Abstract
This chapter examines the first of Hip Hop’s aesthetic “elements” to emerge—graffiti writing—as exemplary of Hegel’s account of the foundational, symbolic stage of an artistic culture’s development, which reflects a community’s groping search for adequate forms of sensation through which to express themselves as free within a situation that radically suppresses clear consciousness of their essence. As “taggers” anonymously spread their adopted, cryptographic names throughout the city, they—in Hegelian terms—enacted a near-total, “architectural” transformation of the cramping barriers of their external sphere into a veritable temple for the celebration of humanity’s universal spirit. In process, graffiti constructed a unified ethical culture grounded in artistic practice, which ultimately fragmented when it attracted the interest of the outside world.
Ra was all-powerful, and he could take many forms. His power and the secret of it lay in his hidden name; but if he spoke other names, that which he named came into being.
Egyptian Creation Narrative
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- 1.
Jack Stewart, Graffiti Kings: New York Mass Transit Art of the 1970s (New York: Melcher Media, 2009), 20. TAKI likely began in 1969, but went “all city” the next year, as graffiti entered the subway system. More on this below.
- 2.
Craig Castleman, Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York (Cambridge: MIT, 1997), 135. While cited far more widely than Stewart , this book primarily treats the graffiti of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and thus the period after its pioneering “Golden Age”; the same is true of the classic text by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, Subway Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984).
- 3.
While Stewart , like virtually all scholars of the art, cites Philadelphia as the geographical origin of “tagging”, recent research by Serouj Aprahamian, “Debunking the Historical Hype: A Look Into The True Origins of Wall Writing”, available at https://www.bombingscience.com/debunking-the-historical-hype-a-look-into-the-true-origins-of-wall-writing/ (accessed October 2017), has uncovered not only photographic evidence of similar markings in New York perhaps as early as 1967, but even scholarly treatment of it beginning in 1969 (Herbert Kohl, with photos by James Hinton, “Names, Graffiti, and Culture”, Urban Review 3 (April 1969), 24–37), raising significant questions about the scholarly and popular consensus regarding the Philadelphia story. The kind of wall writing from which TAKI derived his style may go back to 1964, and some even claim the practice goes back as far as 1960. While we cannot rehearse the details, here, the specifically cryptographic forms of graffiti that form my focus, here, do seem to have begun with in the later 1960s, when writers like JULIO 204 compressed the previous style (which clearly indicated the “name and street” of the writer, as in “Papo of 87th Street”) into a new form; and Taki’s employment of this enigmatic form and broad coverage went far beyond the mid-1960s writing that Kohl claims was written by those who “knew who [their] audience would be […] It would be [their] friends and enemies, the kids on the block” (28), and which centred on names that were largely derived by gang and clique affiliation (what he calls a “peername” (32)), manifesting a far more clear and direct message. South Bronx writer CRASH, for example, firmly claims that real “tagging” was born in 1968 (cf. I. Miller, 163); however, as with much in early Hip Hop, there are conflicting claims about when and with whom particular developments originated, and thus some of the details, here, may need to be amended in light of ongoing research like Aprahamian’s, in whose debt I stand for calling my attention to many of these vital and underexplored issues.
- 4.
Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 232.
- 5.
Compare Etter , “the unique impulse to create art resides in the particular need for the sensuous recognition of what we are and what the world is […] In other words, the need for art originates in the need to surround ourselves with reminders of who we are and what kind of world we truly live in. […] [A]rt is [not] a purely intellectual mode of perception: the need for art arises precisely because we have a sensuous nature, and art is directed to that side as well as to our intellectual or spiritual side by its union of the sensuous and the spiritual” (16–7).
- 6.
Two of the best correctives to Hegel’s account are Jay Lampert, “Hegel and Ancient Egypt: History and Becoming”, International Philosophical Quarterly, XXXV (1995), 43–58 and Charles C. Verharen, “‘The New World and the Dreams to Which It May Give Rise’: An African and American Response to Hegel’s Challenge”, Journal of Black Studies 27:4 (March 1997), 456–493.
- 7.
As David Kolb argues, for Hegel, “architecture […] provides a first (external) overcoming of externality. It is the art of the external because it posits and proclaims its own externality as a […] way of transcending that externality” (“The Spirit of Gravity: Architecture and Externality”, in William Maker, ed. Hegel and Aesthetics (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000), 83–95 (84)).
