Peachy the Magazine February March 2015 | Page 101

ART + ARCHITECTURE

THE ART OF GRAFFITI

From the A Train in New York to
the Corner of Jackson and Harding
WRITTEN BY

T

The term graffiti has long evoked
binary responses and provoked
vehement debate. Some relegate it
to nothing more than vandalism
while others laud its value as a tool
of “art provocation” with a level of
grit that makes it resonate more with
the Everyman than other art forms.
When “Art in the Streets,” brainchild
of Jeffrey Deitch, opened at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in
Los Angeles in 2011, there was a sea
change in the way graffiti was viewed,
including its many “post-graffiti” sub

Kitty Garner

genres such as yarn bombing, lock-on
art and paste-ups. In essence street art
became mainstream art.
In light of graffiti’s acceptance by the
established art hierarchy, perhaps
those in Nashville should not be surprised that graffiti is alleged to have
surfaced in its finest artistic trappings
on the side of a house in tony Belle
Meade. Before considering the shocking incidence of graffiti in this blueblooded bastion of suburbia, perhaps it
would be helpful to look at the evolution of graffiti as an art form.

Subway train graffiti from the book Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant.
BOTTOM LEFT Timeline mural by Joey Nix and Jeff Jacobson. Photo by Joey Nix.
TOP LEFT

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