This article was downloaded by: [78.45.120.158]
On: 08 August 2015, At: 05:41
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG
Visual Communication Quarterly
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hvcq20
From Subways to Product Labels: The Commercial Incorporation of Hip Hop Graffiti
Kara-Jane Lombard
a
a
School of Media, Culture, and Creative Arts at Curtin University in Western Australia
Published online: 18 Jun 2013.
To cite this article: Kara-Jane Lombard (2013) From Subways to Product Labels: The Commercial Incorporation of Hip Hop Graffiti, Visual Communication Quarterly, 20:2, 91-103, DOI:
10.1080/15551393.2013.801277
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2013.801277
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents,
and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in
this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be
independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other
liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013
Arielle Emmett, PhD, is a journalist and
independent scholar. She can be reached at
aemmettphd@gmail.com or through her website,
http://www.arielleemmett.com.
Construction of Citizenship, Nation, and the Body. New
York: New York University Press.
Danovitch, Sylvia E. (Summer, 1980). The Past
Recaptured? The Photographic Record of the
Internment of Japanese-Americans. Prologue: The
Journal of the National Archives 12:2, 98–99.
Eisenhower, M. (1942, May 16). Letter to Robert
Horton, Director, Division of Information, Office of
Emergency Management. National Archives I:
Washington, DC. Box G-210, Folder 20.001.
Flamiano, D. (2010). Japanese American internment
in popular magazines: Race, citizenship, and gender in
popular magazines. Journalism History, 36(1), 23–35.
Gordon, L. (2006). Dorothea Lange photographs the
Japanese American internment. In L. Gordon & G. Y.
Okihiro (Eds.), Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the
censored images of Japanese American internment. New
York, NY: W.W. Norton. pp. 5–45.
Inada, L. F. (Ed.). (2000). Only what we could carry: The
Japanese American internment experience. Salt Lake City,
UT: Heyday.
Kotchemivoda, C. (March, 2005). Why we say
"cheese": Producing the smile in snapshot photography.
Critical Studies in Media Communication. 22:1, 2–25.
Leong, K. (2008). Envisioning a usable past. In T.
Stewart (Ed.), Placing memory: A photographic exploration
of Japanese American internment. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press.
Linfield, S. (2010). The cruel radiance: Photography and
political violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Muller, E. L. (Ed.). (2012). Colors of confinement: Rare
Kodachrome photographs of Japanese American incarceration
in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press.
Ng, W. (2002). Japanese American internment during
World War II: A history and reference guide. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press.
Robinson, G. (2002). Elusive truth: Four photographers at
Manzanar. Nevada City, CA: Carl Mautz.
Schermerhorn, J. (1990, October 26). Clem Albers,
photographer, is dead at 86. San Francisco Examiner,
p. A-4.
Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. New York, NY:
Picador.
Spicer, E. H., Hansen, A. T., Luomala, K., & Opler, M.
K. (Eds.). (1969). Impounded people: Japanese Americans
in the relocation centers. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press.
Stewart, T. (Ed.). (2008). Placing memory: A photographic
exploration of Japanese American internment. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Pages 91 - 103
From Subways to Product Labels:
The Commercial Incorporation of Hip Hop Graffiti
Once described as a terrorist act, hip-hop graffiti has been increasingly appropriated
by commercial, art, and government institutions.This article explores one aspect of
its mainstreaming, the commercial, breaking with previous scholarship which has
stressed the exploitative and degenerative effect of commercial culture on graffiti. It
refers to creative industries literature and the scholarship of economistTyler Cowen
to demonstrate that although commercial incorporation can change the graffiti
aesthetic and exploit it, increasingly the commercialization of graffiti is a
collaborative process. It also finds that often graffiti writers will compromise in one
area to obtain rewards in another. Despite increased appropriation, it is evident that
ambiguity continues to pervade the meanings of graffiti, indicating that this has not
rendered it insignificant or meaningless.
Kara-Jane Lombard
Figure 1. Piece. Courtesy of the author. Color figure available online.
90 91
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
C
onsidered a signifier of resistance, even
described as a terrorist act (Iveson, 2010,
p. 130), hip-hop graffiti first evolved as a
distinct form in the late 1960s and 1970s
when young people in New York began to
systematically graffiti trains and public buildings.
Since then, its aesthetic codes and stylized images
have disseminated to major cities across America
and throughout the globe, and hip-hop graffiti has
become an increasing part of the mainstream.
Many mature writers have been supportive of the
mainstreaming of graffiti and, as Australian
graffiti writer Phibs says, are interested in “being a
businessman, getting government grants” (cited in
Hamilton, 2001, p. 73). Greek graffiti artist
Jasone (“The artists,” n.d., para 1) described
Chromopolis, the 2004 Summer Olympic Games
graffiti project, as an “opportunity to promote our
work, on a professional level.”
There are three main avenues through which
graffiti has been incorporated into the
mainstream: commercial culture, the art world,
and government institutions. The focus of this
article is on the commercial mainstreaming of
hip-hop graffiti. As BBC writer Jane Hughes
(2000, para 20) notes, “The commercial world is
increasingly being won over by its charms.” This
article analyzes such effect on graffiti culture and
its aesthetic, and examines the different ways in
which graffiti is commercialized by considering
the graffiti writers and companies involved.
Previous work into the commercial incorporation
of graffiti has stressed the exploitative and
degenerative effect of commercial culture but
lacks supporting evidence. This article refers to
creative industries literature and the scholarship
of economist Tyler Cowen to demonstrate that
although commercial incorporation can change
the graffiti aesthetic and exploit it, increasingly
the commercialization of graffiti is a collaborative
process in which graffiti writers are involved in
negotiating how the final piece will look. It also
finds that while graffiti writers may have to
compromise in some ways, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation, and often
graffiti writers will compromise in one area to
obtain rewards in another. The central claim is
that it is necessary to resist a uniform
understanding of incorporation which is a
complex process. Incorporation is not simply a
case of gentrification, corruption, or exploitation,
but has diverse and often contradictory potentials.
The Mainstreaming of Graffiti
The extent to which graffiti is incorporated into
the mainstream, and the manner and
circumstances in which this occurs, is dependent
on context. For instance, in America, graffiti was
first incorporated into the mainstream through
the art world, and then through landlords and
shop owners commissioning “mural” works on
buildings, whereas in Australia graffiti has only
really gained acceptance as an art form during the
past decade. While graffiti has primarily been
incorporated via the market in America,
governmental incorporation is more common in
Australia. This is largely due to the differing
political and economic conditions. Generally in
the United States, private enterprise is preferred
over government intervention, lower taxes over
government programs. On the other hand, in
Australia, the role of government has been much
more central, as Keith Hancock’s Australia, first
published in 1930, claims, Australia’s prevailing
ideology was “the appeal to government as the
instrument of self-realisation” (p. 1).
To begin the discussion of the commercialization
of hip-hop graffiti, it is useful to articulate a
historical discussion of mainstreaming of graffiti
that takes into account two complementary
processes of mainstreaming that have occurred:
the development of graffiti from a crime into an
art and the commercialization of the form. This
contextualizes these processes of mainstreaming
alongside the increasingly stringent measures by
authorities to curb graffiti and discusses the
development of the relationship of graffiti writers
to processes of mainstreaming. Hip-hop graffiti
evolved as a distinct form in the late 1960s and
1970s. With unique forms and functions, hip-hop
graffiti is distinct from gang, racial, folk, political,
and other kinds of graffiti. The graffiti painters
refer to themselves as “writers,” and more
recently, often as “aerosol” or “urban artists.”
During the early 1970s this form of graffiti began
to fuse with the other elements of hip-hop culture,
and it spread rapidly when hundreds of young
people were inspired by a July 1971 New York
Times article about a young graffiti writer called
TAKI 183.
Hip-hop graffiti is comprised of three basic forms:
tags, throw-ups, and pieces. A tag is a stylized
version of a signature, a mark of identification
that is instantly recognizable, and is the most
basic form of graffiti (see Figure 2). There are two
types of tagging: individual and crew. Throw-ups
are large two-dimensional versions of tags. The
outlines of letters are usually drawn in one color
and filled in with another color. The piece, short
for masterpiece, is the most sophisticated kind of
graffiti (see Figure 1). Usually designed and
practiced beforehand in a piecebook, pieces are
most often completed by a crew or several writers.
Pieces can include characters—often poached
from pop culture—as well as words and phrases,
and are of complex design and style, featuring
backgrounds, patterns, and multiple colors.
Graffiti began to infuse the mainstream in the
1970s as it first found its way into the legitimate
art world. A key moment in its incursion into the
mainstream was initiated by the graffiti writers
themselves, when in 1973 a group called the
United Graffiti Artists (UGA) participated in the
first formal showing of graffiti art at the Razor
Gallery in SoHo, New York. The collective had
been formed by sociology student Hugo Martinez
a few years earlier as a forum for writers who
were interested in developing graffiti as an art
form which could be exhibited in legitimate
arenas. Certainly UGA wanted to be artists and
so steered toward galleries, not commercial
products (Miller, 2002, p. 154). Unlike Tricia
Rose (1994), Ivor Miller (2002, p. 154) finds that
some early writers did resist profiting from their
pleasure, turning down commercial contracts in
favor of gallery work. Soon graffiti writers were
involved in art exhibitions and “paintings sold for
over a thousand dollars, and press reports were
generally favourable” (Cresswell, 1996, p. 35),
although in sharp contrast to common views at
the time. At the end of the 1970s Italian art dealer
Claudio Bruni purchased a number of graffiti
canvases, and graffiti was soon sought after by
European art dealers and collectors, and lauded in
the prestigious Art Forum magazine. In 1979
Galleria Medusa in Rome introduced “graffiti
art” to a European audience for the first time.
Struggling with the illegal graffiti epidemic,
government bodies in the United States resisted
referring to hip-hop graffiti as art. As cultural
geographer Timothy Cresswell (1996, p. 33) notes,
the New York City government, “fuming at the
suggestion graffiti should be considered ‘art,’
instituted a series of expensive, and largely
fruitless, antigraffiti campaigns.” During the
1970s and 1980s, authorities considered graffiti
one of the worst urban afflictions and dealt with it
under a broken windows policy. This policy is
based on the belief that one broken window in a
building makes the building appear neglected,
leading to more windows being broken.
Therefore, tolerating graffiti was believed to lead
to an increase in all forms of crime and ultimately
urban decay.
Throughout the 1970s, graffiti pieces became
bigger and more complicated as measures to deal
with it became increasingly stringent. Austin
(2001, p. 245) notes that “by 1977, the MTA
Figure 2. Tagging. Courtesy of the author. Color figure available online.
92 93
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
C
onsidered a signifier of resistance, even
described as a terrorist act (Iveson, 2010,
p. 130), hip-hop graffiti first evolved as a
distinct form in the late 1960s and 1970s
when young people in New York began to
systematically graffiti trains and public buildings.
Since then, its aesthetic codes and stylized images
have disseminated to major cities across America
and throughout the globe, and hip-hop graffiti has
become an increasing part of the mainstream.