- 8.
As Etter writes, to “ornament public space appropriately—that is, with decorum—is to affirm its dignity [as well as] our worth as human beings” (169).
- 9.
Gospel, 77.
- 10.
Cf., Stewart , 13.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
All citations in the paragraph are from Stewart , 13. While he is referring to the questionable foundations of graffiti in Philadelphia, Kohl also cites gang membership and the marking of enclosed turf as vital in graffiti’s foundations in New York.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid., 16. For those who insist that tagging first developed in Philadelphia, the pioneering “loners” in that city are generally identified as “Corn Bread” and “Cool Earl”; but, again, see Aprahamian on the evidence for claims of the timeline of their work. Perhaps more pertinently, however, Cornbread began writing to impress a particular love interest (originally writing “Cornbread Loves Cynthia” throughout his neighbourhood), which distinguishes his purpose from that which dominated New York writing, especially after TAKI.
- 15.
While the “name and street” structure of his tag certainly proceeded from earlier forms, as Hinton’s photos reproduced in Kohl’s essay reveal, these earlier tags generally lacked Taki’s mysterious nature. It may seem a small leap from tags like “Foxie of 100 St.” and “Al the Killer of 115” to TAKI 183, but the level of interest and scrutiny faced by Taki’s tag as well as the rapid spread of both the cryptographic tag-form and the accompanying mystery regarding authorship indicate a qualitative change both unique to New York and specific to the manner in which graffiti laid the foundations for Hip Hop’s development. As I. Miller notes, pioneering “[a]rtists like PHASE 2 argue that [New York graffiti writing] has no direct precedents” (13).
- 16.
Cf. TAKI quoted in Castleman, “You don’t do it for girls; they don’t seem to care. You do it for yourself. You don’t go after it to be elected president” (135).
- 17.
Ibid. As he puts it elsewhere, “it was what you do when you’re sixteen, you know. Other guys go drinking, break into cars. We’d go out writing at night” (Ewoodzie, 33).
- 18.
Castleman, 135–6.
- 19.
JULIO 204 (who may have begun tagging in 1967) is generally acknowledged as TAKI’s mentor, although an early arrest seems to have led to a short career, explaining his relative obscurity (cf., Hager, Ch. 2). He is certainly a key figure in the shift out of the more local, clique-based graffiti, but it may be that, using his real name did not have the aesthetic impact of the more mysterious tag of his protégé. TAKI did use a given nickname, but it was likely obscure enough to create the air of mystery that, as we shall see, is essential to graffiti writing.
- 20.
Although many claim that it was the fame afforded him by his coverage in the Times that was primarily inspirational, Hager insists that taggers in “the Bronx had been writing similar graffiti long before the article on Taki appeared” (Ch. 2), although this may refer to the mid-1960s gang and clique tags, rather than the more mysterious style of TAKI and JULIO .
- 21.
Stewart , 19; 42.
- 22.
In an otherwise excellent primer on graffiti, and the subsequent—and vastly different—culture of “street art”, Anna Waclawek treats both as species of a “mode of protest” that reflects “a desire to belong to a city’s visual cultural” and “reclaims space for a more diverse public” (Graffiti and Street Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011), 43–44). Admittedly, many of the early writers do claim their work was an act of rebellion against their confining conditions (it was, after all, illegal, and was certainly condemned by their parents and local authority figures, and reflected a manner of gaining recognition within a local and subversive subculture); however, given the age and the radical alienation of those who invented it, we would hardly expect clearly political intentions to be present in its pioneers, and such accounts downplay the essentially impulsive and unconscious nature which is tied to the “addictive” nature of the art form that she otherwise conveys so convincingly. While it was common among early writers to talk about “doing damage to the system” through their work (I. Miller, 21), when writers like COCO 144 retroactively recognized its political import, their phrasing exposes its cryptic and symbolic nature: “Unconsciously it was a way of screaming out and saying, ‘This is me, and I’m not your household doormat’” (I. Miller, 47, emphasis added). Of course, the unconscious nature of its emancipatory import is by no means a critique of graffiti; it simply helps make sense of the relationship between tagging’s essential content and its unique aesthetic form.
- 23.
Stewart , 42.
- 24.
Hager, Ch. 2.
- 25.
Stewart , 42.
- 26.
