Graffiti in New York City has had a substantial local, national, and international influence. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Graffiti in New York City emerged primarily throughout the city of New York's subway system and as well as throughout working-class neighborhoods. New York City being widely regarded as the birthplace of modern graffiti culture, graffiti in New York City developed into a more defined, visual practice, aided by the widespread use of aerosol spray paint, which allowed for faster and more visible marking of urban surfaces. Writers increasingly emphasized stylistic variation in lettering, treating names as visual identities and contributing to distinct writing styles across the city, while also functioning as a form of informal urban communication through a repeated exposure.
By the mid-to-late 1970s, graffiti became associated with youth cultural production outside institutional art spaces and grew increasingly visually complex, laying the foundation for later stylistic development. Graffiti has continued to influence contemporary street art, the multifaceted worlds of fashion, graphic design, advertising, as well as popular culture.Wacławek, Anna. Graffiti and Street Art. Thames & Hudson, 2011. Although subway graffiti declined significantly after the late 1980s, murals and street art remain visible throughout New York City.
Beginnings and growth Graffiti began appearing around New York City with the words "Bird Lives" in 1955 following the death of jazz musician Charlie Parker, in a street art campaign started by artist and poet Ted Joans.Kelley, Robin D. G. (May 20, 2003). "Ted Joans, 1928–2003". Village Voice. Archived from the original on June 22, 2008 Early graffiti was not explicitly ideological or political.Stewart, Jack, and Regina Stewart. Graffiti Kings : New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970s. Melcher Media/Abrams, 2009. Originally, the two main types of people who engaged in writing graffiti were "territory markers" largely affiliated with neighborhood gangs, and "loners". Loners were the first to only write their names strictly for recognition, and it was in Philadelphia in the mid 1960s that the first loner graffiti writers began to adopt larger than life signatures, such as Cornbread and Cool Earl. Many of the early participants in name based graffiti writing engaged in the practice as an alternative to gangs and drugs.
Graffiti that marked gang territory, social protest, and anti-war sentiments became more popular in New York City in the late 1960s. The term graffiti comes from the Italian root graffito (to scratch), and one of the earliest widely recognized graffiti tags in New York was the word Pray, seen scratched into walls, doors, columns, posts, and telephone booths for many years. Members of the initial generation of graffiti artists in New York largely agree that Pray was the first ubiquitous example of graffiti in the era, and while the true identity of the person behind the Pray tag is unknown, the accepted legend is that she was a "little old lady" who held up a newspaper for concealment while scratching the word.
The New York City graffiti phenomenon of the 1970s was originally known as "wall writing" and began on school and playground walls by teenagers. As the phenomenon grew in popularity, so did its presence around the city as participants began to venture outside their neighborhoods. Early graffiti writer Taki 183 is recognized as the most notable pioneer of this because of his job as a bicycle messenger and the 1971 New York Times article featuring him. Other notable first generation graffiti artists from this time include: Angel 136, C.A.T. 87, Cay 161, Clyde, Julio 204, Snake I, Spade 130, Stich I, Tracy 168, and Yanqui 135. Over time, these individuals progressed to writing graffiti on subway trains for greater exposure. This in turn led to the development of several "writer's corners" in various subway stations around the city that acted as meeting points for practice, socialization, exchanges of ideas and styles, with the most legendary being at the 149th St. Grand Concourse station in The Bronx. As writers became familiar with one another, they began to organize groups (commonly called crews). Writers generally put the name or initials of their crew at the bottom of their own name, with the earliest crews including the Ex Vandals, Wanted club, Broadway Boys, Ebony Dukes, Wild Style, Masterpiece Crew, Out to Bomb, and many more.
Graffiti was growing competitive and artists desired to see their names across the city.About New York City Graffiti, part 1 Around 1974 people like Tracy 168, CLIFF 159, QUIK and BLADE ONE started to create works with more than just their names: they added illustrations, full of scenery and cartoon characters, to their tags, laying the groundwork for later subway car murals. The standards from the early 1970s continued to evolve, and the late 1970s and early 1980s saw new styles and ideas. As graffiti spread beyond Washington Heights and the Bronx, a graffiti crime wave was born. Fab 5 Freddy (Friendly Freddie, Fred Brathwaite) was one of the most notorious graffiti figures of that era. He notes how differences in spray technique and letters between Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn began to merge in the late 1970s: "out of that came 'Wild Style.Fab 5 Freddy quote in: Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings: Art in Multicultural America. New York: The New Press, 1990. Fab 5 Freddy is often credited with helping to spread the influence of graffiti and rap music beyond its early foundations in the Bronx, and making links in the mostly white downtown art and music scenes. It was around this time that the established art world started becoming receptive to the graffiti culture for the first time since Hugo Martinez's Razor Gallery in the early 1970s. In 1979, Fab 5 Freddy and his graffiti partner, Lee Quiñones, showed their work in the Galleria La Medusa, in Rome, thereby putting graffiti on the art-world map.
