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WNET
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Slate: The Eleventh Hour - #335. Graffiti. Rec: 3/29/90. Dir: Andrew Wilk
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Blank
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Charitable funding by Announcer overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.
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The Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener.
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Host Robert Lipsyte in the studio, four small tv screens behind him with var. works of graffiti. He explains the word graffiti derives from the Italian word, Graffito meaning "scratch" or "scribble". However the New York word 'graffiti' could mean subway vandalism, the existential cry of the underclass or the visual arts branch of hip hop.
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Host Lipsyte welcomes viewers to the show and introduces himself. He continues to talk about the topic of tonight's program, Graffiti. He announces what's coming up next and cuts to a documentary film on the subject.
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Clip from the documentary film, "Aerosol Art", featuring var. graffiti artists at work talking about their form of art and their successes.
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Back in the studio with Host Lipsyte, he introduces and welcomes tonight's guests:
Henry Chalfant, Media Artist and Graffiti Movement Archivist; Tony Silver, Filmmaker; Kaye Larson, Art Critic New York Magazine; 'Futura 2000' leading artist of the '70's. |
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Wideshot Host Robert Lipsyte sitting in the studio with tonight's guests
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INTERVIEW WITH CHALFANT, SILVER, LARSON, FUTURA
Robert Lipsyte: What does that have to do with? you're spraying subway cars in the 70s? Futura 2000 Well, I mean, the work I'm creating now really, likeFay said it's 3000 years away from what I was doing back then. Right now I'm just trying to continually discover my myself as an artist, and I continue to work with spray paint, but I think my work has moved beyond the sort of cliche imagery that aerosol art tends to, tends to have I think, Robert Lipsyte did you had you originally discovered yourself as an artist in underground in the 70s on subway cars? Futura 2000 No, I had just discovered futura 2000 sort of invented myself when it comes to that name. And, you know, I, I just wanted to be, I guess, accepted by the graffiti community at that time. I had no aspirations of being an artist back then. Robert Lipsyte That community Henry Chalfant on the community that that you and Tony found and documented? Well, what was this community? I mean, was it a community of artists? Was it a community of kids who just wanted to put their name on subways? Henry Chalfant Well, it's interesting that what happened was, is that there were kids who wanted to put their names on subways. But the way they found to do it to get the utmost fame and recognition was to become a good artist to do that. And that's what makes the whole thing so unusual. And so interesting. So you have everybody you have 1000s of In the city, some of them just wanting to get their name up and not very good artists, and a lot of them who received neck recognition amongst their peers, because they were also wonderful artists, and they got their paintings up on the train many times as well, Robert Lipsyte Tony Silver, was there something that touched you about what you found when you when you shot? Tony Silver The first thing that interested me Was it It seemed to me that there was a kind of a real life drama that was going on in new york city that had been going on? Well, Henry and I began was at 81. It had been going on since the early 70s, since talkie one at three or even before, and that there were these forces that oppose one another that were in suspension, so to speak. It was an ongoing situation, there was a tremendous amount of emotion that surrounded |
00:11:43 696.8 |
Another wide shot of Lipsyte interacting with guests in the studio.
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INTERVIEW CONTINUED
Robert Lipsyte: as an art critic, and any kind of how do we look at this, just the forces include people who found this art, and people who found the people who found this art, another aspect of radical chic. Kay Larson Well, the the movement grew up on the outside of the art world, it had no connection to what we think of as the professional art world. And some people in the art world had a lot of problems with it as a result, and some people who couldn't care less about the art world and who had to ride the trains had a lot of problems, even more so. But you know, the art world is very open right now. And people have come into it in a lot of different ways. And graffiti turned out to be one of the ways, although some of it's better than other parts of it. Some of it, I remember, you know, I remember riding the trains when I first got to New York in 1975. And thinking that some of this was pretty amazing calligraphy. But like calligraphy, is that's all it is that that was the boundaries of it. And that went nowhere after that. So some artists have gone beyond that and become artists. So a problem with how you deal with it. Robert Lipsyte Well, I mean, there there is, there is an assumption that the people in the art world who seized upon this and found that exciting we were people who tended to take other forms of transportation, rather than the subway, and those who got hit in the face felt that their privacy was being defaced. Do you have to have the sense that, you know, what you were doing was kind of in your face art, that you were making your thumbprint on a city that didn't want you? Futura 2000 Well, yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, you know, nobody asked us to go do it. No one ever actually invited kids to paint