PAUL 107, All City: The Book About Taking Space (Toronto: ECW Press, 2003), 7. While this author obviously encourages no-one, those interested in taking up the art might like to consult this near-perfect how-to manual.
- 27.
Stewart , 30.
- 28.
Hager, Ch. 2.
- 29.
See I. Miller , 57–65, for a fascinating history of the varied rationales behind early name choices.
- 30.
Hager, Ch. 2, emphasis added.
- 31.
Cf. the legendary writer PHASE 2: “For quite a while nobody knew I was PHASE 2. I told my friends not to tell anyone. That was the fun of it. You could sit around and people would say, ‘Damn, you know who I want to meet? PHASE 2.’ And I’d be sitting right next to them” (quoted in Stewart , 71). While recent sociological work tends to focus on fame as the primary motive for the artists (e.g. Nancy Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in New York and London (New York: Palgrave, 2001), or the documentary film Infamy (2005; directed by Doug Pray)), any achieved recognition would have been extremely ambiguous in the earliest years.
- 32.
George , hip hop america, 11.
- 33.
I. Miller, 16.
- 34.
As Kaminsky notes, while the subsequent art of the classical ideal “can give us direct insight into living beings themselves [symbolic a]rchitecture can at most suggest life and power” (62, emphasis added).
- 35.
For discussion, see my Hegel’s Philosophy of Language (London: Continuum, 2007), Ch. 2.
- 36.
Stewart , 55.
- 37.
The Faith of Graffiti, documented by Mervyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar, with text by Norman Mailer (New York: Praeger, 1974), 5. This is the catalogue from the first Museum Of Modern Art show on graffiti photography, and it has since been supplemented by Jon Naar, the birth of graffiti (New York: Prestel, 2007). See I. Miller for reactions early writers had to Mailer’s general portrayal of their culture.
- 38.
I. Miller, 41; 70, emphasis added.
- 39.
Stewart, 28, emphasis added.
- 40.
Ibid., 43.
- 41.
Ibid., 28.
- 42.
Ibid., 41.
- 43.
Ibid., 43.
- 44.
Ibid., 47.
- 45.
As PHASE 2 argues, “Some people say they’ve perfected wild-style. That’s impossible. You can’t perfect something that has no limit” (quoted in I. Miller, 87).
- 46.
Stew art, 35.
- 47.
Ibid., 64–5.
- 48.
Ibid., 35–38.
- 49.
Ibid., 170.
- 50.
Chang, Can’t Stop, 15, emphasis added.
- 51.
Stewart , 66.
- 52.
Ibid., 116. Compare with Waclawek, for whom wild style names the “virtually unreadable” pieces whose “letterforms […] are illegible, sometimes even to other writers” (19); or I. Miller , who claims that “[w]ild-style burners, unreadable to the uninitiated, gave writers a feeling of secrecy in the midst of their public expressions” (86); or Grandmaster Flash, who vividly describes being overwhelmed by train cars that “won’t be quiet. Keeps shouting at me to pay attention. […] Giant machines covered in art. Covered in style. Styles so wild, so you can hardly keep up. Letters and numbers so worked up, it takes a minute to figure out where one stops and the next one begins. Like some kind of alien alphabet” (The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash, 29–30).
- 53.
Stewart , 53.
- 54.
Ibid., 54. In the words of Tracy 168, subways were targeted for two main reasons: “The train would shoot over to Brooklyn and somebody over there would see your style. But there was also more adventure on the trains. Daredevil stunts like jumping from trains to platforms would really get the adrenaline going” (Hager, Ch. 2).
- 55.
Quoted in Stewart , 84. Compare I. Miller , for whom “writers painted in ritual contexts adapted to their twentieth-century urban life: deep down in dark tunnels, among homeboys (initiates), and with an air of mystery” (127, emphasis added).
- 56.
Stewart , 84.
- 57.
I. Miller, 98.
- 58.
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash, 31.
- 59.
I. Miller, 125.
- 60.
While Hegel notes that “higher criticism has cast doubt on this” claim, he nevertheless suggests that, “just as minerals rustle in water, the voice of these stone monuments [could be assumed to proceed] from the dew and the cool of the morning and then the falling of the sun’s rays on them” (358/I, 462). The accuracy of the story is less important than Hegel’s insistence that static statues symbolically receive motion from something outside, which nevertheless essentially becomes a part of them thereby.
- 61.
