Bronx, led to FUTURA’s breakthrough design for a whole car piece where his tag was minimised.[89]
‘Break’, as the train was titled in the absence of a tag and to indicate its significance in his stylistic development, was an atmospheric, abstract arrangement of fields of colour. FUTURA said of his intentions, ‘I don’t need to see FUTURA here, now I want to see just color. I want to see a couple of design elements that people would put into their pieces, and see what does that hold for us. Is that interesting? And it was, it was almost a painting’.[90] On the left, white was broken with cool tones of blue, purple, and magenta, while magenta, green, and orange dominated the car from the windows to the centre doors. Just to the right of the doors, the cloud of colour was bounded by a black outline. Bright white around a field of purple broke through, and a second cloud of warm hues completely covered the rest of the train to the right. Scattered over the atmospheric field of colours were triangles and circles in white and black. ‘Break’, ‘Futura’ and ‘2000’ were written in thin black aerosol lines, so that the lettering was absolutely subordinate to the independent fields of colour. The clouds of brilliant hues inspired Richard Goldstein to credit the Russian expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky as an influence, although FUTURA said he only saw Kandinsky’s paintings at a museum some time later.[91] The comparison stuck and was sometimes invoked when he exhibited abstract canvases in succeeding years.
DONDI, Children of the Grave Return, Part 2, 1980. Aerosol paint on New York subway car. Destroyed.
ZEPHYR
ZEPHYR, from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, began writing seriously in 1977 and associated with a group of writers in Central Park. At first, like most writers, he dedicated himself to producing quantities of tags but eventually he collaborated with other writers from whom he could learn style such as NOC 167, FUTURA 2000, and DONDI. A window-down piece from 1980 may show DONDI’s influence with the serifs and crossbars lined up neatly, drawing the eye through the piece to the dramatically-enlarged leg of the R at the end.
ZEPHYR painted regularly with DONDI on Sundays in the train yard near his home at the end of the 2 line in Brooklyn, and in 1980 they worked together on a whole car design of ZEPHYR’s, ‘Heroin Kills’. The third contributor to this piece was Charlie Ahearn, a filmmaker based in Times Square who was in pre-production on a film about writing, rap, and break-dancing that would be released as Wild Style in 1982. Ahearn asked to come along on one of ZEPHYR and DONDI’s forays as part of his research for the film, but ZEPHYR was reluctant to take the risk and responsibility of having a ‘civilian’ with them. DONDI was inclined to let Ahearn accompany them, perhaps because he had already been trailed by photographer Martha Cooper when he painted his ‘Children of the Grave, Part Three’ train in May. Unexpectedly, Ahearn brought paints and an idea for his own piece.[92]
ZEPHYR had made few political pieces, preferring to perfect his tag. This piece was inspired by a friend’s attempt to kick his drug habit. He planned to paint ‘HEROIN’ with the I rendered as a syringe, while DONDI worked on ‘KILLS’. The lettering and palette of each word were slightly different, but compatible, and the break between the words was precisely where the centre doors opened. To the right was a notation that this piece had been produced as a ‘public service’. To the left was a red cartoon devil, not part of ZEPHYR’s original design, poking at ‘HEROIN’ with his pitchfork. This was Ahearn’s contribution. It was the ‘Hot Stuff’ devil from Harvey comics, which also featured Richie Rich and were intended for a juvenile audience. Ahearn’s appreciation for these characters was symptomatic of the taste for kitsch cultivated by some of the downtown artists with whom he associated, while writers like ZEPHYR and DONDI preferred comics for an older or countercultural audience, such as those by Vaughn Bodé or R. Crumb. Nevertheless, Ahearn’s devil worked well with the concept and design of ‘Heroin Kills’ and ZEPHYR considered his execution to be impressive, especially since Ahearn had no prior experience spray-painting trains.[93]
Graffiti 1980
ZEPHYR’s ability to bridge different social circles, as he did with the filmmaker Ahearn and the master writer DONDI, suited him to run a studio for writers established for two months in the spring of 1980 by businessman and art collector Sam Esses. It marked a breakthrough in writers’ sense of what they could accomplish. ZEPHYR said:
Every day at the studio turned into a colossal writer’s convention, a veritable ‘who’s who in graffiti.’ For two straight months, FUTURA and I excitedly greeted graffiti legends at the door – many of whom we had never met before… The studio stayed open all day, everyday, and sometimes late into the night… Serious networking took place and countless friendships were forged. Phone numbers were exchanged and late-night soirees were planned and executed… The subsequent early 80s subway renaissance changed the state of New York graffiti forever. Prior to that summer, many of us only knew each other through each other’s work. The Graffiti 1980 Studio changed all that. It was a wake-up call. We realized the power of ourselves and the miraculous community we were a part of.[94]
DONDI, Children of the Grave Again, Part 3, 1980. Aerosol paint on New York subway car. Destroyed.
Graffiti 1980, as Esses’ studio was called, was crucial to writers making a transition from the subway to painting on canvas: it was a networking opportunity at a time when communication among writers was difficult; it facilitated collaboration and professionalism; and it inspired a sense of ambition that prepared them for the opportunities offered by Fashion Moda and the Fun Gallery.[95]
As an art collector in the early 1980s, Esses supported promising young gallerists and artists. According to ZEPHYR, he had encountered graffiti at the home of Claudio Bruni, an Italian collector whose support of FAB FIVE FREDDY and LEE will be discussed later in this chapter. LEE had painted his terrace.[96] Preferring to develop his own relationship with graffiti writers, Esses met ZEPHYR and RASTA through his daughter who hung around with the Central Park writers in 1979. He invited them to his apartment, where they showed him photographs documenting their pieces. Impressed with their quality and dismayed that they would be scrubbed off the trains, Esses proposed that they organise a workshop where writers could work on permanent surfaces to preserve their efforts. ZEPHYR was interested in participating, and approached FUTURA 2000, with whom he worked in ALI’s Soul Artists collective. FUTURA was organised and able to see projects through, an unusual characteristic among writers who were mostly younger and less disciplined.[97] Esses enabled them to rent a working space on East 75th Street from March to May 1980, and provided spray paints and canvases.[98]
While writers’ collectives had been established before, notably United Graffiti Artists and more recently the Soul Artists, Graffiti 1980 had a unique aim: at the end of its limited duration, Esses would have a collection of graffiti paintings by writers selected on the basis of their reputations among their peers. The writers would benefit, too, by developing working relationships amongst themselves. It was difficult for writers to make contact for a variety of reasons, including concern about letting one’s identity become known to the police, the brevity of most graffiti writers’ active careers, an urban geography that was divided along school zones and subway lines, and simple lack of means of communication, since in the days before mobile phones access to telephones was limited to homes, where there was competition for the line, and public booths. The Esses Studio facilitated cross-borough introductions
Miller, 192n2.
FUTURA quoted in Miller, 120.
Goldstein, “The Fire Down Below,” 55; Hoekstra, ed., 135. Carlo McCormick surmises that it was the Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1982 that FUTURA saw, and that he visited it with Kiely Jenkins, a downtown artist. (Interview with Carlo McCormick, 27 July 2006.)
Interview with ZEPHYR, 4 November 2006.
Interview with ZEPHYR, 4 November 2006.
Austin, 189.
Interview with ZEPHYR, 4 November 2006.
Miller, 192n1.
Interview with ZEPHYR, 4 November 2006.
Mizrahi, 11.