The growth of graffiti in New York City was enabled by its subway system, whose accessibility and interconnectedness emboldened the movement, who now often operated through coordinated efforts. It was further left unchecked due to the budgetary restraints on New York City, which limited its ability to remove graffiti and perform transit maintenance. Mayor John Lindsay declared the first war on graffiti in 1972, but it would be a while before the city was able and willing to dedicate enough resources to that problem to start impacting the growing subculture.
The Abraham Beame Administration established a police squad of about 10 police officers to work in anti graffiti capacity. The squad attended informal meetings and socialized with minor suspects to gather information to help them apprehend leaders. Although the squad gathered information on thousands of graffiti vandals, inadequate manpower prevented them from following through with arrests.
Graffiti vandal arrests in New York City were reported at around 4,500 between 1972 and 1974, 998 in 1976, 578 in 1977, 272 in 1978, and 205 in 1979.
Social perspective of street art Scholars have noted that the early New York City graffiti movement was largely shaped by African American and Puerto Rican youth from working-class neighborhoods in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, pioneering the landscape for modernized graffiti. Graffiti also reflected the dense social geography of New York City where the proximity and daily movement between neighborhoods allowed visual styles to circulate quickly across different boroughs. This mobility contributed to graffiti functioning as a shared urban language shaped by interaction visibility and repetition rather than formal artistic training.
As graffiti continuously evolved following TAKI 183 and Tracy 168's activity at the start of the 1970s, so did the general perspective on graffiti as an art form. Despite significant financial and legal attempts to erase graffiti by upper class New Yorkers throughout the 1970s, hip-hop culture and American-inspired foreign artists continued to deepen the value of graffiti as a conventional mean of expression and protest. The presence of graffiti at the Berlin Wall and throughout South American countries facing political violence, incentivized American artists to continue to revolt against systematic quandaries.
As years passed, graffiti-covered murals and trains integrated the global perspective of New York City, which only grew with the rise of films and music videos set in New York. By the 1980s the cultural content of graffiti sparked an economical interest from local property owners. Aiming to use them to advertise stores or neighborhoods, graffiti soon became a landmark of its own, used to allure tourists to some of the more better-known pieces. However, as graffiti made its way into reputable art galleries and other public outlets, a divide was made between artists who emphasized expression and those who emphasized professionalism. Upper class New Yorkers who once belittled street art, were now advocating for it as a valuable and provocative art form. Despite the newly found appreciation for street art, political movements against graffiti continued to rise for the next couple of decades, and political opposition against graffiti still prevails today.
Moral panic became widespread as local governmental figures cracked down on graffiti, discouraging artists through legal persecution and public disdain. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the overwhelming majority of New York City's mayoral candidates campaigned publicly opposing graffiti. The Dinkins, Giuliani, and Bloomberg administrations introduced laws targeted towards graffiti artists. Although a large proportion of New York residents celebrated the complete embargo of graffiti art, New York slums and under policed neighborhoods experienced a surge of graffiti following the implementation of the aforementioned administration's laws. The next couple years, criminologists began to associate graffiti with the broken windows theory, further intensifying the negative perspective New Yorkers had on graffiti. The presence of gang graffiti followed a similar structure to traditional street art, yet its motives and end-goals differed. Within cosmopolitan neighborhoods far from business districts, graffiti began to be associated with gang activity; the presence of graffiti, regardless of who authored it, enticed numerous criminal organizations to operate in these tension zones. Following the rise of gang-related graffiti markings, numerous social and financial strategies were employed to combat graffiti, including contracting private cleanup companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even with significant professional support, combating graffiti felt effortless according to members of the New York State Department of Transportation.
Decline of New York City graffiti subculture: Enforcement and control
As graffiti became associated with crime, many demanded that the government take a more serious stance towards it, particularly after the popularization of broken windows theory. By the 1980s, increased police surveillance and implementation of increased security measures (razor wire, guard dogs) combined with continuous efforts to clean it up led to the weakening of New York's graffiti subculture. As a result of subways being harder to paint, more writers went into the streets, which is now, along with commuter trains and box cars, the most prevalent form of writing. But the streets became more dangerous due to the burgeoning crack epidemic, legislation was underway to make penalties for graffiti artists more severe, and restrictions on paint sale and display made obtaining materials difficult.