Art in the Streets, Graffiti in the Museums
March 14, 2011
Next month, a landmark exhibit surveying street art and graffiti opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Our man Roger Gastman curated the show along with Aaron Rose and Jeffrey Deitch, coedited the companion Art in the Streets issue of Juxtapoz , and is the subject of a recent article in T Magazine.
He’s also coauthor of Los Angeles Graffiti and one of the biggest motivators behind street art’s rapidly growing approval in the art world, not to mention a graffiti writer himself since the age of fifteen.
In Juxtapoz, Gastman says, “I think graffiti, street art, and skateboarding are all highly undocumented cultures, and even though some of it has been recognized, there is a lot that hasn’t been properly chronicled … Hopefully, this show will make the academics pay attention and make the average museumgoer curious about these cultures and how they blend together.”
It’s only fitting that graffiti’s long-standing documenter, photographer and MBP author Martha Cooper of Name Tagging and Going Postal, has work featured in the MOCA show and in a Juxtapoz feature. MBP salutes Cooper, Gastman, and all of the other artists featured in the MOCA show.
From T Magazine: LEE, "Lion's Den," Lower East Side, New York City, 1980. Martha Cooper
It’s about time graffiti gets this kind of notice. Though as Gastman points out in T Magazine, “[the artists are] excited to be in a museum setting, but they’re also still really excited to go paint a huge wall off the freeway.”
And let’s hope they don’t quit anytime soon.
