Tipster Chronicles...going back to '79-'82 New York #graffiti #ArtInTheStreets

Anita Rosenberg's "Tipster Chronicles"

When you think of hip hop graffiti documentarians props are rightly paid to the early photographers like Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfont. Their images of graffiti in public spaces and on trains eventually led them to the graffiti artists themselves who embraced these white, middle-class photographers from Manhattan into their clandestine world. And history was made with books like Subway Art, Style Wars, Spraycan Art and Hip Hop Files.

"Subway Art" 25th anniversary edition (credit: Arrested Motion)

Back in those days, Anita Rosenberg was also on the scene for a few years between 1979-82 photographing the emerging downtown art scene as it welcomed the renegade graffiti artform into their galleries and establishments. Rosenberg's approach was different to Cooper or Chalfont's. She was the first graffiti society photographer following the parties and gallery openings of her small group of very influential friends in the East Village.

Stevio and Anita at Fun Gallery event in 2009, Meltdown Comics, LA

Who's Who To this day, her circle of friends remain a Who's Who of urban culture due to their pioneering work in the late 70s and early 80s: Patti Astor, Fab 5 Freddy, Kenny Scharf, Charlie Ahearn, Futura and Zephyr; and legends who passed too young Dondi and Keith Haring.

Rosenberg's book, "Tipster Chronicles," was given that name by her then boyfriend, Zephyr (although it was just a scrapbook back in the 80s.) And if you know you hip hop trivia, you'll know it was Zephyr, along with Dr. Revolt and Sharp, who painted the legendary "Wild Style" mural for Charlie Ahearn's film of the same name. And you'll also know that Wild Style is hip hop 1.01 for generations of youth!

"The players on the scene always get the spotlight, but it's the folks in the wings who make the show roll. In the wild early 80s our East Village art scene was like a new born baby...She [Anita] saw us as important in our own right, long before the media did, and she shot these extraordinarily candid phots of the artists from the FUN. Later many became legend. Many died. But Anita got the intimate shots when we were young and pretty." Zephyr

You can read an interview with Anita Rosenberg on Miss Rosen's wonderful blog. It touches on some of the "Tipster Chronicles" stories that will transport you back to the days when New York was a melting pot of border-crossing cultural entrepreneurs.

Limited Edition The small book is self-published and limited to only 140 copies ($32) so cop yourself one at either the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA store (signed by Anita) or directly at her website.

1980's New York graffiti re-lived: Subway Art history project

Flashback! Ed Koch was Mayor of New York City for nearly a decade during the height of graffiti in the city, 1978-1989. His battle against graffiti on the subway was immortalized in the film "Style Wars," produced by L.A.'s Tony Silver (R.I.P.) and Henry Chalfont.



Stuck in time Two decades later, I read in the New York Times a retro graffiti movement has been spotted near the Prospect Park area of Brooklyn. Whilst Seen (United Artists) has been spending time in Paris, France over the past couple of years it seem fans have taken his infamous "Hand of Doom" whole train (1980) and recreated it at Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

"The original work — among those canonized in Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s 1984 landmark photographic history, “Subway Art” — was a token of its troubled urban times, a reference to the Black Sabbath song of the same title with the words flanked by a hooded executioner and a time bomb. The 21st-century version, on closer inspection, turns out to be a bit gentler and a lot more oblique. It reads “Joan of Arc,” and the hatchet man has been replaced by an armored representation of the martyred French saint." New York Times

Graffiti "Slavery" The artists behind these classic tributes are part of a collective called "Slavery" and made up of, predominately, graffiti writers who grew up studying "Subway Art" like many others born too late to see the real deal rolling gallery.

Inspired by another New York artist, Steve Powers, aka ESPO, (whose project brightened up a rundown West Philadelphia commercial district as part of the city’s Mural Arts Program,) the Slavery collective has chosen 50 seminal old-school graffiti murals to recreate and customize as part of a project imaginably called "Subway Art History."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T As Subway Art co-author, Henry Chalfant, says, the "Subway Art History" project is a rare  form of tribute in the world of (New York) graffiti: “I think it’s a wonderful reverse of what usually happens, which is that these people whose shoulders everyone has stood on don’t get any credit,” he said.

Blade (taken from Miss Rosen)

“It’s nice the attention guys my age are finally starting to get for our work,” he said. “It kind of amazes me actually. People in their teens and 20s come up to me, and they know every detail of my life story. I’m like, ‘Wow, I don’t even remember dating that girl back in ’72, but this kid here knows all about it.’ ” Blade, graffiti legend

Support and collect The "Joan of Arc" piece will be available as a print from Edition One Hundred, a new online art gallery that sells only 100 limited-edition prints, all signed by the artists. 10% of the profits go to charity.

Still down with hip hop! Malcolm McLaren RIP

News of Malcolm McLaren's passing came over the internet. And now photos of his funeral have appeared on Facebook.

These are sad, but historic moments, but what made the funeral notable to old skool hip hop heads like me was McLaren's family choosing to adorn his coffin with graffiti as a tribute to the "Duck Rock" boom box featured on the album cover designed by graff legend, Dondi, and long-time McLaren collaborator, Nick Egan. (Psst. Let's not forget about the Keith Haring illustration.)

 

"I was kindly asked by Malcolm Mclaren's family to paint his coffin for his funeral. The boombox was an homage to the Duck Rock album cover painted by Dondi produced by Malcom Mclaren. Too fast to live and too young to die was a slogan used in the first boutique with Vivienne Westwood, at age 67 it pretty much says it all. What an honour. Rest in peace Malcolm." Tizer

I'd say this has lifted Tizer One from relative obscurity to a notch above that...I've just subscribed to his Flickr photostream ;)

Last words? "Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die" may have been resurrected, but I prefer the words in the floral tribute, "Cash from Chaos" which some would say was a better fit for McLaren!

Fun Gallery resurrected for '09

Galo hit me up about the Fun Gallery show in Los Angeles to celebrate what that space did to bring together the best of the 80's New York graffiti to the downtown art gallery scene.

Little did I know there were gonna be old skool hip hop luminaries there. Patti Astor aka "Virginia" the reporter in Wild Style, "Queen of the East Village" and co-founder of the Fun Gallery. I also got the chance to meet with Anita the photographer behind some amazing and never-seen-before pics of Dondi, Keith Haring, Futura and Kenny Scharf's work exhibited at the Fun Gallery.

Learn, yo! If you want to know what it was like, here's an article from Charlie Ahearn published in Artforum 10 years ago in 1999.

Patti Astor as Virginia in 'Wild Style'

Beautiful Losers

My print by Henry Chalfont arrived last week. It's a photograph of three 'whole cars' painted in the 80s by seminal New York graffiti artists Lee (Quinones aka Zoro), Futura and Dondi White (RIP). If these imagines look familiar you may've seen them in Henry Chalfont and Martha Cooper's book called 'Subway Art'. But, Chalfont is also featured as part of a film project called 'Beautiful Losers' (not to be confused with a similarly named art magazine called 'Beautiful Decay').

Beautiful Losers "...In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, began their careers in just such a way. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine, and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led...The story of the Beautiful Losers will be a retrospective celebration of this spirit". By Anonymous.

Thanks to Britt for hitting me up on the film!