GRAFFITI - Early Stages

A fundamental part of graffiti is tagging.....creating a tag, or signature or symbol that identifies the artist.  

Darryl McCray, better known by his tag name Cornbread, is considered the first modern graffiti artist.  How did he get his nickname?  The cooks at the Philadelphia Youth Development Center, where he was placed, nicknamed him Cornbread because he'd pester them to make him cornbread.  At the age of 17, he jumped a fence at the Philadelphia Zoo and spray-painted Cornbread Lives on the side of an elephant.

Just as Cornbread did in Philadelphia, TAKI 183 became the first to start the graffiti movement in New York City.  Both were poor, with limited choices of how and where to spend their free time. Writing their names around the cities not only gave them something to do, but gave them an opportunity to be known. TAKI 183 was a kid from north Manhattan.  His simple signature captured the attention of a reporter in the summer of 1971, and appeared in The New York Times.  TAKI 183 was the first New Yorker to become famous for writing graffiti.  Rumor has it that he even tagged a Secret Service car and the Statue of Liberty.

 TAKI 183 was a nickname for his Greek birth name Dimitraki.  The number 183 came from his address on 183rd Street in Washington Heights.  Taki wrote his name anywhere he could, like on lamp posts, subway cars and walls.  He used his job as a foot messenger to get around the city.  His work is featured in modern graffiti exhibits around the world and in The History of American Graffiti.  Rumor also has it that he may have been the inspiration for the book Turk 182, the story about a young street artist in New York.  (hmmmmm.....that sounds interesting)

These early writers used whatever they could find to write, from shoe polish to markers, to spread their tags across the cities.  Eventually painting subway trains at night was a way for them to get their work across New York's 5 boroughs.  The writers used subway system maps and shared intelligence to warn each other about which spots were safe and which ones were not.  The trains were white-washed to erase the graffiti, but that only provided clean canvases for the writers.

Bubble Style Graffiti

Lonny Wood, a native of the Bronx, (tagged Phase 2) created the now-iconic bubble style of aerosol writing.....thick, marshmallow-like letters that look like they've been blown up with air, and symbols like spikes, eyes, arrows, drips and splashes and stars.

These developments in the 1970s graffiti scene set the stage for new forms like the Wild Style, a unique style that helped transition graffiti from simple scribbled words to famous works of art. 

Wild Style Graffiti

As their works became more complex, the graffiti writers started using spray paint.  This evolution led to what was known as the Style Wars, which is how the graffiti we see today started.