Many mature writers have been supportive of the
mainstreaming of graffiti and, as Australian
graffiti writer Phibs says, are interested in “being a
businessman, getting government grants” (cited in
Hamilton, 2001, p. 73). Greek graffiti artist
Jasone (“The artists,” n.d., para 1) described
Chromopolis, the 2004 Summer Olympic Games
graffiti project, as an “opportunity to promote our
work, on a professional level.”
There are three main avenues through which
graffiti has been incorporated into the
mainstream: commercial culture, the art world,
and government institutions. The focus of this
article is on the commercial mainstreaming of
hip-hop graffiti. As BBC writer Jane Hughes
(2000, para 20) notes, “The commercial world is
increasingly being won over by its charms.” This
article analyzes such effect on graffiti culture and
its aesthetic, and examines the different ways in
which graffiti is commercialized by considering
the graffiti writers and companies involved.
Previous work into the commercial incorporation
of graffiti has stressed the exploitative and
degenerative effect of commercial culture but
lacks supporting evidence. This article refers to
creative industries literature and the scholarship
of economist Tyler Cowen to demonstrate that
although commercial incorporation can change
the graffiti aesthetic and exploit it, increasingly
the commercialization of graffiti is a collaborative
process in which graffiti writers are involved in
negotiating how the final piece will look. It also
finds that while graffiti writers may have to
compromise in some ways, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation, and often
graffiti writers will compromise in one area to
obtain rewards in another. The central claim is
that it is necessary to resist a uniform
understanding of incorporation which is a
complex process. Incorporation is not simply a
case of gentrification, corruption, or exploitation,
but has diverse and often contradictory potentials.
The Mainstreaming of Graffiti
The extent to which graffiti is incorporated into
the mainstream, and the manner and
circumstances in which this occurs, is dependent
on context. For instance, in America, graffiti was
first incorporated into the mainstream through
the art world, and then through landlords and
shop owners commissioning “mural” works on
buildings, whereas in Australia graffiti has only
really gained acceptance as an art form during the
past decade. While graffiti has primarily been
incorporated via the market in America,
governmental incorporation is more common in
Australia. This is largely due to the differing
political and economic conditions. Generally in
the United States, private enterprise is preferred
over government intervention, lower taxes over
government programs. On the other hand, in
Australia, the role of government has been much
more central, as Keith Hancock’s Australia, first
published in 1930, claims, Australia’s prevailing
ideology was “the appeal to government as the
instrument of self-realisation” (p. 1).
To begin the discussion of the commercialization
of hip-hop graffiti, it is useful to articulate a
historical discussion of mainstreaming of graffiti
that takes into account two complementary
processes of mainstreaming that have occurred:
the development of graffiti from a crime into an
art and the commercialization of the form. This
contextualizes these processes of mainstreaming
alongside the increasingly stringent measures by
authorities to curb graffiti and discusses the
development of the relationship of graffiti writers
to processes of mainstreaming. Hip-hop graffiti
evolved as a distinct form in the late 1960s and
1970s. With unique forms and functions, hip-hop
graffiti is distinct from gang, racial, folk, political,
and other kinds of graffiti. The graffiti painters
refer to themselves as “writers,” and more
recently, often as “aerosol” or “urban artists.”
During the early 1970s this form of graffiti began
to fuse with the other elements of hip-hop culture,
and it spread rapidly when hundreds of young
people were inspired by a July 1971 New York
Times article about a young graffiti writer called
TAKI 183.
Hip-hop graffiti is comprised of three basic forms:
tags, throw-ups, and pieces. A tag is a stylized
version of a signature, a mark of identification
that is instantly recognizable, and is the most
basic form of graffiti (see Figure 2). There are two
types of tagging: individual and crew. Throw-ups
are large two-dimensional versions of tags. The
outlines of letters are usually drawn in one color
and filled in with another color. The piece, short
for masterpiece, is the most sophisticated kind of
graffiti (see Figure 1). Usually designed and
practiced beforehand in a piecebook, pieces are
most often completed by a crew or several writers.
Pieces can include characters—often poached
from pop culture—as well as words and phrases,
and are of complex design and style, featuring
backgrounds, patterns, and multiple colors.
Graffiti began to infuse the mainstream in the
1970s as it first found its way into the legitimate
art world. A key moment in its incursion into the
mainstream was initiated by the graffiti writers
themselves, when in 1973 a group called the
United Graffiti Artists (UGA) participated in the
first formal showing of graffiti art at the Razor
Gallery in SoHo, New York. The collective had
been formed by sociology student Hugo Martinez
a few years earlier as a forum for writers who
were interested in developing graffiti as an art
form which could be exhibited in legitimate
arenas. Certainly UGA wanted to be artists and
so steered toward galleries, not commercial
products (Miller, 2002, p. 154). Unlike Tricia
Rose (1994), Ivor Miller (2002, p. 154) finds that
some early writers did resist profiting from their
pleasure, turning down commercial contracts in
favor of gallery work. Soon graffiti writers were
involved in art exhibitions and “paintings sold for
over a thousand dollars, and press reports were
generally favourable” (Cresswell, 1996, p. 35),
although in sharp contrast to common views at
the time. At the end of the 1970s Italian art dealer
Claudio Bruni purchased a number of graffiti
canvases, and graffiti was soon sought after by
European art dealers and collectors, and lauded in
the prestigious Art Forum magazine. In 1979
Galleria Medusa in Rome introduced “graffiti
art” to a European audience for the first time.
Struggling with the illegal graffiti epidemic,
government bodies in the United States resisted
referring to hip-hop graffiti as art. As cultural
geographer Timothy Cresswell (1996, p. 33) notes,
the New York City government, “fuming at the
suggestion graffiti should be considered ‘art,’
instituted a series of expensive, and largely
fruitless, antigraffiti campaigns.” During the
1970s and 1980s, authorities considered graffiti
one of the worst urban afflictions and dealt with it
under a broken windows policy. This policy is
based on the belief that one broken window in a
building makes the building appear neglected,
leading to more windows being broken.
Therefore, tolerating graffiti was believed to lead
to an increase in all forms of crime and ultimately
urban decay.
Throughout the 1970s, graffiti pieces became
bigger and more complicated as measures to deal
with it became increasingly stringent. Austin
(2001, p. 245) notes that “by 1977, the MTA
Figure 2. Tagging. Courtesy of the author. Color figure available online.
92 93
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
[Metropolitan Transportation Authority] had
built a $25 million car wash that smeared and
faded (but could not remove) the masterpieces on
the trains and had formed an antigraffiti police
squad.” As a new wave of creativity bloomed in
1977, the MTA introduced polyurethane paint
coverings, an automatic chemical wash known as
“the Buff,” and an enforcement unit known as the
Vandal Squad. While measures were being taken
to eradicate graffiti in America,
interest in graffiti as “high” art quickly
burned out. A 1975 gallery exhibit in
SoHo, with prices ranging from $1,000 to
$3,000, was deemed a disappointment and
the trend spotters, once hot on turning this
public nuisance into a saleable commodity,
turned their appraising eyes elsewhere.
(George, 1998, p. 12)
Graffiti’s second foray into the art world occurred
in the early 1980s, “after the whole-car trains had
gained international press and the movers and
shakers in the downtown art scene were getting
hip to the dynamics of the culture” (Miller, 2002,
p. 158).
Graffiti’s new prominence has encouraged
some to return to the trains. Others, like
Vulcan, who re-emerged in 1981 after a
six-year hiatus, work primarily on murals
and in commercial art. Futura 2000 and
Dondi, among others, have done work in
fashion design. Fab Five Freddy has sold
pieces to banks. (George, Banes, Flinker, &
Romanowski, 1985, p. 52)
While many writers became famous as “graffiti
artists,” a term first used by UGA in 1972 (Miller,
2002, p. 167), some artists with little connection
to hip-hop graffiti culture (such as Keith Haring,
Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf) were
represented by the media as graffiti artists,
becoming the most famous figures associated with
the culture. The Post-Graffiti exhibition at the
Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1984 was an
early attempt to rebadge graffiti as art. Soon after
that, however, graffiti began to recede into the
underground. Austin (2001) explains that
despite good reviews, the “Post-Graffiti”
show at Janis marked the decline of the
mainstream New York City art world’s
fascination with writers as canvas-painters.
Gallery owners had already stopped
buying new paintings before the Janis show
was hung, and they had a difficult time
selling those already in stock. (p. 192)
Graffiti writer Mare 139 recalls seeing cartoon
characters shown Barney Rubble and Fred
Flintstone b-boying in commercials during the
early 1980s, as well as a range of graffiti toys and
graffiti applications on clothing and in advertising
(Miller, 2002, p. 175). While many writers refused
to have their work co-opted, just as many pursued
commercial opportunities and studied art
traditionally, so clearly not all writers were against
graffiti’s relationship with commercial culture. A
further development during this initial phase saw
the first instances of commercial interest in
hip-hop from the late 1980s. At first, only a few
mainstream corporations were willing to associate
with hip-hop, despite the fact that hip-hop music
was becoming increasingly commercialized and
reaching a wider audience.
It was also during this time that graffiti became a
regular part of the commercial mainstream. Ivor
Miller (2002) gives some indication of how this
market relation evolved: “After several years of
the corporate mimicking of New York City urban
youth culture, some companies began to hire
actual writers, dancers, and musicians” (pp.
176–177). After examining books, newspaper and
journal articles, and Internet sites and
interviewing graffiti writers, my research reveals
that graffiti was predominantly inserted into
marketing and advertising through landlords and
shop owners commissioning “mural” work on
buildings. Thus graffiti writers benefited because
they were paid or given paint. This relationship
was also beneficial for landlords and shop owners
who had had trouble keeping their property
graffiti free: those who commissioned a
prominent writer or crew would find that other
graffiti writers would not “go over” this piece.
With the proliferation of legal graffiti, its meaning
has changed in some contexts where it is now
referred to as aerosol art. Since the 1990s graffiti
has been a regular part of the commercial
mainstream, appearing in advertising for
everything from apparel to beverages, food, and
cars. Angela McRobbie’s (2002) work on creative
entrepreneurs is useful in discussing the
commercialization of graffiti. McRobbie outlines
a series of constitutive features of this new model
of work in the creative industries that are useful in
explaining the differences between the
unconventionality of business entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs in the creative sector. She points out
one of the features of this new work is that it
draws on rave culture, leading to a fusion of youth
culture and entrepreneurship: “imported into the
creative sector are elements of youth culture, in
particular those drawn from energetic and
entrepreneurial world of dance and rave culture”
(McRobbie, 2002, p. 519). She states:
The dance/rave culture which came into
being in the late 1980s as a mass
phenomenon has strongly influenced the
shaping and contouring, the energising and
the entrepreneurial “nous” of the new
culture industries. . . . The level of selfgenerated
economic activity which “danceparty-rave”
organisation entailed, served as
a model for many of the activities which
were a recurrent feature of “creative
Britain” in the 1990s. (p. 519)
This rave model of entrepreneurship is certainly
the same model favored by grassroots hip-hop
ventures since the 1970s. It reveals a style of
economic activity that begins not as a career or
means of generating an income but more as a
hobby or promotional activity. This trend has
occurred in the musical elements of hip-hop, the
development of media such as magazines and
websites, as well as in the work of graffiti writers.
