Street Art

Unauthorized painting that started on subway cars and building walls. In 1971, the New York Times ran a story on the tagger behind the signature “TAKI 183.” He wasn't the first — subway graffiti had already been going since the late 1960s — but that article is what made the rest of the country aware of it. In the 1980s, Keith Haring drew more than 5,000 chalk pieces on blank subway ad panels, and Basquiat left words around the city under the tag SAMO©. Then in 2018, moments after Banksy's Girl with Balloon sold at auction, a shredder hidden in the frame kicked in and cut the painting in half. Retitled Love is in the Bin, it sold again three years later — for eighteen times the price. A work that criticized the market ended up fetching even more from that same market. The question Duchamp raised when he submitted a urinal is clearly still open.