My trip to New York

I was excited to read the story about some recently 'excavated' old skool graffiti in New York's SoHo district. "Wow! I need to see that", I thought to myself, so I jumped on Farecast and patiently waited till fares fell to $277 (on Virgin America, baby!)



Bust my bubble As I was eagerly reading about the graffiti, I found an article entitled, "Writers of the Lost Ark", which was posted as a comment on NY's Paper Magazine blog. Although it didn't put the dampeners on the trip for me, but did put it all into context:

"Is anyone really interested in the ‘mystery’ behind this ugly and hilarious artifact? Because there’s no mystery at all. Everyone who scrawled on it is alive and well and willing to talk - but few of us are (or ever were) graffiti artists. The 80’s were an era of ‘fake it till you make it’, so we might give 1 or 2 poseurs a pass here, but the only legitimate exception on the ‘151 Wooster Street Mural’ is Lenny (futura 2000), who got up (note the clean background) well before any of us came over to Edit Deak’s and pretended to be ‘writers’ for an evening or two.

If a legend exists concerning this mess it is one that’s been actively hyped by a number of respectable people, no doubt with the best of intentions. Since hype is the dope of today, we might forgive a group halucination, at first. But I know that an email naming each artist and spilling the beans on Jean-Michel’s perfect absence was forwarded to Lisa Denisson at the Gugenheim well in time to head off the howlers that are now everywhere in print. What hapened to those beans? And what do we actually have here? Fragment’s of a lost Basquiat? Francesco Clemente’s only graffiti? The birth of Graffiti itself? Why not the lost Amber Room of Catherine the Great? Certainly the truth will devalue this treasure."

Full disclosure Read the full story to see whether Basquiat's work is actually part of the graffiti discovered and who else is "up" on the wall (or not)! I have no idea who Seth Tillett is, but he's obviously a 40-something hipster from back in the day ;)

VIP, baby If you couldn't make the opening, like me, here's the video. Love the soundbites - bag o' shite!