As graffiti writer Zephyr explains, he does not get
upset by corporations’ use of graffiti imagery
because
usually a lot of the products centering
around graffiti is being produced from
within the culture, as opposed to the ’80s
when that wasn’t the case. We were very
young and the people who were creating
the business of graffiti were almost always
outsiders. Now we’ve grown up; a lot of us
are entrepreneurs and we’re producing our
own products. That’s a much better
situation. (Cited in Miller, 2002, p. 177)
By creating their own brands and businesses,
graffiti writers are able to profit while
“representing” the culture. New York–based Tats
Cru Inc. have been instrumental in the
commercialization of hip-hop graffiti. Tats Cru is
symptomatic of the way in which those involved
in graffiti are evolving due to its closer
relationship with the mainstream. One of the
most successful aerosol art businesses, Tats Cru
was once a graffiti crew that wrote illegally on
subway trains. Now legitimate aerosol artists, the
group incorporated in the early 1990s and has
been commissioned to do work for a variety of
companies such as small neighborhood businesses
as well as bigger corporations such as Coca-Cola,
Firestone, Reebok, the Bronx Museum of Arts,
and Chivas Regal (see Figures 3 and 4). They
have also been featured in media outlets such as
the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and BBC.
The way in which Tats Cru work is very much
like others working in the creative industries
today, which breaks old working patterns
(McRobbie 2002), instead involving “holding
down three or even four ‘projects’ at once . . .
[which are] usually short term” (p. 519). This is
part of a broader trend in which “the new relation
between art and economics marks a break with
past anti-commercial notions of being creative”
(p. 521). The recontextualization of graffiti as
aerosol art has disrupted notions that equate
crime with authenticity, and it means that graffiti
writers have had to redefine notions of
authenticity. For many writers, this has meant a
weakened connection between illegality and
authenticity, allowing them to become involved in
legal projects.
While it is certainly easier to make a living from
graffiti nowadays, especially in the United States
where graffiti writers such as Man One and crews
like Tats Cru are able to do it full time, the
mainstreaming of hip-hop graffiti in Australia is
significantly different to that of the United States.
On the whole, developments in the United States
tend to be formed by market relations, while in
Australia mainstreaming occurs primarily through
government. There is an aerosol market in
Australia, however, although not as well
developed as the one in the States, and
commercial projects tend to come from small
businesses and private commissions. Some writers
have started businesses that combine their
expertise in graffiti with other elements.
Australian graffiti writer Andrew Bourke started
Figures 3 and 4. Tats Cru pieces for Coke. Courtesy of Tats Cru. Color figures available online.
94 95
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
[Metropolitan Transportation Authority] had
built a $25 million car wash that smeared and
faded (but could not remove) the masterpieces on
the trains and had formed an antigraffiti police
squad.” As a new wave of creativity bloomed in
1977, the MTA introduced polyurethane paint
coverings, an automatic chemical wash known as
“the Buff,” and an enforcement unit known as the
Vandal Squad. While measures were being taken
to eradicate graffiti in America,
interest in graffiti as “high” art quickly
burned out. A 1975 gallery exhibit in
SoHo, with prices ranging from $1,000 to
$3,000, was deemed a disappointment and
the trend spotters, once hot on turning this
public nuisance into a saleable commodity,
turned their appraising eyes elsewhere.
(George, 1998, p. 12)
Graffiti’s second foray into the art world occurred
in the early 1980s, “after the whole-car trains had
gained international press and the movers and
shakers in the downtown art scene were getting
hip to the dynamics of the culture” (Miller, 2002,
p. 158).
Graffiti’s new prominence has encouraged
some to return to the trains. Others, like
Vulcan, who re-emerged in 1981 after a
six-year hiatus, work primarily on murals
and in commercial art. Futura 2000 and
Dondi, among others, have done work in
fashion design. Fab Five Freddy has sold
pieces to banks. (George, Banes, Flinker, &
Romanowski, 1985, p. 52)
While many writers became famous as “graffiti
artists,” a term first used by UGA in 1972 (Miller,
2002, p. 167), some artists with little connection
to hip-hop graffiti culture (such as Keith Haring,
Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf) were
represented by the media as graffiti artists,
becoming the most famous figures associated with
the culture. The Post-Graffiti exhibition at the
Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1984 was an
early attempt to rebadge graffiti as art. Soon after
that, however, graffiti began to recede into the
underground. Austin (2001) explains that
despite good reviews, the “Post-Graffiti”
show at Janis marked the decline of the
mainstream New York City art world’s
fascination with writers as canvas-painters.
Gallery owners had already stopped
buying new paintings before the Janis show
was hung, and they had a difficult time
selling those already in stock. (p. 192)
Graffiti writer Mare 139 recalls seeing cartoon
characters shown Barney Rubble and Fred
Flintstone b-boying in commercials during the
early 1980s, as well as a range of graffiti toys and
graffiti applications on clothing and in advertising
(Miller, 2002, p. 175). While many writers refused
to have their work co-opted, just as many pursued
commercial opportunities and studied art
traditionally, so clearly not all writers were against
graffiti’s relationship with commercial culture. A
further development during this initial phase saw
the first instances of commercial interest in
hip-hop from the late 1980s. At first, only a few
mainstream corporations were willing to associate
with hip-hop, despite the fact that hip-hop music
was becoming increasingly commercialized and
reaching a wider audience.
It was also during this time that graffiti became a
regular part of the commercial mainstream. Ivor
Miller (2002) gives some indication of how this
market relation evolved: “After several years of
the corporate mimicking of New York City urban
youth culture, some companies began to hire
actual writers, dancers, and musicians” (pp.
176–177). After examining books, newspaper and
journal articles, and Internet sites and
interviewing graffiti writers, my research reveals
that graffiti was predominantly inserted into
marketing and advertising through landlords and
shop owners commissioning “mural” work on
buildings. Thus graffiti writers benefited because
they were paid or given paint. This relationship
was also beneficial for landlords and shop owners
who had had trouble keeping their property
graffiti free: those who commissioned a
prominent writer or crew would find that other
graffiti writers would not “go over” this piece.
With the proliferation of legal graffiti, its meaning
has changed in some contexts where it is now
referred to as aerosol art. Since the 1990s graffiti
has been a regular part of the commercial
mainstream, appearing in advertising for
everything from apparel to beverages, food, and
cars. Angela McRobbie’s (2002) work on creative
entrepreneurs is useful in discussing the
commercialization of graffiti. McRobbie outlines
a series of constitutive features of this new model
of work in the creative industries that are useful in
explaining the differences between the
unconventionality of business entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs in the creative sector. She points out
one of the features of this new work is that it
draws on rave culture, leading to a fusion of youth
culture and entrepreneurship: “imported into the
creative sector are elements of youth culture, in
particular those drawn from energetic and
entrepreneurial world of dance and rave culture”
(McRobbie, 2002, p. 519). She states:
The dance/rave culture which came into
being in the late 1980s as a mass
phenomenon has strongly influenced the
shaping and contouring, the energising and
the entrepreneurial “nous” of the new
culture industries. . . . The level of selfgenerated
economic activity which “danceparty-rave”
organisation entailed, served as
a model for many of the activities which
were a recurrent feature of “creative
Britain” in the 1990s. (p. 519)
This rave model of entrepreneurship is certainly
the same model favored by grassroots hip-hop
ventures since the 1970s. It reveals a style of
economic activity that begins not as a career or
means of generating an income but more as a
hobby or promotional activity. This trend has
occurred in the musical elements of hip-hop, the
development of media such as magazines and
websites, as well as in the work of graffiti writers.
As graffiti writer Zephyr explains, he does not get
upset by corporations’ use of graffiti imagery
because
usually a lot of the products centering
around graffiti is being produced from
within the culture, as opposed to the ’80s
when that wasn’t the case. We were very
young and the people who were creating
the business of graffiti were almost always
outsiders. Now we’ve grown up; a lot of us
are entrepreneurs and we’re producing our
own products. That’s a much better
situation. (Cited in Miller, 2002, p. 177)
By creating their own brands and businesses,
graffiti writers are able to profit while
“representing” the culture. New York–based Tats
Cru Inc. have been instrumental in the
commercialization of hip-hop graffiti. Tats Cru is
symptomatic of the way in which those involved
in graffiti are evolving due to its closer
relationship with the mainstream. One of the
most successful aerosol art businesses, Tats Cru
was once a graffiti crew that wrote illegally on
subway trains. Now legitimate aerosol artists, the
group incorporated in the early 1990s and has
been commissioned to do work for a variety of
companies such as small neighborhood businesses
as well as bigger corporations such as Coca-Cola,
Firestone, Reebok, the Bronx Museum of Arts,
and Chivas Regal (see Figures 3 and 4). They
have also been featured in media outlets such as
the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and BBC.
The way in which Tats Cru work is very much
like others working in the creative industries
today, which breaks old working patterns
(McRobbie 2002), instead involving “holding
down three or even four ‘projects’ at once . . .
[which are] usually short term” (p. 519). This is
part of a broader trend in which “the new relation
between art and economics marks a break with
past anti-commercial notions of being creative”
(p. 521). The recontextualization of graffiti as
aerosol art has disrupted notions that equate
crime with authenticity, and it means that graffiti
writers have had to redefine notions of
authenticity. For many writers, this has meant a
weakened connection between illegality and
authenticity, allowing them to become involved in
legal projects.
While it is certainly easier to make a living from
graffiti nowadays, especially in the United States
where graffiti writers such as Man One and crews
like Tats Cru are able to do it full time, the
mainstreaming of hip-hop graffiti in Australia is
significantly different to that of the United States.
On the whole, developments in the United States
tend to be formed by market relations, while in
Australia mainstreaming occurs primarily through
government. There is an aerosol market in
Australia, however, although not as well
developed as the one in the States, and
commercial projects tend to come from small
businesses and private commissions. Some writers
have started businesses that combine their
expertise in graffiti with other elements.
Australian graffiti writer Andrew Bourke started
Figures 3 and 4. Tats Cru pieces for Coke. Courtesy of Tats Cru. Color figures available online.
94 95
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
KomplexGraphix, a business which combines
classic graphic design with street art and graffiti in
creating signage and advertising. A similar
situation exists in New Zealand. As Jonny
Wartman (“Graffiti Artist Jonny Wartman,” n.d.)
explains, he was inspired to start Disruptiv after
returning from Europe, where he was
lucky enough stay and paint with some of
the best graf artists in the world. I met all
these guys who were professional graf
artists, running businesses, just the level
hip-hop was at operating over there all
together was an inspirational kick in the
ass. (para. 2)
While governments utilizing the alternative
approach and the art world have been intent on
transforming graffiti vandalism into aerosol art,
mainstream and commercial brands have relied
on graffiti (and the other elements of hip-hop)
remaining signs of resistance. At the same time,
while graffiti is increasingly a part of the
mainstream, it is facing escalating criminalization
as governments deal with it in an increasingly
stringent manner. It is interesting to note that
while the meanings and aesthetics of graffiti have
evolved, the debate over whether graffiti is art or
crime has persisted. As Timothy Cresswell (1996,
p. 52) noted, “It is surely paradoxical that the
same act (painting a stylized logo) can be at once
reviled and admired, removed and preserved.” As
graffiti continues to blur the boundaries between
art and crime, its meanings are still somewhat
contested.