trains. But I feel that what really bothered a lot of people in New York wasn't so much the more arts like I guess it was good. Who said that, but there's your writers, and then is your artists, okay? When I first started, I was more of really a writer. That's all I cared about. And that's one of the things that turns most people off, or at least did before this subway got cleaned up was the sort of scrolling on the inside of cars over the windows over the maps. You know, people got very intimidated by that. But that didn't say that the work that was done in the outside was any less beautiful art. Actually, I think it was a lot stronger. The stuff that was done on the outside. Robert Lipsyte Yeah, outside of the cars. Henry, did you ever have the feeling perhaps, that you will glamorizing vandalism? Henry Chalfant That wasn't my intention? I mean, it as it turns out, I think one of the things that happened was the books that I did are the two the first and second most stolen book in London. So it had effects that I didn't intend it to have. all I was doing was documenting it. And certainly, one of the results was is that it? It turned into a sort of appealing thing for a lot of people to copy and emulate all over. Robert Lipsyte Yeah. Was there any sense also Tony that there was a a social value to graffiti that it was it was a mode of expression to people who didn't have any? Tony Silver I think for those who did it, it was great social value. And I think that for many people What gave them a sense of possibility and self discovery? That was very impressive. To me. It was an aggressive. Yeah. Without question, it was the opposite to other people. And that's what made it interesting to me the combination of those two things. Robert Lipsyte Do you like it now? Kay Larson Yes, and no, there's good graffiti and bad graffiti. I want to say something about this, this other point for a minute. You can't ignore the social component of writing on the trains. So some of it was was great calligraphy or good calligraphy, let's say. But that wasn't its essence. its essence was, there was a lot of machismo and going out there and taking risking your life, risking other people's lives, doing something you weren't supposed to being kind of adolescent basically about, about where you did your art. And people who, who went through that period, and have come out the other side and become artists and are justified in calling themselves artists. That's fine. And I don't care how somebody gets to where he is that he's a good artist. Except that in the early stages, I think there was a lot that was wrong with it. |
00:16:26 979.58 |
Host Lipsyte announces a break and introduces a documentary film clip by a young video artist hoping to preserve the worldwide community of aerosol art.
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Clip from a documentary film, "Video Graf" - interviews and commentary with graffiti artists, great samples of their work.
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wide shot and pan in on the studio with Robert Lipsyte sitting with same four guests from earlier in the program.
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INTERVIEW - CONTINUED
Robert Lipsyte when you started you started to prove yourself as a man rather than as an artist. Futura 2000 Yeah, well, I don't think I was really trying to do that. I was a kid and I was a young boy. I was 16 I didn't really know what to do with myself. I just graduated from high school and having some problems at home and basically just saw graffiti as the perfect nonviolent sort of Daredevil ish thing. To do in New York, and you know, like I said before, well, we've kay said about the calligraphy aspect of it. I recognize that immediately, and I thought that was very inspiring, you know, other artists in art history, Pollock Klein, you know, those guys got into calligraphy in a way also. And for me, it was just something to some group, I could sort of join and feel like I was part of a family. That's why I did it. Robert Lipsyte Family of Futura 2000 a family of what could you call them sort of very wild, energetic kids? Robert Lipsyte Wild and energetic kid?sIn a sense, it was like an art gang. E Futura 2000 Exactly. Yeah, it was, it was it was an art posse, and art and art policy. Yeah. Although I don't think anyone considered themselves really artists at that. At that point. It was only until, you know, parts of the art world shine their lights on us that we began to crawl out from underground. Robert Lipsyte Now, once the art world began to shine his light, of course, it began to change, the art began to change, art began to change. And the posse began to change, they began to see themselves in a different way, didn't they? Kay Larson Well, since I wasn't part of the mode, I can only see what I say what I saw on the outside. So some of them certainly changed. But I think the interesting thing is how the art world adopted them or co opted them, if you will, because I think that had a lot to do with it. Suddenly, people who were looking ravenously around for the next thing got onto graffiti. And I think a lot of the artists just transferred the aerosol from walls to Canvas, or from trains to Canvas. And without any sense of what being on a canvas would have meant, as opposed to what they were doing before. So the the artists went through some kinds of transformations. But the art world that seems to me kind of dipped in looked a little bit of graffiti and dipped out again, Robert Lipsyte you use the word Co Op. Is there an element of exploitation that are? Well, I'd say, yes, you think that there was? Futura 2000 I'd say, definitely, I'd say certain people in the in the art world who weren't even really in the high art world, saw some sort of a financial thing happening here where they could maybe cash in on it. And they actually asked the kids ask the guys do what you do on the trains and just put it on the canvas. We'll put it up in the gallery now that that sort of motivation behind making work is really terrible. And people who did that, ultimately, got sort of narrowed into this sort of, yeah, well, we can furnish you with graffiti art that looks like what you'll see on a subway, but it's on a canvas, and you can live with it. I mean, that wasn't the motivation to me to start making work, you know, and I sort of shied away from people who Robert Lipsyte Do you think that that's gave them a chance to make some money or stunted their possibilities as artists? |
