What started in the ’70s as a visual assault on commuters has attained a certain acceptability, if not cachet, thanks in part to the city’s crackdown on subway graffiti in the late ’80s. Today, ambitious aerosol canvases hang in galleries, while corporations like Nike, Coca-Cola and Sony hire graffiti muralists to paint storefront advertisements. Vintage photographs plucked from archives have inspired a small industry of coffee table books.
Graffiti is so mainstream now, they may as well just legalize it. The quality of the scribbles you see on a lot of streets certainly would be better…
