Nassau County Museum of Art unveils ‘Glamorous Graffiti’ exhibit

There was a time when there was nothing glamorous about graffiti in the eyes of many who observed it, especially on the sides of what seemed every subway car in New York City in the 1970s and ’80s.

But while spraycan defacement remains evident in phrases and vanity initials scrawled along public byways, the art in graffiti-style painting has become legit. Cities reserve alleyways for volunteer artists to paint mini-murals. More than tolerating it, art schools now teach techniques in graffiti-style painting while commercial galleries display and sell it. Museums add it to their collections, sometimes by donation from well-heeled collectors.

“Glamorous Graffiti,” which opened last weekend at the Nassau County Museum of Art as a companion to the solo Kenny Scharf exhibit, traces this evolution from the artists who created the movement in the 1970s and ’80s.

“We’re offering a bit of an overview of graffiti art,” says Karl Willers, the Nassau museum’s director who also curated the show and brought the Scharf exhibit to its downstairs galleries. “Glamorous Graffiti” occupies all seven upstairs galleries with paintings by contemporaries of Scharf, including Keith Haring, once a housemate of his near Times Square, and Brooklyn-born Jean-Michel Basquiat.

FRIENDS IN ART

The three friends exhibited together, along with fellow graffiti artist Lee Quinones, in the landmark 1980 “Times Square Show.” Works by all four can be seen at the Nassau museum, as well as art by Futura 2000, Crash, Toxic and others.

Perhaps the most radical contemporary art movement, graffiti art — also known as street art, spraycan art, aerosol art or subway art — encompassed images and text applied by paint or marker to buildings, public transport or other property. While its defenders say this form was common in antiquity or even prehistorically — witness cave art — the modern term grew out of the 1960s urban protest movements.

“Its outlaw aspects are part of its appeal,” says Willers. “Like break-dancing and rap music, it broke boundaries of what was considered art.

“It’s one of the few indigenous American art forms, after jazz and abstract expressionism,” he says, along with musical theater.

POST-MORTEMS

Haring, who died of AIDS in 1990 at age 31, like Scharf was inspired early by cartoons — “Bugs Bunny” was a favorite. That influence is seen in the bold lines and vivid colors of five paintings from his “Growing” series in the Nassau show. His later work, including dozens of public murals, carried messages about life and unity, and later, about AIDS.

Basquiat, who died at 27 of a heroin overdose in 1988, often incorporated text in his art in the graffiti tradition. Much of his work, such as the acrylic and Xerox “Third Street” in the show, focused on “suggestive dichotomies” — wealth/poverty, integration/segregation. We can only imagine what he would make of Black Lives Matter.

“They both left me, us, way too early,” Scharf says of his friends. “I’m holding a torch for them, in a way, with my art.”