Special Exhibition Gallery: Graffiti at Brooklyn Museum

When is graffiti art? We can all agree that "Tiff ♥ Kyle" scrawled in black spray paint on a railroad trestle doesn't qualify as "art" except, possibly, to the lovelorn Tiff. Moving past simple vandalism, there are different gradients of graffiti-as-art. Artistically trained or not, a graffiti artist has to employ many of the elements of art in order to move beyond "scribbling" (painting simple words or tags), into "piecing" (that is, creating graffiti masterpieces) and being generally regarded as an artist.

"Piecing" - multi-colored and compositionally sound - is art. Due to the unwelcomed nature of most graffiti, and its tendency to invoke court dates and fines upon those caught producing it, piecers typically sign their work with street aliases rather than a legal name upon whom civic authorities might want to sic the police. (This should go some ways towards explaining why each of the artists in our Graffiti image gallery has not one, but two names listed in the credits.)

Graffiti Art also quite often carries messages of social and political importance to which certain bureaucratic types should be paying attention. While there is slim hope of that ever happening, other people in high positions - such as art dealers and museum curators - have long recognized that some graffiti is art worth collecting, cataloguing and displaying.

Thanks to art dealer Sidney Janis (who began to collect pieces decades ago), his heirs Carroll and Conrad Janis (who donated much of Sidney's graffiti collection after his death), the Brooklyn Museum (which accessioned the Janis collection in 1999) and Charlotta Kotik (John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator and Chair, Department of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum) just such a distinguished group have produced Graffiti. This special exhibition is on view from June 30 through August 27, 2006 in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor of the Brooklyn Museum. We are, once again, lucky to have a taste of such a special Special Exhibition here.

Special thanks to Adam Husted, Media Relations Manager at Brooklyn Museum, for his kind assistance in providing images for the viewing pleasure of About Art History readers. And speaking of Graffiti's curator Charlotta Kotik, Stan Parchin had written the following up previously:

New Endowed Curatorship at Brooklyn Museum Announced and Filled

Arnold L. Lehman, Director of the Brooklyn Museum, announced on May 12, 2006 that Charlotta Kotik was appointed to the newly created and endowed position of John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art.

A curator at the Brooklyn Museum since 1983, Ms. Kotik studied art history and archaeology on the undergraduate and graduate levels at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She worked at the Jewish Museum, the National Gallery, Prague's National Institute for Preservation and Reconstruction of Architectural Landmarks and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. During her tenure at the Brooklyn Museum, Kotik organized site-specific installations of works by Martin Puryear (b. 1941), Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) and Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945) in the institution's Grand Lobby. She also curated Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, the widely acclaimed special exhibition that toured internationally after its debut at the Venice Biennale in 1993.

John and Barbara Vogelstein collect twentieth-century paintings and French antiques.