Contemporary graffiti writers further complicate
this paradox by being involved in both legal and
illegal graffiti. This is particularly true for those
who are able to do more complex forms of
graffiti: while taggers tend to remain in the illegal
element, those able to do pieces have more
opportunities available to them for legal work and
tend to feel limited by illegality as they mature.
There is certainly a reluctance to consider tagging
as art, although as a signifier of resistance it is
often incorporated in advertising. The graffiti
writer or street artist has always had to negotiate
the ambivalences that exist at the edges of legality
(Lachmann, 1988); however, these contradictions
have only intensified. Although having been
involved in numerous legal schemes, including
private commissions, exhibitions such as Word at
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in
1999, graffiti demonstrations, hip-hop jams,
workshops, youth festivals, and council schemes
(personal communication with Amuck 37, April
28, 2005), Australian writer Amuck 37 remains a
prolific illegal writer. He explains that he is
well-rounded in this respect: “I like doing
‘legals,’ 1
I like doing ‘illegals,’2
I like bombing, I
like, you know, taking photos, and I also like
doing legal council work, and I like getting paid
for doing legals as well” (personal communication
with Amuck 37, July 3, 2004). Amuck adds that
after completing a legal piece, graffiti writers often
go out and do “the real thing”—illegal graffiti.
He considers it important to be involved in a
variety of aspects of graffiti.
Commercial Incorporation
This section presents a more in-depth analysis of
the commercial incorporation of graffiti. It
utilizes creative industries literature and the work
of Tyler Cowen to explore various processes of
commercialization of graffiti and argues that
although commercial incorporation can change
the graffiti aesthetic and exploit it, increasingly
the commercialization of graffiti is a collaborative
process in which graffiti writers are involved in
negotiating how the final piece will look. While it
is possible to explore examples of graffiti writers
who are now employed as graphic designers or in
industries such as fashion, this discussion is
limited to those who are still primarily involved in
producing hip-hop graffiti style for various types
of commissioned works from signage to
advertising to private murals.
Those who have explored the commercial
incorporation of graffiti have argued that it
renders graffiti meaningless. For example, Lynn
Powers’s (1996) article, “Whatever Happened to
the Graffiti Art Movement?,” argues that graffiti
has become devoid of meaning (p. 141). She
believes that graffiti’s move into the commercial
scene is an example of “a successful art
movement within a subculture that was subverted
by a dominant culture” (p. 142). Similarly, Susan
Stewart (1994) argues that as graffiti has moved to
canvas and gallery space, it has been rendered
acceptable, readable, and apprehensible (p. 225).
There are a number of problems with the work of
Power and Stewart, however. First, they do not
acknowledge that graffiti artists continue to
pursue commercial opportunities despite the fact
that commercial culture apparently exploits and
degrades graffiti. Also, as discussed earlier, Phibs
has indicated there is a tendency for graffiti
writers to graduate from illegal graffiti to being
more business oriented as they get older. Last,
and most significant, Powers and Stewart offer no
evidence that commercial culture exploits or
degrades graffiti or graffiti culture.
To conduct a more detailed analysis of the
commercial incorporation of graffiti, the creative
industries literature provides a useful point from
which to begin. As John Hartley and Stewart
Cunningham (2001, p. 4) state, “creative
Figure 6. Moizie
please stop biting me.
Courtesy of the
author. Color figure
available online.
industries” is an idea whose time has come; it
“suits the political, cultural and technological
landscape of these times,” and it is a concept that
combines and radically transforms the two
existing terms of creative arts and cultural
industries to produce the creative industries (p. 2).
Creative industries is a reaction to the former
polarized opposition of commerce and creativity.
To understand why the creative industries concept
is seen as so radical, it must be noted that civic
humanism and cultural conservatives such as
Geoffrey Faber, F. R. Leavis, and Queenie Leavis
have left a lasting impact, which has resulted in an
opposition between culture or creativity and
commerce. To develop an account of the rise of
the creative industries that challenges such
notions, it is necessary to first examine the rubric
of the cultural industries.
American economic geographer Richard Florida
(2003, p. 201), in his study of the creative class,
remarks that “most good graffiti artists and
rappers are like good artists of any kind. The
mainly want to hone their skills and do their art . .
. if they can make money in the process, that’s
wonderful.” Angela McRobbie (2002, p. 521)
concurs: “to have seemingly circumvented
‘unhappy work’ and to have come upon a way or
earning a living without the feeling of being
robbed of identity is a social phenomenon worthy
Figure 5. Amuck hears
noises while painting.
Courtesy of the author.
Color figure available
online.
96 97
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
KomplexGraphix, a business which combines
classic graphic design with street art and graffiti in
creating signage and advertising. A similar
situation exists in New Zealand. As Jonny
Wartman (“Graffiti Artist Jonny Wartman,” n.d.)
explains, he was inspired to start Disruptiv after
returning from Europe, where he was
lucky enough stay and paint with some of
the best graf artists in the world. I met all
these guys who were professional graf
artists, running businesses, just the level
hip-hop was at operating over there all
together was an inspirational kick in the
ass. (para. 2)
While governments utilizing the alternative
approach and the art world have been intent on
transforming graffiti vandalism into aerosol art,
mainstream and commercial brands have relied
on graffiti (and the other elements of hip-hop)
remaining signs of resistance. At the same time,
while graffiti is increasingly a part of the
mainstream, it is facing escalating criminalization
as governments deal with it in an increasingly
stringent manner. It is interesting to note that
while the meanings and aesthetics of graffiti have
evolved, the debate over whether graffiti is art or
crime has persisted. As Timothy Cresswell (1996,
p. 52) noted, “It is surely paradoxical that the
same act (painting a stylized logo) can be at once
reviled and admired, removed and preserved.” As
graffiti continues to blur the boundaries between
art and crime, its meanings are still somewhat
contested.
Contemporary graffiti writers further complicate
this paradox by being involved in both legal and
illegal graffiti. This is particularly true for those
who are able to do more complex forms of
graffiti: while taggers tend to remain in the illegal
element, those able to do pieces have more
opportunities available to them for legal work and
tend to feel limited by illegality as they mature.
There is certainly a reluctance to consider tagging
as art, although as a signifier of resistance it is
often incorporated in advertising. The graffiti
writer or street artist has always had to negotiate
the ambivalences that exist at the edges of legality
(Lachmann, 1988); however, these contradictions
have only intensified. Although having been
involved in numerous legal schemes, including
private commissions, exhibitions such as Word at
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in
1999, graffiti demonstrations, hip-hop jams,
workshops, youth festivals, and council schemes
(personal communication with Amuck 37, April
28, 2005), Australian writer Amuck 37 remains a
prolific illegal writer. He explains that he is
well-rounded in this respect: “I like doing
‘legals,’ 1
I like doing ‘illegals,’2
I like bombing, I
like, you know, taking photos, and I also like
doing legal council work, and I like getting paid
for doing legals as well” (personal communication
with Amuck 37, July 3, 2004). Amuck adds that
after completing a legal piece, graffiti writers often
go out and do “the real thing”—illegal graffiti.
He considers it important to be involved in a
variety of aspects of graffiti.
Commercial Incorporation
This section presents a more in-depth analysis of
the commercial incorporation of graffiti. It
utilizes creative industries literature and the work
of Tyler Cowen to explore various processes of
commercialization of graffiti and argues that
although commercial incorporation can change
the graffiti aesthetic and exploit it, increasingly
the commercialization of graffiti is a collaborative
process in which graffiti writers are involved in
negotiating how the final piece will look. While it
is possible to explore examples of graffiti writers
who are now employed as graphic designers or in
industries such as fashion, this discussion is
limited to those who are still primarily involved in
producing hip-hop graffiti style for various types
of commissioned works from signage to
advertising to private murals.
Those who have explored the commercial
incorporation of graffiti have argued that it
renders graffiti meaningless. For example, Lynn
Powers’s (1996) article, “Whatever Happened to
the Graffiti Art Movement?,” argues that graffiti
has become devoid of meaning (p. 141). She
believes that graffiti’s move into the commercial
scene is an example of “a successful art
movement within a subculture that was subverted
by a dominant culture” (p. 142). Similarly, Susan
Stewart (1994) argues that as graffiti has moved to
canvas and gallery space, it has been rendered
acceptable, readable, and apprehensible (p. 225).
There are a number of problems with the work of
Power and Stewart, however. First, they do not
acknowledge that graffiti artists continue to
pursue commercial opportunities despite the fact
that commercial culture apparently exploits and
degrades graffiti. Also, as discussed earlier, Phibs
has indicated there is a tendency for graffiti
writers to graduate from illegal graffiti to being
more business oriented as they get older. Last,
and most significant, Powers and Stewart offer no
evidence that commercial culture exploits or
degrades graffiti or graffiti culture.
To conduct a more detailed analysis of the
commercial incorporation of graffiti, the creative
industries literature provides a useful point from
which to begin. As John Hartley and Stewart
Cunningham (2001, p. 4) state, “creative
Figure 6. Moizie
please stop biting me.
Courtesy of the
author. Color figure
available online.
industries” is an idea whose time has come; it
“suits the political, cultural and technological
landscape of these times,” and it is a concept that
combines and radically transforms the two
existing terms of creative arts and cultural
industries to produce the creative industries (p. 2).
Creative industries is a reaction to the former
polarized opposition of commerce and creativity.
To understand why the creative industries concept
is seen as so radical, it must be noted that civic
humanism and cultural conservatives such as
Geoffrey Faber, F. R. Leavis, and Queenie Leavis
have left a lasting impact, which has resulted in an
opposition between culture or creativity and
commerce. To develop an account of the rise of
the creative industries that challenges such
notions, it is necessary to first examine the rubric
of the cultural industries.
American economic geographer Richard Florida
(2003, p. 201), in his study of the creative class,
remarks that “most good graffiti artists and
rappers are like good artists of any kind. The
mainly want to hone their skills and do their art . .
. if they can make money in the process, that’s
wonderful.” Angela McRobbie (2002, p. 521)
concurs: “to have seemingly circumvented
‘unhappy work’ and to have come upon a way or
earning a living without the feeling of being
robbed of identity is a social phenomenon worthy
Figure 5. Amuck hears
noises while painting.
Courtesy of the author.
Color figure available
online.