I. Miller, 41.
- 62.
In fact, writers incorporated motion into their work from the very beginning. Before the move to subway exteriors, many tagged the sides of city buses, which could be hit while they were moving, by taggers who jogged alongside them (this was called “motion writing” (Ibid., 112)).
- 63.
Waclawek, 19.
- 64.
Stewart , 43.
- 65.
Ibid., 46. For discussion of the import of moving trains to early artists, see I. Miller, 89–92.
- 66.
Sacha Jenkins, “The Writing on the Wall: Graffiti Culture Crumbles into the Violence it Once Escaped”, in Raquel Cepeda, ed. And It Don’t Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years (New York: Faber and Faber, 2004), 288–299 (288). Its most enduring and widespread elements are summarized well here, as well as in Waclawek, 27–8, William “Upski” Wimsatt , Bomb The Suburbs, Revised 2nd Edition (Chicago: The Subway and Elevated Press Company, 1994), 41–2, and Stephen Powers, The Art of Getting Over: Graffiti at the Millennium (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 154–5.
- 67.
For examples of this code operating in practice, see the documentary Style Wars (1983; directed by Tony Silver) or Powers, 106–7.
- 68.
SHARP speaking in I. Miller, 126.
- 69.
Ibid., 130.
- 70.
VULCAN, quoted in Ibid. (emphasis added).
- 71.
Stewart , 203.
- 72.
Ibid., 33. As I. Miller puts it, “[t]hrough their paintings, writers indicated that […] ‘If mass transit is for the masses […] we want it to look like us’” (45).
- 73.
Castleman, 137; 140.
- 74.
Ibid., 142. This is also cited, e.g. by Mailer.
- 75.
This is the judgment, for example, of Stewart , as well as most of the taggers interviewed in Hager, and Hager himself. TRACY 168, in his preface to Graffiti Kings, claims that graffiti’s Golden Age “died in April of 1974” (Stewart, 5).
- 76.
Stewart, 83.
- 77.
Ibid., 84.
- 78.
Ibid. I. Miller agrees that in the “translation from train to canvas [graffiti] art ceased to be an act and instead became an object” (158).
- 79.
Stewart, 84.
- 80.
Ibid., 140–1. As we will see below, the tension between grassroots creation and institutional assimilation is, in many ways, the general problem posed by Hip Hop’s entire history, as well as by Hegel’s Aesthetics. For discussion of the second boom in “graffiti art”, which accompanied Hip Hop culture’s global spread, see Chang , Can’t Stop, 167–211, or Castleman.
- 81.
Stewart , 146.
- 82.
Hip Hop activist Jacqueline Hines, quoted in KRS-One, Gospel, 516. She applies the point more broadly to Hip Hop itself, although in the next chapter, I argue that the full culture was much more conscious of its creative action and purpose than the early writers were, as well as more wary of the possibility of assimilation to the broader society.
- 83.
The most famous case was the “Warhol Soup Cans” mural, painted by Lee and Fab 5 Freddy in the late 1970s, which ran for “at least three or four years” before being taken down (Fricke and Ahearn, 283).
- 84.
Stewart , 175.
- 85.
I. Miller, 130.
- 86.
Stewart , 95.
- 87.
Although, of course, these were not immune to ethical violation. This war on “painterly” subway cars is the primary theme of Style Wars, as well as Hollywood’s first Hip Hop film, Beat Street (1984; directed by Stan Lathan). The original, superior screenplay by Hager is reprinted in Hip Hop.
- 88.
Stewart , 84, emphasis added.
- 89.
For an oral history of how some pioneers resisted the co-option of tagging by the art world, see I. Miller 152–62.
- 90.
KRS-One, Gospel, 118.
- 91.
As Etter puts it, “the vocation of [symbolic] architecture in general [lies in] fashioning external nature into an enclosure for the human spirit” (164).
- 92.
As Richard Dien Winfield notes, the liberating effects of architecture can be felt, among other ways, in “buildings that unify a nation, both in the task of construction and, upon completion, by providing a focal point of gathering” (“The Challenge of Architecture to Hegel’s Aesthetics”, in William Maker, ed. Hegel and Aesthetics, 97–111 (102).
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Vernon, J. (2018). Graffiti Writing, or the Symbolic Stage Art. In: Hip Hop, Hegel, and the Art of Emancipation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91304-9_3
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