© Jacob Kimvall

First printing
Printed in Poland, 2014
ISBN 978-91-85639-68-7

Text: Jacob Kimvall

Proof reading: Sven Carlsson
Graphic design: Martin Ander
Thanks to: Björn Almqvist, Tobias Barenthin Lindblad, Per Englund

Dokument Press
Box 773
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info@dokument.org
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 Contents

7 INTRODUCTION: AT FIRST SIGHT

1. THE FRAMEWORK

9 1.1 Aims, Objectives, and Research Questions

12 1.2 Theory and Methodology

12 1.2.1 Discourse Theory

12 1.2.2 Graffiti as a Discursive Formation

14 1.2.3 Production and Distribution of Knowledge

14 1.2.4 Discourse and Art-Historical Methodology

15 1.3 Material

18 1.4 Terminology

18 1.4.1 Graffiti and Street Art

20 1.4.2 Institution, Subculture, and Mainstream

21 1.5 Previous Research

21 1.5.1 Knowledge Production on Graffiti and Street Art

30 1.5.2 Research on Hip-Hop and Other Cultural Contexts

31 1.5.3 Art History and Visual Culture

2. BACK IN THE DAYS

37 2.1 The Transnational Subculture of Graffiti

37 2.2 Narratives of Subcultural Graffiti Art

40 2.3 Art and Vandalism

46 2.4 Crack Is Wack Playground (Take 1)

55 2.5 Graffiti in Art-Historical Narratives

65 2.6 Descriptions of the Graffiti Writer’s Social Identity

69 2.7 Crack Is Wack Playground (Take 2)

3. THE RISE, FALL, AND AFTERMATH OF THE BERLIN WALL GRAFFITI

81 3.1 Graffiti at the CIA Headquarters

83 3.2.1 Setting the Stage: The Cold War and the Berlin Wall

85 3.2.2 The Cultural Surroundings: Kulturkampf, Jazz, New York Subway Graffiti
and the Hip-Hop Subculture

89 3.3 The Graffiti on the Berlin Wall

89 3.3.1 A Brief History and Typology 1978–1992

92 3.3.2 Circumstances of Production

93 3.3.3 Reception of Berlin Wall Graffiti in English-Language Press

98 3.4 Remembering the Berlin Wall 2009–2011

4
98 3.4.1 Berlin Wall Monuments in Berlin

99 3.4.2 The Berlin Wall All Around the World

4. NOLLTOLERANS – THE SWEDISH ADAPTATION OF ZERO TOLERANCE ON GRAFFITI

105 4.1 Zero Tolerance and Nolltolerans

109 4.2 Graffiti in Sweden – Before Nolltolerans

111 4.2.1 The Combating Approach

111 4.2.2 The Domestication Approach

112 4.2.3 The Subcultural Approach

113 4.2.4 The Considering Approach

114 4.3 The Launch of Nolltolerans

122 4.4 The Institutional Effects of Nolltolerans

123 4.4.1 The Expansion of Law Enforcement

124 4.4.2 The Hampering of Legal Graffiti

133 4.5 The Anti-Graffiti Industry

151 6. CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

158 Books and Journal Articles

165 Magazine and Newspaper Articles

169 Political Policies, Bills and Other Public Documents

171 Internet Sources

171 Films and Broadcast Media

172 Interviews
172 List of Pictures

APPENDIX

174 1. Graffiti as an Art-Institutional Subject 1972–1992

182 2. Selected Quotes on Berlin Wall Graffiti 1974–1990

186 3. Articles on Graffiti in the Newspaper Metro 1995–1999

192 4. Glossary of Glossaries

216 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

218 INDEX

5
 Figure 1.1: Escape by Crime, Deza & Crazy Colour of The Denots Crew. This piece was painted circa 1985, in the Berlin Graffiti
Hall of Fame, located at the Berlin Wall, close to Märkisches Viertel. See page 90 for a longer description.

6
INTRODUCTION: AT FIRST SIGHT

At least since the 1970s public discussions on graffiti have been characterized
by a puzzling contradiction, on the one hand chastising graffiti as pollution and
vandalism, and on the other praising it as a healthy youth culture or an art form.
In the contemporary debate the opposing claims are usually stated one by one, but
occasionally this contradictoriness is brought to the fore, for example in newspaper
headlines such as “Graffiti: art or vandalism?”1 The dynamics of the contradiction –
graffiti as pollution/vandalism and as culture/art – is also used in both journalism and
fictional stories to create irony or dramatic paradoxes.
One illustrious example of the latter could be found in the movie At First Sight, where
Val Kilmer plays the role of Virgil Adamson – a blind man who gets his sight restored
after a complicated and unique operation. Virgil, blind since early childhood, has to learn
to see the world, and it is this complicated process – with neurological as well as cognitive
and cultural implications – that constitutes the dramatic centerpiece of the movie.2 The
story is partly narrated by Virgil’s physician, who presents his surgery and its effects:

Immediately following the operation the patient experienced extreme disorientation. Images
and colors had no meaning for him. But now, just weeks after surgery, Mr. Adamson has
mastered the ability to define shape and distance, giving him confidence to move about his
environment. However he is still becomes confused by new images – just as a child would
be fascinated by everyday objects that we may take for granted.3

The sentences are uttered through a narrative structure which crosscuts between a
lecture, held by the physician, and scenes that could be described as exemplum – anec-
dotal events meant to substantialize an abstract claim. In one scene, Virgil is walking
around midtown Manhattan clearly overwhelmed by visual impressions, bumping
into people and objects; this is followed by a scene where Virgil is guided into the
visual world by his girlfriend Ami, who shows him a large black and white sculpture:4

Amy: “Look up.”

