Wild Style: Graffiti Painting

Abstract

Futura’s painting in Notting Hill Gate, designed to be seen from the underground (between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park) is one of a number by Futura and by other New York graffitists. London must seem like virgin territory to Futura and Ali who have both visited London recently. Access to the underground must seem like child’s play for graffiti writers who have had to cope with a mounting security campaign directed against them by the New York Transit Authority. Few of the generation who invented the large-scale pictorial graffiti style, which reached its height in New York about two or three years ago, are still able to practice their paintings on the street in the same way. Some are being pursued by the police for their huge acts of joyous vandalism. It must be nostalgic to be creeping through the tunnel again. In a culture where graffiti is restricted to political denunciation and support of football clubs or rock bands, there is a lot of wall space and little to deter its appropriation.

This article appeared in ZG, No. 2, 1981.