96 97
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
of sociological attention.” The commercial
incorporation of graffiti is not quite as simple as
Florida would have us believe. The proliferation
of legal opportunities has meant changes to
graffiti culture. For instance, following the success
artists such as Shepard Fairey and Banksy, graffiti
writers command a notoriety that extends well
beyond the subculture, challenging assumptions
that graffiti is fueled largely by subcultural
recognition. Recontextualized onto product
labels, on clothing, and into advertising changes
graffiti, thus legal graffiti is not only displaced
from its location but also from another important
aspect of the graffiti aesthetic: its mode of
production. As Banksy (2005, p. 205) articulates,
“The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get
access to the site as much as it is in the art. . . .
Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to
convey his insanity—I use short, thin ledges above
mainline train tracks.”
The commercial incorporation of graffiti has
meant changes not just to the culture and craft but
also to its aesthetic. The evaluative comments
often put up alongside illegal graffiti (such as
“sorry about the drips” and “cheap paint”) are
absent from legal pieces, as are comments
describing the circumstances in which the graffiti
was done, such as “too late, too tired,” “my hands
were cold,” “nineteen years old, nineteen years
young, someone is here so let’s all run” (see
Figures 5 and 6). A further change in the graffiti
aesthetic when it occurs in legal contexts is in
terms of style. Advertising and product labels
tend to privilege tagging style over complicated
lettering forms such as wildstyle and 3-D,
rendering graffiti readable and comprehensible
(see Figure 7).
In commercial contexts, illegal graffiti style
(which places great importance on names and
individuality) is transformed, rendering the graffiti
writer nameless and anonymous. Graffiti writers
realize that outsiders are unable to understand the
graffiti aesthetic. As Amuck puts it,
If we’re going to paint some high profile
area I would basically just look at actual
painting and go, “Okay. Should I do an
intricate piece, or a shall I do a public style
piece?” Public style piece is basically
readable; wildstyle is something very
intricate that the public just looks at and
goes, “That looks like shit because I can’t
read it.” All right, to us it looks like a mad
piece, but to them it looks like this big wild
abstract pattern. (Personal communication,
July 3, 2004)
As Stewart (1994) notes, “The more illegible or
‘wildstyle’, the writing, the stronger is the public’s
assumption that the message must be obscene” (p.
219), although it must be noted that hip-hop
graffiti is rarely obscene. The implication of
commercial culture’s celebrating of tagging,
despised by the public and many graffiti writers,
has yet to be realized, but it is already obvious
that contemporary graffiti writers are more likely
to be taggers than the artistic writers of the 1970s
and 1980s. Kurt Iveson concurs that graffiti will
continue in a less sophisticated form (2009, p. 25;
2010, p. 129). Also, while graffiti culture
encourages unique and individual styles,
commercial culture encourages a uniform tagging
style, rendering graffiti dull and easily
reproducible.
Florida’s comments also fail to recognize the
various processes of commercialization of graffiti.
There is top-down commercialization of graffiti,
where commercial culture favors a generic kind of
tagging that can be generated with computer
programs. As Sterling Downey (cited in Woodley,
2003, para. 16), graffiti artist and co-organizer of
the Under Pressure hip-hop event in Canada,
argues, “Corporations exploit graffiti imagery and
give nothing back to the community.” Some
corporations have developed credibility by
working with those involved in graffiti culture and
not exploiting the style on a superficial level but,
as Downey notes, that kind of support is not as
common in countries outside of the United
States. He approached numerous companies in
2003, including Fuji, to sponsor Under Pressure,
and was refused. Even seemingly supportive
corporations such as Nike and Adidas were not
interested. “The events in other countries are
being financed majorly” (para 14), said Downey,
“whereas it’s encountering all these financial
barriers in Canada. They come out with a
campaign with graffiti in it and when you say ‘I
want to get on board,’ they say, ‘No no, we do our
own things’” (cited in Woodley, 2003, para 14).
On the other side of the spectrum are companies
who do give back to the graffiti community. One
company that has developed credibility by
working with those involved in graffiti culture is
Coca-Cola, which has commissioned hundreds of
writers to paint aerosol art murals across America
over the past ten years. In 2002 the NoGraf
Network, which is involved in combating graffiti
globally, wrote to the CEO of Coca-Cola,
outlining its concerns about the company’s
aerosol art initiatives. The NoGraf Network was
specifically concerned about Sprite sponsoring a
national program to highlight aerosol art as well
as the Art of Harmony, art competition which
transforms the winning works into aerosol murals.
Coca-Cola responded to the NoGraf Network
saying there is a difference between “mural
tagging and street graffiti” (Robinson, 2002, para
2). It explained that the aerosol art lessons given
as part of Sprite’s Liquid Mix Tour focused “on
the artistic style of graffiti and how it can be
applied to more appropriate mediums” (para 2).
Coca-Cola also added that the Art of Harmony
murals are for the “express purpose of beautifying
the neighborhoods and are not acts of vandalism.
In fact, most locations are chosen in order to
replace unsightly graffiti” (para 1).
Man One is one of the aerosol artists who
completed murals for Coca-Cola’s Art of Harmony
initiative. Since 1996, he has painted various other
murals for Coca-Cola around America, including
“Paint the Town Red” in Southern California and
“The World of Coke” in Georgia and Nevada.
He first became involved in graffiti in 1987,
writing tags and his trademark colorful pieces
around Los Angeles. After completing a degree in
fine arts, he set about changing the way the world
interprets graffiti. Man One’s commissioned
works for MTV, IBM, Adidas, and Sony, among
others, has made him influential in graffiti’s move
from graffiti into aerosol art (Man One, n.d.).
This is a collaborative commercialization where
corporations and graffiti writers work together to
create a piece. Graffiti writer Zephyr explains how
this is a more positive process of
commercialisation: “It’s nice when corporations
go to the real people as opposed to asking art
directors and illustrators to co-opt the imagery
that’s synonymous with this culture” (Miller,
2002, p. 177).
The fact that graffiti writers are increasingly being
hired for advertising and marketing campaigns
instead of the superficial appropriation of graffiti
style is indicative of a more positive process of
commercialization; however it is important to be
cautious about such an argument. In this regard,
Richard Caves’ (2000, p. 4) study of the
organization of creative industries is useful
because he explores the problems that arise from
“coupling creative effort with humdrum
commerce.” Caves points out that
the view of creative inspiration inherited
from romanticism holds that the artist
creates out of inner necessity . . . asked to
cooperate with humdrum partners in some
production process, the artist is disposed to
forswear compromise and to resist making
commitments about future acts of artistic
creation or accepting limitations on them.
The rub is that resources are scare, and
compromise is unavoidable. (p. 4)
It is certainly true that graffiti writers hired by
companies are often forced to compromise. For
example, when New Zealand graffiti writer Jonny
Wartman of Disruptiv Limited (a company
started by two graffiti writers specializing in
permissioned and commissioned graffiti works)
was involved in a Vodaphone commercial, he
found that “we just had to follow their direction
with little creative input” (“Graffiti Artist Jonny
Wartman,” n.d., para 10).
However, compromise is not as distasteful as it
might seem, and here it is necessary to reexamine
the arguments of Richard Florida. Noting the
“acute shortages of factory workers across the
United States” (Florida, 2003, p. 85), Florida
asked his students at Carnegie Mellon if they had
only two career choices open to them, where
would they rather work: in a machine shop with
high pay and a job for life or a hair salon with less
pay and less stability? (pp. 85–86). Florida found
that repeatedly the hair salon was preferred for
the same reasons: it provides a more stimulating
and cleaner environment, more flexibility, the
chance to work with interesting people, learn new
things, as well as the opportunity to make creative
decisions and see immediate results (p. 85).
Florida explains that “in almost every case, the
content of the job and the nature of the work
environment mattered more than compensation”
(p. 86). He also came to much the same
conclusion through field research and statistical
Figure 7. A Body Glove advertisement utilizes tagging
style. Advertisement courtesy of Body Glove. Color figure
available online.
98 99
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
of sociological attention.” The commercial
incorporation of graffiti is not quite as simple as
Florida would have us believe. The proliferation
of legal opportunities has meant changes to
graffiti culture. For instance, following the success
artists such as Shepard Fairey and Banksy, graffiti
writers command a notoriety that extends well
beyond the subculture, challenging assumptions
that graffiti is fueled largely by subcultural
recognition. Recontextualized onto product
labels, on clothing, and into advertising changes
graffiti, thus legal graffiti is not only displaced
from its location but also from another important
aspect of the graffiti aesthetic: its mode of
production. As Banksy (2005, p. 205) articulates,
“The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get
access to the site as much as it is in the art. . . .
Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to
convey his insanity—I use short, thin ledges above
mainline train tracks.”
The commercial incorporation of graffiti has
meant changes not just to the culture and craft but
also to its aesthetic. The evaluative comments
often put up alongside illegal graffiti (such as
“sorry about the drips” and “cheap paint”) are
absent from legal pieces, as are comments
describing the circumstances in which the graffiti
was done, such as “too late, too tired,” “my hands
were cold,” “nineteen years old, nineteen years
young, someone is here so let’s all run” (see
Figures 5 and 6). A further change in the graffiti
aesthetic when it occurs in legal contexts is in
terms of style. Advertising and product labels
tend to privilege tagging style over complicated
lettering forms such as wildstyle and 3-D,
rendering graffiti readable and comprehensible
(see Figure 7).
In commercial contexts, illegal graffiti style
(which places great importance on names and
individuality) is transformed, rendering the graffiti
writer nameless and anonymous. Graffiti writers
realize that outsiders are unable to understand the
graffiti aesthetic. As Amuck puts it,
If we’re going to paint some high profile
area I would basically just look at actual
painting and go, “Okay. Should I do an
intricate piece, or a shall I do a public style
piece?” Public style piece is basically
readable; wildstyle is something very
intricate that the public just looks at and
goes, “That looks like shit because I can’t
read it.” All right, to us it looks like a mad
piece, but to them it looks like this big wild
abstract pattern. (Personal communication,
July 3, 2004)
As Stewart (1994) notes, “The more illegible or
‘wildstyle’, the writing, the stronger is the public’s
assumption that the message must be obscene” (p.
219), although it must be noted that hip-hop
graffiti is rarely obscene. The implication of
commercial culture’s celebrating of tagging,
despised by the public and many graffiti writers,
has yet to be realized, but it is already obvious
that contemporary graffiti writers are more likely
to be taggers than the artistic writers of the 1970s
and 1980s. Kurt Iveson concurs that graffiti will
continue in a less sophisticated form (2009, p. 25;
2010, p. 129). Also, while graffiti culture
encourages unique and individual styles,
commercial culture encourages a uniform tagging
style, rendering graffiti dull and easily
reproducible.
Florida’s comments also fail to recognize the
various processes of commercialization of graffiti.
There is top-down commercialization of graffiti,
where commercial culture favors a generic kind of
tagging that can be generated with computer
programs. As Sterling Downey (cited in Woodley,
2003, para. 16), graffiti artist and co-organizer of
the Under Pressure hip-hop event in Canada,
argues, “Corporations exploit graffiti imagery and
give nothing back to the community.” Some
corporations have developed credibility by
working with those involved in graffiti culture and
not exploiting the style on a superficial level but,
as Downey notes, that kind of support is not as
common in countries outside of the United
States. He approached numerous companies in
2003, including Fuji, to sponsor Under Pressure,
and was refused. Even seemingly supportive
corporations such as Nike and Adidas were not
interested. “The events in other countries are
being financed majorly” (para 14), said Downey,
“whereas it’s encountering all these financial
barriers in Canada. They come out with a
campaign with graffiti in it and when you say ‘I
want to get on board,’ they say, ‘No no, we do our
own things’” (cited in Woodley, 2003, para 14).
