Art in the Public Face?

Art museums and galleries have embraced graffiti as long as it's confined to carefully curated shows; spontaneous acts of graffiti on their walls could provoke grave consternation. Such is the paradox that eludes Roger Gastman and Caleb Nelson in their massive and profusely illustrated tome, The History of American Graffiti (HarperDesign).

The authors, both of them practitioners as well as commentators, have compiled a well researched study on the precursors (“Killroy was here”) and development of a form whose more familiar patterns quickly hardened into genre conventions known the world over. Great on sifting out origins and key figures, Gastman-Nelson present many interesting facts (it wasn't readily apparent how to effectively use spray can paint) while raising questions they never really answer about who owns public space. It may be one thing to turn the ugly concrete face of an urban wasteland into a canvas, but what about targeting beautiful architecture? Should there be a graffiti ethic?

“Graffiti is the art of freedom,” they write, but whose freedom? While messages hastily scrawled on walls have been acts of political defiance long before the advent of the spray can, many illustrations in The History of American Graffiti have nothing to say except “Look at me! I was here!” The cost of removing unwanted graffiti from places where it should never have been left is great and, unless the painters are caught, is usually born by the property owners—whether individuals or the district's taxpayers. At the same time, Gastman-Nelson are right to suggest that some of the anti-graffiti hysteria had its origins in the enduring racism of American life. By the '70s, graffiti was associated with the underclass, even if some of its practitioners were actually middle class suburbanites on a joy ride.

Much of American Graffiti's bulk is occupied by investigations of the art in particular regions and cities. Wisconsin receives two pages, with most of the ink devoted to Milwaukee.