The idea of street art and graffiti playing a role in the gallery space isn’t something new. Some of the great artists of the 1980s started as street and graffiti artists. Jean Michel Basquiat would get up around New York under the name Samo and Keith Haring got his start by drawing in the subway tunnels. And even more recently, artists like Shepard Fairey, Kaws, Banksy and many more have all left massive impacts not only on the popular culture but have gained an amount of respect from the more traditional art world.
These kinds of artists have been shown in some of the world’s most renowned museums like the Tate, the Louvre and MoMa. Even outside of the traditional art world, there has been a wave of street art-focused exhibitions that have traveled around the world like “Beyond the Streets” and “Street Art Alive.” And the reason different artists have been picked out of their element — the street — and put into the gallery space is due to select visionary art curators and directors. Whether in a small gallery or major museum, street art and graffiti has been finding way into the mainstream with the help of curators who aren’t afraid to branch outside of the traditional art world.
It was 1974, Jeffrey Deitch was a receptionist at a New York gallery with an eye for innovation. He found himself to be astonished by the passing subway cars that were transformed by the large works of graffiti. He began following the artists and paying interest to their up-and-coming works.
“In those days, New York City was a very organic place to meet people. I met most of the major players. I’m still in touch with a lot of them like Quinones, Futura, Dandy, and Kenny Scharf. It was a very organic involvement, and I’m still very involved,” said Deitch.
Ever since first engaging with this culture, he has woven this passion into his career seamlessly. Over the years, he has provided different street artists with platforms and has curated several exhibitions and shows that are centered around street art. His biggest street art exhibition to date was “Art in the Streets” in 2010 at MOCA in Los Angeles. This was the first-ever major exhibition in the US that showcased graffiti and street art. As the art director of MOCA, he achieved an all-time attendance record with this show that traced graffiti’s history from its origins to the present day.
“It’s art about how people live. Unlike, say, the more official art in the museums where it was not accepted to make art about yourself, about life around you, it had to be more abstract. Art about art is a lot of what you saw in the museums. So to have art that people could relate to, something they saw developing in their neighborhood, it’s a right of passage,” explains Deitch.
Los Angeles has always been a hub of art like this, and this was the first time people were able to see and understand it on this scale and through the lens of a museum. People of all ages visited this exhibition and Deitch saw people coming back three of four times before it ended.
His most recent work within street art is a nod to its origins in New York. With the 50-year anniversary of hip hop and the 40-year anniversary of the film “Wild Style” — a film that opened the eyes of the world to the culture and art of New York graffiti — his gallery in New York is currently exhibiting a show entitled, “Wild Style 40.” The show includes works from the artists that star in the film like Fab 5 Freddy, Lady Pink, Sharp, Crash, Futura, Lee Quinones and many more. It depicts the evolution, legacy and energy that captured NYC at the time in addition to celebrating the trailblazing work of “Wild Style.”
As someone who spent the beginning of his career in New York and recently settled in Los Angeles with two additional galleries in the Sycamore area, he has a unique perspective on the art that comes from Los Angeles streets.
“I was particularly interested in the unique Los Angeles street art language that came out of East LA and the Mexican-American community. These East LA artists did it for their neighborhood and their communities. It took much more time for this to get out into the larger world. It even took me a long time to get to it but as soon as I did, I immersed myself in it,” said Deitch.
Within the early years of graffiti, New York was front and center mostly due to the reach that the painted subway cars had — everyone in the city could see them. But in Los Angeles where graffiti was widely understood through the lens of gang and cholo culture, there was no way for this style of art to reach people who weren’t a part of those communities.
“In LA it’s more dispersed [than New York], particularly with the cholo graffiti that was invented here. It’s much more in private and within the neighborhoods,” said Deitch. “In New York, these artists became celebrities, I mean Basquiat dated Madonna. So, in the beginning, LA street art was a much quieter situation,” said Deitch.
With a similar participation and passion for street and graffiti art to Deitch, Badir McCleary, an art curator, consultant and founder of the art firm Art Above Reality, finds that the Los Angeles street art scene would not be on the scale that it is today without the Chicano influence.
“On the West Coast, there were people who developed this old English, really West Coast, Chicano style that truly defined the city. It gave the city its muscle. Graffiti was more than just understanding your city. It was understanding who you were here, understanding your culture, your neighborhood, your gang, your barrio — it was really a dedication to turf,” said McCleary. He feels that the practice remained like this until the gallery space got involved and it got somewhat exploited.
“There was a period between, 2014 and 2018 or 19 where street art was all the rage. Street art was contemporary art, especially in LA. It was a chance to see that guy that did that large mural on the 101, tell him how much you love it and be able to finally take that art off the wall and bring it back home,” explains McCleary. “But then at the same time, it became oversaturated to where collectors and gallerists saw it as a money pot.”
It’s not that McCleary thinks street art doesn’t belong in the gallery space, but it has to do with the monetization of art and what the business side of this world looks like.
“Being a graffiti artist in the gallery space is about identifying exactly who you are. The majority of them are not privy to what goes on in the art world. They come from this culture and are faced with a new sense of formality,” explains McCleary.
Los Angeles wouldn’t look like itself without the prevalence of street art and graffiti. The city is a creative hub, from its relationship to the entertainment industry and its starlike qualities, street art only adds to this creative environment. Any driver can turn any street and they are bound to encounter at least one graffiti tag, a commissioned mural or even some sort of installation. But McCleary argues this openness towards public art provides a pathway for gentrification.
“There’s a certain gentrification value of what a mural and public art can do — I don’t mean the kind of gentrification that just kicks people out, but the kind that brings new businesses in. People react to beautiful things, especially on the wall,” said McClearly “I remember when I opened my gallery in West Adams, we had a project where we just were beautifying the walls and it was the only wall that looked like that in the area. Now it just looks like freaking Melrose. We opened on the brink of the gentrification boom of that neighborhood.”
The varying discourses surrounding Los Angeles and its relation to public art, street art and graffiti help to not only validate street art as an art form but prove how integrated it is into the culture of the city.
“Street art is, in its pure form, unsanctioned public art. It’s done without permission. You admire the artists who actually take a big risk to express themselves. It angers some people, but it also excites people. It’s part of the visual culture of the city to drive through and see these works,” said Deitch.