On the other side of the spectrum are companies
who do give back to the graffiti community. One
company that has developed credibility by
working with those involved in graffiti culture is
Coca-Cola, which has commissioned hundreds of
writers to paint aerosol art murals across America
over the past ten years. In 2002 the NoGraf
Network, which is involved in combating graffiti
globally, wrote to the CEO of Coca-Cola,
outlining its concerns about the company’s
aerosol art initiatives. The NoGraf Network was
specifically concerned about Sprite sponsoring a
national program to highlight aerosol art as well
as the Art of Harmony, art competition which
transforms the winning works into aerosol murals.
Coca-Cola responded to the NoGraf Network
saying there is a difference between “mural
tagging and street graffiti” (Robinson, 2002, para
2). It explained that the aerosol art lessons given
as part of Sprite’s Liquid Mix Tour focused “on
the artistic style of graffiti and how it can be
applied to more appropriate mediums” (para 2).
Coca-Cola also added that the Art of Harmony
murals are for the “express purpose of beautifying
the neighborhoods and are not acts of vandalism.
In fact, most locations are chosen in order to
replace unsightly graffiti” (para 1).
Man One is one of the aerosol artists who
completed murals for Coca-Cola’s Art of Harmony
initiative. Since 1996, he has painted various other
murals for Coca-Cola around America, including
“Paint the Town Red” in Southern California and
“The World of Coke” in Georgia and Nevada.
He first became involved in graffiti in 1987,
writing tags and his trademark colorful pieces
around Los Angeles. After completing a degree in
fine arts, he set about changing the way the world
interprets graffiti. Man One’s commissioned
works for MTV, IBM, Adidas, and Sony, among
others, has made him influential in graffiti’s move
from graffiti into aerosol art (Man One, n.d.).
This is a collaborative commercialization where
corporations and graffiti writers work together to
create a piece. Graffiti writer Zephyr explains how
this is a more positive process of
commercialisation: “It’s nice when corporations
go to the real people as opposed to asking art
directors and illustrators to co-opt the imagery
that’s synonymous with this culture” (Miller,
2002, p. 177).
The fact that graffiti writers are increasingly being
hired for advertising and marketing campaigns
instead of the superficial appropriation of graffiti
style is indicative of a more positive process of
commercialization; however it is important to be
cautious about such an argument. In this regard,
Richard Caves’ (2000, p. 4) study of the
organization of creative industries is useful
because he explores the problems that arise from
“coupling creative effort with humdrum
commerce.” Caves points out that
the view of creative inspiration inherited
from romanticism holds that the artist
creates out of inner necessity . . . asked to
cooperate with humdrum partners in some
production process, the artist is disposed to
forswear compromise and to resist making
commitments about future acts of artistic
creation or accepting limitations on them.
The rub is that resources are scare, and
compromise is unavoidable. (p. 4)
It is certainly true that graffiti writers hired by
companies are often forced to compromise. For
example, when New Zealand graffiti writer Jonny
Wartman of Disruptiv Limited (a company
started by two graffiti writers specializing in
permissioned and commissioned graffiti works)
was involved in a Vodaphone commercial, he
found that “we just had to follow their direction
with little creative input” (“Graffiti Artist Jonny
Wartman,” n.d., para 10).
However, compromise is not as distasteful as it
might seem, and here it is necessary to reexamine
the arguments of Richard Florida. Noting the
“acute shortages of factory workers across the
United States” (Florida, 2003, p. 85), Florida
asked his students at Carnegie Mellon if they had
only two career choices open to them, where
would they rather work: in a machine shop with
high pay and a job for life or a hair salon with less
pay and less stability? (pp. 85–86). Florida found
that repeatedly the hair salon was preferred for
the same reasons: it provides a more stimulating
and cleaner environment, more flexibility, the
chance to work with interesting people, learn new
things, as well as the opportunity to make creative
decisions and see immediate results (p. 85).
Florida explains that “in almost every case, the
content of the job and the nature of the work
environment mattered more than compensation”
(p. 86). He also came to much the same
conclusion through field research and statistical
Figure 7. A Body Glove advertisement utilizes tagging
style. Advertisement courtesy of Body Glove. Color figure
available online.
98 99
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
studies. To summarize Florida’s point: people are
increasingly interested in more than pecuniary
compensation in employment. As Florida (2003)
puts it, money “is important, but not the whole
story. Creative people want challenging work and
the ability to do their jobs flexibly” (p. 98). Thus it
seems that creative people are willing to
compromise in some respects to gain intrinsic
rewards. Graffiti writer Amuck confirms this:
If I have to do what they want me to do, I
put a price on it, a very nice one. And if I
get creative control where I get to do
something as well we negotiate a price that
is not too unreasonable, but it’s like they’re
getting a good deal and I’m getting a good
deal as well. That way I manage to get like
a painting for free and they get the signage
and background and everything at the
same time. And you get a fair few tins
laying around after the actual painting,
plus you know you actually get paid for it,
but if you don’t then you get a few tins out
of it, you get cans. It’s all good, you know.
(Personal communication, April 28, 2005)
While Amuck is concerned with pecuniary
rewards, “getting a painting for free,” and
collecting spare tins of spray paint is just as
valued. When commissioned by the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Sydney for the 1999
exhibition Word, Amuck explains that his main
motivation in accepting the contract was to obtain
paint:
The lady tried to rip me off by taking me to
the Dulux and by saying, “You can paint
this in Dulux.” And I just went, “Stop
wasting my time.” And I went to the
Belton store and spent five grand on
Belton, which was heaps of fun; you can
do that very, very easily in a paint shop.
And then we just walked into the art
gallery with twenty cans, painted for the
whole entire day . . . and walked off with
just over four and a half thousand dollars’
worth of paint. Good deal that one . . .
four and a half grand’s worth of paint is a
lot of paint to play with; it’s just over 540
cans. I think we used twenty or thirty in
the actual piece. (Personal communication,
April 28, 2005)
The work of economist Tyler Cowen is useful in
understanding the more positive processes of
commercial incorporation of graffiti. As Cowen
(1998, p. 10) remarks, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation and
psychological motivations that do not operate
independent of external constraints. He explains
that artists respond to both internal forces (such
as the artist’s love of creating, demands for money
and fame, and the desire to work out styles,
aesthetics, and problems posed by previous
works) and external forces (such as the artistic
materials and media available, the conditions of
patronage, the distribution network, and
opportunities for earning income) (p. 10). Cowen
(1998) adds that “when translated into the
terminology of economics or rational choice
theory, the internal forces correspond to
preferences and external forces represent
opportunities and constraints. These internal and
external forces interact to shape artistic
production” (p. 10).
Cowen sees the capitalist market economy as a
vital but underappreciated institutional
framework for supporting a plurality of
coexisting artistic visions, providing a
steady stream of new and satisfying
creations, helping consumers and artists
refine their tastes, and paying homage to
the eclipsed past by capturing, reproducing,
and disseminating it. (p. 2)
In this way, Cowen disagrees with Adorno and
Horkheimer’s critique of the market’s effect on
cultural production. Like Florida, Cowen is
critical of these “cultural pessimists” who take a
negative view of the market economy’s effect on
culture. He uses “the term ‘market economy’ to
refer more generally to a nexus of voluntary
exchanges” (p. 3) and treats “capitalism in terms
of its underlying economic logic, rather than in
terms of a particular historical epoch, as do many
Marxists” (p. 3) while still acknowledging that
capitalism has not operated in the same fashion
across historical eras (p. 3).
Cowen gives several reasons why the capitalist
market economy is positive. First, he declares that
“the arts tend to flourish in a modern liberal
order” (p. 9). He explains that this is just one of at
least three versions of the cultural optimist
position. The second version
goes further and makes the political
prediction that a liberal order will remain
prominent for many years to come . . .
[while] the third version of cultural
optimism argues that the arts will flourish
precisely because capitalism is doomed and
will be replaced by a superior system, such
as socialism or communism. (p. 9)
Cowen rejects these latter versions, instead
preferring the first. Thomas Frank (1997, p. 295)
is critical of Cowen’s combination of cultural
studies populism and market populism, which has
translated into his “extended celebration of the
benevolence of markets.” Frank certainly has a
point; as mentioned, there are instances of the
superficial exploitation and exploitation of graffiti
by commercial culture. Furthermore, there are
also some weaknesses in Cowen’s argument. For
instance, Cowen (1998, p. 18) claims that
capitalism has “allowed minority groups to
achieve market access, despite systematic
discrimination and persecution. Black rhythm and
blues musicians, when they were turned down by
major record companies, marketed their product
through the independents, such as Chess, Sun,
Stax and Motown.” While this is true to a certain
extent with graffiti, especially in the United
States, Cowen’s perception of capitalism’s effects
on minority groups is oversimplified because the
majority of graffiti writers involved in graffiti
production for the market still need to supplement
their income with other employment.
Despite these weaknesses in his argument, Cowen
is useful in understanding the more positive
processes of commercial incorporation of graffiti.
One area which Cowen is able to illuminate in the
commercialization of graffiti is diversity. Cowen
(1998) asserts that the capitalist market economy
is positive because “market exchange and
capitalism produce diverse art, rather than art that
appeals to one particular set of tastes” (p. 6). He
explains that a well-developed market supports
cultural diversity (p. 14) as “the market brings
crowd-pleasing artists, such as Michael Jackson or
Steven Spielberg, in touch with their audiences,
while at the same time securing niches for more
obscure visions” (p. 6). He adds, “Competition
and complementarity are forces for innovation.
Artists offer new products to increase their
income, their fame, and their audience exposure”
(p. 15). Related to this point is the fact that “a
large market lowers the costs of creative pursuits
and makes market niches easier to find” (p. 14).
Cowen argues that “today it is easier than ever
before to make a living by marketing to an artistic
niche and rejecting mainstream taste. The wealth
and diversity of capitalism have increased the
latitude of artists to educate their critics and
audiences” (p. 15). It is certainly easier to make a
living from graffiti nowadays, especially in the
United States where graffiti writers such as Man
One and crews like Tats Cru are able to do it full
time.
A further aspect of Cowen’s (1998) work that is
useful in understanding the commercialization of
graffiti is his point that many artists pursue
profits, and “a wealthy economy gives artists a
greater number of other sources of potential
financial support” (p. 11). When I asked Amuck
if it is acceptable to make money from graffiti, he
replied, “Yeah, depends. If, like, you’re making
money from your own graffiti or from somebody
else’s. If you’re making money from something
that you’ve done, yeah, cool” (personal
communication, July 3, 2004). Today graffiti
writers are able to obtain pecuniary rewards from
a number of avenues—commercial projects,
government schemes, or private commissions.