00:22:54 1367.27 |
Futura 2000
Well, yeah, they made some quick money, with not even good money, but they made some quick money, but I don't think it it really helped him out in a way where it was in the big picture. Instead of this immediacy. Kay Larson The reason it was co optation. Was that exactly what Futura said happened, a lot of people moved in, gave the artists canvases, and then there was no support structure, no, no way of taking these kids who were basically street kids and saying, This is what it means to be an artist, which is the kind of education you get an art school, one hopes Robert Lipsyte you've been following them for years, what's happened to them? Henry Chalfant I have to say this about the what you were just talking about is that for a lot of the kids, they never got out of the gang and the posse structure, because it was totally contradictory to what was going on in the galleries, they wanted a star, they wanted one artists, they wanted to have an outlaw, too, they wanted to exploit that aspect of it. And here, you know, since the whole, there's a long tradition of outlaw artists, but usually it was formally, you know, breaking down formal structures within the art. And that was all over with the end of modernism, you know, and then along comes the graffiti. And they exploited the artists as a kind of outlaw hero. But they never the the posse aspect of it. The people who went on were the ones who went on became artists were the ones who could break away and be individuals, and not have to bring along everybody else, the rest of the posse as part of the art show. Robert Lipsyte And yet the posse was a community and gave support. Tony Silver Right? And I think what, what, what the kids who painted and wrote on trains were doing was an extension or another kind of Social Forum that they lived in and did a lot of things and, and what they did as graffiti writers and Greek graffiti artists, in public and public spaces and on the trains and in the trains, had to do with expectations that they created for themselves or for one another. When they went into the art world. They had to deal with a different set of expectations completely. And some of them were successful, and some of them not. It's a subject which is so fraught with paradox. No matter where you look, there are at least two era irreconcilables dealing with one another. The issue of Whether the chance to do the kind of thing that you're talking about futura, to just transfer, train graffiti to Canvas may not have created great art in all respects. But the paradox was that it gave an opportunity to kids who wouldn't have had it. Otherwise, what they were able to Henry Chalfant the futura did it the other way around. He painted a abstract expressionist sort of mural on a train several of them because the posse mentality of the graffiti artist is rather narrow in what what is acceptable as graffiti art form, you know, the way it's supposed to be. And it took somebody with a whole new vision like futura to come back and put something else entirely different on the train and be respected for it. Futura 2000 See, I'm sorry, I tried to take the word. You know, the whole machismo, this is my name, this is my name. 20 feet tall. This is my name 20 feet tall with a drop shadow, you know, I sort of thought, well, maybe I could tear away the structure of the letter and just sort of leave the form that the colors made. And that could be an interesting vision, a new vision. And what happened to you? Well, I mean, I think immediately people thought it was pretty unique. And then they said, Well, this guy's he's the abstract guy and then all the the associations with Kandinsky and watsco and Matisse and people who had never even heard about. So I guess I did something kind of right back then. But then again, I was just like the other kids, I didn't really know what was going on. Right? It's taking me good decade to figure out what's going on, Robert Lipsyte futura would have emerged, whether he did it on subway cars, or the inside of caves. Kay, now we don't have much time left, has this whole movement, given anything to art in 1990, I mean, other other shards of it, or visions of it, Kay Larson I think it's probably given a lot more to the artists than it has to the art world, the art world is, is always pursuing a narrow focus. And that focus is moved on if you mix the metaphors. And by now, you know that but there are all sorts of artists, there are real estate artists, there are graffiti artists, there are all sorts of artists in the art world now who are doing things that are not considered mainstream. And that's fine. It's just the if you want to talk about the establishment, art world, I think graffiti doesn't exist anymore. Robert Lipsyte It doesn't exist anymore. Kay Larson, Henry Chalfsnt, Futura 2000, Tony silver, graffiti, it's still there and I think it still has some impact on some of our lives. That's the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte. |
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Interview concludes, Host Lipsyte thanks guests.
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Host Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. Show end.
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Credits over graffiti.
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00:28:34 1707.14 |
Funding by Announcer, charitable orgs overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.
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Reel end.
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