This document discusses the history and evolution of graffiti art in New York City. It begins by describing the author's observations of street art in the city and their interest in understanding graffiti as a creative art form rather than mere vandalism. The document then traces the origins of graffiti in Philadelphia in the 1960s where it was associated with gangs and an expression of territorialism. When graffiti emerged in New York City via subway taggers in the 1970s, it was similarly viewed negatively. However, graffiti matured and developed artistic merit. By the 1980s, graffiti had grown in recognition abroad and in art galleries, moving from its gang origins to an expression worthy of praise. Today, graffiti is

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Lea Porcelli
Professor Alberts
15 December 2014
Graffiti in New York City: Gangs to Galleries
I am not a native New Yorker, but I walk with my head down. When I do decide to look
up from my phone or deep thought, my gaze meets a girl with symbols all over her body above
the Instagram hashtag “ELLEthuglife” or a written piece about the ever so relevant use of force
in the absence of the authority of the law. I had never understood why street art, or as some like
to call it—graffiti—is automatically labeled as a defacement of property instead of a form of ex-
traordinarily creative art. Though it began as a trend in “the bad parts of town,” graffiti in New
York City has transformed into a creative outlet for those who refuse to work within the confines
of a canvas. And though street art has definitely gained recognition thanks to the introduction of
social media platforms, after the city walkers snap their pictures, they tend to linger for a few
minutes and appreciate what the art adds to the industrial sides of building they’re used to. In a
city so obsessed with keeping the time, keeping up with tasks, and getting places as quickly as
possible, street art is making the city slow down. Through the works of New York City’s most
famous graffiti artists and its troubled history, I will be uncovering how this obsession is trans-
forming a fast paced city into one that stops to appreciate the beauty.
Though it is currently referred to as an “accepted part of youth culture” (Ehrlich 1), graf-
fiti has not always been looked at as an art form. Some say graffiti got its bad name from the so
called “loners” of the Philadelphia streets. When graffiti appeared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
in the mid-1960s, graffiti artists were labeled either “territorial markers” or “loners” (Stewart

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13). The aesthetic of their work was “similar to the social protest graffiti that was [already]
spreading in other large cities” (Stewart 13), but the graffiti of these “territorial markers” and
“loners” was not political and did not hold any meanings other than those pertaining to gangs.
Their work’s main goal was to strike fear in others on behalf of not only the individual gang
member doing the actual graffiti, but of the gang as a whole.
The first time the word graffiti appeared in New York City was in February of 1967 on a
“New York City Transportation Authority report on ‘subway good manners ’”(Stewart 19). Graf1 -
fiti arrived in the city on a bad note, already having a history from Philadelphia as a destructive
form of art instead of a creative outlet. Graffiti wasn’t always what it is now, though. It started
out with writers tagging their nicknames on the sides of subway cars—most notably: “the writer2
Phase 2 also wrote Phase, Phase II and Phase two on top of the Roman numeral II” (Stewart 19)
in order to gain the most publicity possible. With the millions riding subways daily, his name was
bound to be spread by word of mouth, good or bad—Phase Two, along with many other “writ-
ers” (such as TAKI 183 and JOE 182), did not care, as long as people were talking. Though
subway riders once referred to graffiti as “crude scribbles,…writers became more inventive [and]
graffiti developed and matured as quickly as it was produced” (Stewart 20).
While many New Yorkers continued to view graffiti as a form of vandalism in the 1980s,
those abroad viewed it as a cultural aspect of the city that should be honored, not hidden. In Feb-
The report featured a “list of thirty nine directive for subway behavior, notably, ‘don’t write graf1 -
fiti’” (Stewart 19).
The word “writers” was used to describe the most common graffiti artists in the mid2
1960s-1970s—as it was most popular in the form of artists tagging their initials or names on
walls, subways, etc. to gain publicity.

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ruary 1984, “a London based tour agency and airline arranged a free weekend’s stay in New York
City… for European and Middle Eastern hotel managers as a token of appreciation” (Austin 2).
After a tour of the city’s most sought after sights, the hotel managers boarded a subway train to
get to their chosen up-scale restaurant. Yet, when they reached the subway, many expressed that
the train was missing an infamous aspect of New York City’s culture that they were excited to
see. Prior to their arrival, and at the cost of $4,000, “a special renovated and repainted ‘graffiti-
free’ subway train had been arranged and paid for by the tour agency” (Austin 2). In the city’s
defense, cleaning up the trains was a way to signify its rebound from a financial crisis. Yet, in the
process, the “real New York” along with all of its colors and imperfections that it’s known for,
diminished and resorted back to the bland, industrial city it was before graffiti art became the
norm.
Around the early 1980s is when graffiti art moved away from its dark and gang affiliated
history and became a focus for “writers who risked life, limb, and arrest,…teenagers and film-
makers” (Ehrlich 1). Through their work, graffiti art began its exposure as something worthy of
praise and recognition, both on the streets and in more elite settings, such as those they were
producing or writing about. Museums and galleries eventually caught onto this trend “when graf-
fiti was briefly part of the era’s art boom” (Ehrlich 1) in the 80s as well.
Ever since, graffiti art has become a focus of young adults obsessed with social media, art
enthusiasts, commuters on their daily journeys, and those who have watched their home of New
York City be transformed into a world of color. Along with many others, articles from websites
such as “Street Art NYC” and “Huffington Post” sparked my interest in the booming graffiti art
scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn, both on the streets and in the galleries. I came to the city in

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search of a world of color, a world of expression, and a world of art that had no limits—what I
found was graffiti. In the process of fulfilling that search, I found groups of people of all colors,
religions, and sexes gathered around a wall, snapping pictures, then returning their phones to
their bags to find a moment of peace in a piece of art on a wall of a city that never stops nor
sleeps. So, I end with a quote from Jamie Bryan from Joe Austin’s book “Taking the Train” about
the presence of graffiti in cities around the world, and especially in New York:
The ultimate point seems to be: What kind of city do people want to live in? The stone
gray and earth colors that we’ve erected around the vast labyrinths of monolithic
structures that dwarf the scale of man set the tone for daily lives of city dwellers. It’s the
natural impulse of people who are very alive to decorate their environment, make it
beautiful.
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Works Cited
Websites/Online Articles
1) Street Art NYC RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.
2) Brooks, Katherine. "Here's Your Definitive Map To Exploring Street Art In New York City."
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 18 Aug. 2014. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.
3) Ehrlich, Dimitri, and Gregor Ehrlich. "Graffiti in Its Own Words." NYMag.com. NYMag, 3
July 2007. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.
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Books (from Fordham’s libraries)
1) Austin, Joe. Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City.
New York: Columbia UP, 2001. Print.
2) Stewart, Jack. Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970s. Abrams, New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009. Print.