Also, Cowen (1998, p. 15) argues that market
mechanisms are involved in more than simply
supplying consumers with what they want. He
stresses that
markets give the producer the greatest
latitude to educate his or her audience. Art
consists of a continual dialogue between
producer and consumer; this dialogue
helps both parties decide what they want.
The market incentive to conclude a
profitable sale simultaneously provides an
incentive to engage consumers and
producers in a process of want refinement.
(p. 15)
A story from Amuck seems to bear this out:
Nine times out of ten you just go with
what you want to do. Like you know that
demon that I did in that guy’s lounge
room? That was a really funny thing ’cause
I rolled up with just a bagful of paint and
had no idea of what I was even painting.
And it’s like we were just talking and he
goes, “Oh, that’s off the AC/DC cover.”
And we’re like, “Yeah, it is, hey.” ’Cause
me and this dude just hit it off, ’cause he
Figure 8. Amuck legal piece. Courtesy of the author. Color figure available online.
100 101
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
studies. To summarize Florida’s point: people are
increasingly interested in more than pecuniary
compensation in employment. As Florida (2003)
puts it, money “is important, but not the whole
story. Creative people want challenging work and
the ability to do their jobs flexibly” (p. 98). Thus it
seems that creative people are willing to
compromise in some respects to gain intrinsic
rewards. Graffiti writer Amuck confirms this:
If I have to do what they want me to do, I
put a price on it, a very nice one. And if I
get creative control where I get to do
something as well we negotiate a price that
is not too unreasonable, but it’s like they’re
getting a good deal and I’m getting a good
deal as well. That way I manage to get like
a painting for free and they get the signage
and background and everything at the
same time. And you get a fair few tins
laying around after the actual painting,
plus you know you actually get paid for it,
but if you don’t then you get a few tins out
of it, you get cans. It’s all good, you know.
(Personal communication, April 28, 2005)
While Amuck is concerned with pecuniary
rewards, “getting a painting for free,” and
collecting spare tins of spray paint is just as
valued. When commissioned by the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Sydney for the 1999
exhibition Word, Amuck explains that his main
motivation in accepting the contract was to obtain
paint:
The lady tried to rip me off by taking me to
the Dulux and by saying, “You can paint
this in Dulux.” And I just went, “Stop
wasting my time.” And I went to the
Belton store and spent five grand on
Belton, which was heaps of fun; you can
do that very, very easily in a paint shop.
And then we just walked into the art
gallery with twenty cans, painted for the
whole entire day . . . and walked off with
just over four and a half thousand dollars’
worth of paint. Good deal that one . . .
four and a half grand’s worth of paint is a
lot of paint to play with; it’s just over 540
cans. I think we used twenty or thirty in
the actual piece. (Personal communication,
April 28, 2005)
The work of economist Tyler Cowen is useful in
understanding the more positive processes of
commercial incorporation of graffiti. As Cowen
(1998, p. 10) remarks, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation and
psychological motivations that do not operate
independent of external constraints. He explains
that artists respond to both internal forces (such
as the artist’s love of creating, demands for money
and fame, and the desire to work out styles,
aesthetics, and problems posed by previous
works) and external forces (such as the artistic
materials and media available, the conditions of
patronage, the distribution network, and
opportunities for earning income) (p. 10). Cowen
(1998) adds that “when translated into the
terminology of economics or rational choice
theory, the internal forces correspond to
preferences and external forces represent
opportunities and constraints. These internal and
external forces interact to shape artistic
production” (p. 10).
Cowen sees the capitalist market economy as a
vital but underappreciated institutional
framework for supporting a plurality of
coexisting artistic visions, providing a
steady stream of new and satisfying
creations, helping consumers and artists
refine their tastes, and paying homage to
the eclipsed past by capturing, reproducing,
and disseminating it. (p. 2)
In this way, Cowen disagrees with Adorno and
Horkheimer’s critique of the market’s effect on
cultural production. Like Florida, Cowen is
critical of these “cultural pessimists” who take a
negative view of the market economy’s effect on
culture. He uses “the term ‘market economy’ to
refer more generally to a nexus of voluntary
exchanges” (p. 3) and treats “capitalism in terms
of its underlying economic logic, rather than in
terms of a particular historical epoch, as do many
Marxists” (p. 3) while still acknowledging that
capitalism has not operated in the same fashion
across historical eras (p. 3).
Cowen gives several reasons why the capitalist
market economy is positive. First, he declares that
“the arts tend to flourish in a modern liberal
order” (p. 9). He explains that this is just one of at
least three versions of the cultural optimist
position. The second version
goes further and makes the political
prediction that a liberal order will remain
prominent for many years to come . . .
[while] the third version of cultural
optimism argues that the arts will flourish
precisely because capitalism is doomed and
will be replaced by a superior system, such
as socialism or communism. (p. 9)
Cowen rejects these latter versions, instead
preferring the first. Thomas Frank (1997, p. 295)
is critical of Cowen’s combination of cultural
studies populism and market populism, which has
translated into his “extended celebration of the
benevolence of markets.” Frank certainly has a
point; as mentioned, there are instances of the
superficial exploitation and exploitation of graffiti
by commercial culture. Furthermore, there are
also some weaknesses in Cowen’s argument. For
instance, Cowen (1998, p. 18) claims that
capitalism has “allowed minority groups to
achieve market access, despite systematic
discrimination and persecution. Black rhythm and
blues musicians, when they were turned down by
major record companies, marketed their product
through the independents, such as Chess, Sun,
Stax and Motown.” While this is true to a certain
extent with graffiti, especially in the United
States, Cowen’s perception of capitalism’s effects
on minority groups is oversimplified because the
majority of graffiti writers involved in graffiti
production for the market still need to supplement
their income with other employment.
Despite these weaknesses in his argument, Cowen
is useful in understanding the more positive
processes of commercial incorporation of graffiti.
One area which Cowen is able to illuminate in the
commercialization of graffiti is diversity. Cowen
(1998) asserts that the capitalist market economy
is positive because “market exchange and
capitalism produce diverse art, rather than art that
appeals to one particular set of tastes” (p. 6). He
explains that a well-developed market supports
cultural diversity (p. 14) as “the market brings
crowd-pleasing artists, such as Michael Jackson or
Steven Spielberg, in touch with their audiences,
while at the same time securing niches for more
obscure visions” (p. 6). He adds, “Competition
and complementarity are forces for innovation.
Artists offer new products to increase their
income, their fame, and their audience exposure”
(p. 15). Related to this point is the fact that “a
large market lowers the costs of creative pursuits
and makes market niches easier to find” (p. 14).
Cowen argues that “today it is easier than ever
before to make a living by marketing to an artistic
niche and rejecting mainstream taste. The wealth
and diversity of capitalism have increased the
latitude of artists to educate their critics and
audiences” (p. 15). It is certainly easier to make a
living from graffiti nowadays, especially in the
United States where graffiti writers such as Man
One and crews like Tats Cru are able to do it full
time.
A further aspect of Cowen’s (1998) work that is
useful in understanding the commercialization of
graffiti is his point that many artists pursue
profits, and “a wealthy economy gives artists a
greater number of other sources of potential
financial support” (p. 11). When I asked Amuck
if it is acceptable to make money from graffiti, he
replied, “Yeah, depends. If, like, you’re making
money from your own graffiti or from somebody
else’s. If you’re making money from something
that you’ve done, yeah, cool” (personal
communication, July 3, 2004). Today graffiti
writers are able to obtain pecuniary rewards from
a number of avenues—commercial projects,
government schemes, or private commissions.
Also, Cowen (1998, p. 15) argues that market
mechanisms are involved in more than simply
supplying consumers with what they want. He
stresses that
markets give the producer the greatest
latitude to educate his or her audience. Art
consists of a continual dialogue between
producer and consumer; this dialogue
helps both parties decide what they want.
The market incentive to conclude a
profitable sale simultaneously provides an
incentive to engage consumers and
producers in a process of want refinement.
(p. 15)
A story from Amuck seems to bear this out:
Nine times out of ten you just go with
what you want to do. Like you know that
demon that I did in that guy’s lounge
room? That was a really funny thing ’cause
I rolled up with just a bagful of paint and
had no idea of what I was even painting.
And it’s like we were just talking and he
goes, “Oh, that’s off the AC/DC cover.”
And we’re like, “Yeah, it is, hey.” ’Cause
me and this dude just hit it off, ’cause he
Figure 8. Amuck legal piece. Courtesy of the author. Color figure available online.
100 101
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
was an AC/DC fan and so am I. . . . When
he was talking I was just subconsciously
putting paint into color schemes and orders
and stuff and I says, “Well, here’s the
deal.” And he went down to the shop and
got like some white primer and some
pollyfiller and filled over a couple of
patches and while they were setting up we
primed the wall and everything and then
just threw the actual dragon up in, I think
it was, nearly two hours. (Personal
communication, April 28, 2005)
As Amuck suggests, commissioned graffiti often
results from a dialogue between the producer and
consumer; there is a process of negotiation
involved.
Conclusion
Once considered a signifier of resistance, even
described as a terrorist act (Iveson, 2010, p. 130),
hip-hop graffiti has been increasingly appropriated
by commercial, art, and government institutions.
Many contemporary graffiti writers are supportive
of this transformation. Increasingly, mature
writers feel that the removal of their graffiti has
robbed them of a history and have turned to legal
work in an effort to restore it. Some writers argue
that they have gone beyond graffiti, while others
refuse to call their painting graffiti (Brewer, 1990,
p. 359). Australian graffiti writers Phibs and Kano
(cited in Hamilton, 2001, pp. 73–74), who
participated in the graffiti exhibition Sake of Name
in Sydney in 2001, declared illegal graffiti
“limited” and claimed it no longer inspired them.
Phibs, who has been involved in graffiti for more
than 25 years, explained, “I love graffiti; it’s a
major part of my life—but you have to find ways
to adapt as you get older” (p. 73). His attitude
demonstrates that nowadays it is acceptable to
make money from writing graffiti.
While the meanings and aesthetic of graffiti have
evolved over the past 40 years, these meanings are
still somewhat contested because graffiti
continues to blur the boundaries between art and
crime. Traditionally, location and mode of
production have been the key markers by which
the authenticity of graffiti has been established.
The recontextualization of graffiti into aerosol art
has disrupted notions that equate crime with
authenticity and means that graffiti writers have
had to redefine notions of authenticity. For many
writers, this has meant a weakened connection
between illegality and authenticity. Thus aerosol
art can be considered just as authentic as illegal
graffiti. Very similar to what is happening in art
world where the commercial aspect “is no longer
disparaged but is welcomed and even celebrated”
(McRobbie 2002, p. 520). However, as Amuck
indicates, the mark of authenticity is still
involvement in the illegal aspects of graffiti:
You can’t stay in one form. If you stay in
one actual area and just do legals all the
time, I think that’s where council people—
not only council people but your graffiti
community—will turn around and say
“sellout” because you’re not staying true to
what graffiti is, which is basically illegal
writing on a surface. (Personal
communication, July 3, 2004)
This article has investigated the
commercialization of hip-hop graffiti, analyzing
the effect on graffiti culture, its aesthetic, and the
different ways in which graffiti is commercialized
by considering the graffiti writers and companies
involved. In discussing commercial incorporation
it is evident there are contradictory potentials.
