both of
whom attended the opening), and of UGA
(United Graffiti Artists), the collective that
pioneered white cube graffiti art by exhibiting
their work in downtown New York in the first
half of the seventies. Gordon Matta Clarks
neatly hand-colored black and white photos
of tags, from his 1 9 7 3 series Graffiti, attest to
a budding interest in graffiti as a subject of art
that dates almost to the beginning of the
movement.
Many if not most of the paintings on
display are new, some of them made on the
interior and exterior walls of the museum.
They will probably disappear soon, just as
the vast majority of the works of graffiti and
street art have been whitewashed, buffed
away or otherwise obliterated. Their history
is thus reliant on photographic documentation; most of the iconic works of New York
subway graffiti are far more famous
mediated as photos than as paintings, a
fact only rarely acknowledged. And one of
the great assets of Art in the Streets is that
crucial documenters such as Martha Cooper,
Henry Chalfant, Jim Prigoff, Jon Naar, and
Martin Wong are displayed not as mere
observers but as participating artists in their
own right.
For a brief period in the early eighties,
graffiti art was a crucial part of the New York
gallery scene, and subway-style graffiti
painted on canvases regarded as the new

KONSTHISTORISK TIDSKRIFT 2011, VOL 80, NO 4

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254 J A C O B K I M V A L L

vanguard. At MoCA, Patti Astor recreates her

famous East Village melting pot Fun Gallery,
where uptown graffiti writers met downtown
art scenesters from 1981 to 1 9 85
and with
this reenactment, Astor creates one of several
exhibitions within the exhibition. Another is
a recreation of recently deceased artist/musician Rammellzees combined studio/living
room. But however intriguing, these exhibitions within the exhibition seem to divide the
participating artists into two different leagues:
an official category of 5 9 artists
whose biographies are included in the attractively designed and very detailed catalogue,
and a second tier of 100 more who are not
to be found in the official material. Some of
these, like Daze, Coco 1 4 4 and Carlos Mare
139 Rodriguez
are far more deserving of
attention than many of those listed in the
catalogue.
MoCA has set a new standard for graffiti
and street art exhibitions, but Art in the
Streets is far from flawless. As a retrospective,
its subject is so diverse as to verge on
schizophrenia. The timeline spans from
1 9 4 1, when Kilroy was here became the
US Armys unofficial slogan, thanks to the
self-documentation of an enterprising soldier,
through the birth of skateboarding in LA the
1 9 5 0 s, the rise of urban graffiti in New York
and Philadelphia in the 1 9 60 s, its fusion with
hip-hop culture in the1 9 7 0s, the punk aesthetics of London in the same decade, the
New Wave movement of the1980 s, and so on
until 20 10, when Banksys Exit Through the
Gift Shop is nominated for an Oscar and
French street artist JR wins the TED price.
Schizophrenic, but still a success story, and
perhaps Art in the Streets is the coronation
itself. And perhaps the exhibits combination

of description and celebration is simply a

convention of the retrospective genre itself.
The broad scope is not a problem in itself;
in fact, it could have been an asset, were it not
wedded to an underground version of the art
for art sake philosophy, which mandates that
all external factors
political, economic,
racial
be minimized to a technical invention
here, a shift in policy there. Where is the red
thread, the conceptual glue that unites all of
these works into some kind of whole? Deitchs
vast knowledge of street art history doesnt
seem to be paired with the curatorial or
theoretical strength one expects from an
institution of MoCAs caliber. Worse yet, this
leaves Art in the Streets susceptible to meanspirited criticism from the conservative right,
which has attempted to reduce the exhibition
to a celebration of anti-social behavior and
vandalism.1
This criticism may have contributed to the
cancellation of Art in the Streets at the
Brooklyn Museum in New York, where it
was supposed to open in the spring of 20 12.2
This is a shame, not so much for MoCA as for
the citizens of New York, the city whose
intricate and intimate ties with hip-hop
culture is rarely acknowledged by institutions
of power. Art in the Streets at the Brooklyn
Museum would have allowed for an opportunity to discuss, recognize and analyze the
visual aspects of this history
both its myths
and its facts. New York Citys unique relationship to graffiti is embodied in one of MoCAs
highlights, Lee Quinones monumental painting of seven larger than life graffiti writers
standing in front of the wall tiles of the 1 4 9 th
Street/Grand Concourse subway station
the
station known in the 1 97 0 s and 80s as the
writers bench. This masterpiece is called

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EXHIBITIONS AND CONFERENCES

Fig. 1. Lee Quinones in front of Benchmark
a Great Rush Hour in the Bronx (2 0 11 ), 29 6 x 2 00 mm.

Benchmark
a Great Rush Hour in the

Bronx, and its a shame that it wont make it
to Brooklyn.
My overall impression is that MoCAs
massive assemblage of artists and artworks
would have been enough for a whole series of
exhibitions. My hope is that other museums
in the future make use of the vast body of
artworks collected and the knowledge accumulated by MoCA
that they approach this
history with the same energy and ambitions,
but with sharper curatorial tools and theoretical perspectives.
Endnotes
1. See for example Heather Mac Donald, Crime in the
Museums - Americas first major graffiti show celebrates
urban sabotage, City Journal, April 17 , 2 0 11 .
2 . See Editorial in New York Daily News, Plan to bring
exhibition glorifying graffiti vandalism to the Brooklyn
Museum should be tagged No Way, April 2 4, 2 0 11 .

Jacob Kimvall
Department of Art History
106 9 1 Stockholm
Sweden
E-mail: jacob.kimvall@arthistory.su.se

255