The central claim of this article is that it is
necessary to resist a uniform understanding of the
incorporation of hip-hop graffiti, which should be
seen as a complex process. Incorporation is not
simply a case of gentrification, corruption, or
exploitation, but has diverse and often
contradictory potentials. Although commercial
incorporation can change the graffiti aesthetic and
exploit it, increasingly the commercialization of
graffiti is a collaborative process in which graffiti
writers are involved in negotiating how the final
piece will look. Although graffiti writers may have
to compromise in some ways, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation, and often
graffiti writers will compromise in one area to
obtain rewards in another. Despite increased
appropriation, it is evident that ambiguity
continues to pervade the meanings of graffiti,
indicating that this has not rendered it
insignificant or meaningless.
Notes
1
Legal graffiti pieces or opportunities.
2
Illegal graffiti pieces or opportunities.
References
Austin, J. (2001). Taking the train: How graffiti became an
urban crisis in New York City. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Brewer, D. D. (1990). Bombing and burning: The social
organization and values of hip hop graffiti writers and
implications for policy. Deviant Behavior, 11, 345–369.
Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative industries: Contracts between
art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cowen, T. (1998). In praise of commercial culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cresswell, T. (1996). In place/out of place: Geography,
ideology, and transgression. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Florida, R. (2003). The rise of the creative class. North
Melbourne, Australia: Pluto Press.
Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
George, N. (1998). Hip hop America. New York, NY:
Penguin.
George, N., Banes, S., Flinker, S., & Romanowski, P.
(1985). Fresh: Hip hop don’t stop. New York, NY:
Random House.
Graffiti artist Jonny Wartman [interview]. (n.d.). The
Pulse. Retrieved from http://thepulse.org.nz/Me/
My-Career/Jonny-Wartman/.
Hamilton, K. (2001). Can in hand. Rolling Stone
Australia, 590, August, 72–75.
Hancock, K. (1930). Australia. London, England:
Ernest Benn.
Hartley, J., & Cunningham, S. (2001). Creative
industries - from Blue Poles to fat pipes. Retrieved from
http://creativeindustries.qut.com/.
Hughes, J. (2000, January 5). How to get ahead in graffiti.
BBC News Online. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.
co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/592262.stm.
Iveson, K. (2009). War is over (if you want it):
Rethinking the graffiti problem. Australian Planner,
46(4), 24–34.
Iveson, K. (2010). The wars on graffiti and the new
military urbanism. City, 14(1–2), 115–134.
Lachmann, R. (1988). Graffiti as career and ideology.
American Journal of Sociology, 94(2), 229–250.
Man One. (n.d.). Man One art. Retrieved from http://
www.manone.com/site.html.
McRobbie, A. (2002). Clubs to companies: Notes on
the decline of political culture in speeded up creative
worlds. Cultural Studies, 16(4), 516–531.
Miller, I. L. (2002). Aerosol kingdom: Subway painters of
New York City. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Powers, L. A. (1996). Whatever happened to the graffiti
art movement? Journal of Popular Culture, 29, 137–142.
Robinson, R. K. (2002). Coke response [letter].
Retrieved from http://www.nograffiti.com/letters/
CokeResponseToNoGraf.htm.
Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and Black culture
in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England.
Stewart, S. (Ed.). (1994). Crimes of writing: Problems in
the containment of representation. Durham, NC: Duke
University.
The artists. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.
chromopolis.gr.
Woodley, M. (2003, August 7–13). Writing on the wall
[Electronic version]. Montreal Mirror, 19(8). Retrieved
from http://www.montrealmirror.com/.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of
Amuck 37, Body Glove, Tats Cru, and the two anonymous
reveiwers.
Kara-Jane Lombard teaches in the School of Media,
Culture, and Creative Arts at Curtin University in
Western Australia. Her research interests include
youth culture, governmentality, and creative
industries. Email: K.Lombard@Curtin.edu.au
102 103
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015
Visual Communication Quarterly Visual Communication QuarterlyVolume 20 April - June 2013 Pages 91 - 103
was an AC/DC fan and so am I. . . . When
he was talking I was just subconsciously
putting paint into color schemes and orders
and stuff and I says, “Well, here’s the
deal.” And he went down to the shop and
got like some white primer and some
pollyfiller and filled over a couple of
patches and while they were setting up we
primed the wall and everything and then
just threw the actual dragon up in, I think
it was, nearly two hours. (Personal
communication, April 28, 2005)
As Amuck suggests, commissioned graffiti often
results from a dialogue between the producer and
consumer; there is a process of negotiation
involved.
Conclusion
Once considered a signifier of resistance, even
described as a terrorist act (Iveson, 2010, p. 130),
hip-hop graffiti has been increasingly appropriated
by commercial, art, and government institutions.
Many contemporary graffiti writers are supportive
of this transformation. Increasingly, mature
writers feel that the removal of their graffiti has
robbed them of a history and have turned to legal
work in an effort to restore it. Some writers argue
that they have gone beyond graffiti, while others
refuse to call their painting graffiti (Brewer, 1990,
p. 359). Australian graffiti writers Phibs and Kano
(cited in Hamilton, 2001, pp. 73–74), who
participated in the graffiti exhibition Sake of Name
in Sydney in 2001, declared illegal graffiti
“limited” and claimed it no longer inspired them.
Phibs, who has been involved in graffiti for more
than 25 years, explained, “I love graffiti; it’s a
major part of my life—but you have to find ways
to adapt as you get older” (p. 73). His attitude
demonstrates that nowadays it is acceptable to
make money from writing graffiti.
While the meanings and aesthetic of graffiti have
evolved over the past 40 years, these meanings are
still somewhat contested because graffiti
continues to blur the boundaries between art and
crime. Traditionally, location and mode of
production have been the key markers by which
the authenticity of graffiti has been established.
The recontextualization of graffiti into aerosol art
has disrupted notions that equate crime with
authenticity and means that graffiti writers have
had to redefine notions of authenticity. For many
writers, this has meant a weakened connection
between illegality and authenticity. Thus aerosol
art can be considered just as authentic as illegal
graffiti. Very similar to what is happening in art
world where the commercial aspect “is no longer
disparaged but is welcomed and even celebrated”
(McRobbie 2002, p. 520). However, as Amuck
indicates, the mark of authenticity is still
involvement in the illegal aspects of graffiti:
You can’t stay in one form. If you stay in
one actual area and just do legals all the
time, I think that’s where council people—
not only council people but your graffiti
community—will turn around and say
“sellout” because you’re not staying true to
what graffiti is, which is basically illegal
writing on a surface. (Personal
communication, July 3, 2004)
This article has investigated the
commercialization of hip-hop graffiti, analyzing
the effect on graffiti culture, its aesthetic, and the
different ways in which graffiti is commercialized
by considering the graffiti writers and companies
involved. In discussing commercial incorporation
it is evident there are contradictory potentials.
The central claim of this article is that it is
necessary to resist a uniform understanding of the
incorporation of hip-hop graffiti, which should be
seen as a complex process. Incorporation is not
simply a case of gentrification, corruption, or
exploitation, but has diverse and often
contradictory potentials. Although commercial
incorporation can change the graffiti aesthetic and
exploit it, increasingly the commercialization of
graffiti is a collaborative process in which graffiti
writers are involved in negotiating how the final
piece will look. Although graffiti writers may have
to compromise in some ways, there are complex
motivations behind artistic creation, and often
graffiti writers will compromise in one area to
obtain rewards in another. Despite increased
appropriation, it is evident that ambiguity
continues to pervade the meanings of graffiti,
indicating that this has not rendered it
insignificant or meaningless.
Notes
1
Legal graffiti pieces or opportunities.
2
Illegal graffiti pieces or opportunities.
References
Austin, J. (2001). Taking the train: How graffiti became an
urban crisis in New York City. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Brewer, D. D. (1990). Bombing and burning: The social
organization and values of hip hop graffiti writers and
implications for policy. Deviant Behavior, 11, 345–369.
Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative industries: Contracts between
art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cowen, T. (1998). In praise of commercial culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cresswell, T. (1996). In place/out of place: Geography,
ideology, and transgression. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Florida, R. (2003). The rise of the creative class. North
Melbourne, Australia: Pluto Press.
Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
George, N. (1998). Hip hop America. New York, NY:
Penguin.
George, N., Banes, S., Flinker, S., & Romanowski, P.
(1985). Fresh: Hip hop don’t stop. New York, NY:
Random House.
Graffiti artist Jonny Wartman [interview]. (n.d.). The
Pulse. Retrieved from http://thepulse.org.nz/Me/
My-Career/Jonny-Wartman/.
Hamilton, K. (2001). Can in hand. Rolling Stone
Australia, 590, August, 72–75.
Hancock, K. (1930). Australia. London, England:
Ernest Benn.
Hartley, J., & Cunningham, S. (2001). Creative
industries - from Blue Poles to fat pipes. Retrieved from
http://creativeindustries.qut.com/.
Hughes, J. (2000, January 5). How to get ahead in graffiti.
BBC News Online. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.
co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/592262.stm.
Iveson, K. (2009). War is over (if you want it):
Rethinking the graffiti problem. Australian Planner,
46(4), 24–34.
Iveson, K. (2010). The wars on graffiti and the new
military urbanism. City, 14(1–2), 115–134.
Lachmann, R. (1988). Graffiti as career and ideology.
American Journal of Sociology, 94(2), 229–250.
Man One. (n.d.). Man One art. Retrieved from http://
www.manone.com/site.html.
McRobbie, A. (2002). Clubs to companies: Notes on
the decline of political culture in speeded up creative
worlds. Cultural Studies, 16(4), 516–531.
Miller, I. L. (2002). Aerosol kingdom: Subway painters of
New York City. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Powers, L. A. (1996). Whatever happened to the graffiti
art movement? Journal of Popular Culture, 29, 137–142.
Robinson, R. K. (2002). Coke response [letter].
Retrieved from http://www.nograffiti.com/letters/
CokeResponseToNoGraf.htm.
Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and Black culture
in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England.
Stewart, S. (Ed.). (1994). Crimes of writing: Problems in
the containment of representation. Durham, NC: Duke
University.
The artists. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.
chromopolis.gr.
Woodley, M. (2003, August 7–13). Writing on the wall
[Electronic version]. Montreal Mirror, 19(8). Retrieved
from http://www.montrealmirror.com/.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of
Amuck 37, Body Glove, Tats Cru, and the two anonymous
reveiwers.
Kara-Jane Lombard teaches in the School of Media,
Culture, and Creative Arts at Curtin University in
Western Australia. Her research interests include
youth culture, governmentality, and creative
industries. Email: K.Lombard@Curtin.edu.au
102 103
Downloadedby[78.45.120.158]at05:4108August2015