Virgil: “What is it?”
Amy: “It’s art... Dubuffet”.
Virgil [touching the sculpture]: “This is art?”5

7
 The short dialogue is followed by another scene where Amy and Virgil are strolling
down the sidewalk of a busy street. Virgil sees something, takes off his sunglasses and
enthusiastically burst out: “Oh, now that has to be art! Look at that. That is beautiful.”
The film cuts to the object in Virgil’s sight. It is the backside of a truck covered with
graffiti – different words written with markers and spray paint in a variety of different
colors, beside and on top of each other, creating a blur. Amy first smiles, and then
corrects Virgil, explaining: “Uh, no, that’s just somebody being destructive. The words
read something pretty nasty, Virgil.” Virgil gently touches the truck, just like he in the
previous scene touched the sculpture by Dubuffet, and asks what it is. Amy answers:
“It says pigshit.”
On the one hand, the scene implies an ambiguous relation between a sculpture
by Dubuffet and graffiti, used in the movie to make a subtle joke, and perhaps it is
as a representative of the viewer that Amy smiles at Virgil’s enthusiasm in thinking
the graffiti-covered truck is a work of art. On the other hand, the movie makes a
clear distinction between art (the sculpture by Dubuffet) and destruction/vandalism
(graffiti on the back of a truck). Virgil’s point of view, that the graffiti is beautiful
art, is dismissed – not as culturally naïve, unconventional, or eccentric, but as plainly
incorrect. Virgil is proven wrong when Amy reads the word pigshit. Virgil asks what
it is and Amy replies by telling what it reads, a shift from context and connotation to
content and denotation. Nevertheless, a duality of graffiti is present and used to create
ambiguity even if the final, outspoken claim is unambiguous.
This duality of graffiti as vandalism or crime and as art or culture constitutes a cen-
tral element in the following study, and the ambition is to explore how this duality is
created, used, reproduced, and transformed in different contexts by various agents in
different positions and with different agendas.

8
1. The FRAMEWORK

1.1 Aims, Objectives, and Research Questions

The aim is to study the construction of contemporary graffiti as a phenomenon
dependent on diametrically opposite but interdependent statements, as well as
how and in which contexts these statements are enounced.
Contemporary graffiti has been subject to a great deal of academic interest, and this
will be discussed thoroughly in Chapter 1.5, but in order to situate the aims, objectives,
and questions of this project I will start by pointing out some general characteristics of
the previous research in the field, and how this project both builds on, and differs from
it. Most of the research has been done within different branches of the social sciences,
and tends to focus on aspects of graffiti as a social phenomenon, and to explicitly or
implicitly describe graffiti as a criminal, deviant, or criminalized subculture of youths.
Most of it also distinguishes between a few types of “traditional graffiti” and the new
type of subcultural graffiti developed in Philadelphia and New York City during the
late 1960s and early 1970s, one that was internationalized through the media during
the 1980s and 1990s.6 I would also like to point out that I have a background in this
subculture, something that sets this project apart from most of the previous research
projects on graffiti. I will describe these personal experiences at some length in the
second chapter of the thesis.
The duality of graffiti as vandalism and art, briefly described in the introduction of
this thesis, is often acknowledged – albeit in various degrees and with different app-
roaches. Scholars have interpreted the duality as representing different types of graffi-
ti/phenomena, as based on a misconception, and as constituting opposing viewpoints
on the same phenomenon.7
To a large extent, research on the new type of graffiti has been driven by two in-
terconnected motivations. The first is a desire to describe the graffiti subculture. For
sociologist Craig Castleman (1982), whose research is often referred to as the first
scholarly endeavor in the field, the act of description seems to be both the driving
force and the stated objective:

I have taken as a guidepost the suggestion made by my academic advisers at Columbia

University, Margaret Mead and Louis Forsdale, that this be a strictly descriptive study […]
I especially valued Professor Forsdale’s suggestion that “this isn’t the time to worry about

9
 why people write and fight graffiti, because we aren’t sure yet what they are doing. Find out
that first. People can argue about what it all means later on.”8

The second motivation, following this perceived need to describe the graffiti subcul-
ture, lies in different attempts to prove that graffiti is more complex than a superfi-
cial understanding might suggest. Ethnologist Nancy Macdonald argues, in a study
published two decades after Castleman, that most people are indifferent to graffiti and
perceive it as “an urban white noise which is recognized but rarely registered” – and
thus poses and answers the question why the public should care about graffiti (and,
indirectly, about her research):

And why should we even care? Because, as I found out when I plucked graffiti from its
hiding place and took a closer look, this drama, these commentaries and the vibrant sub-
culture that lies behind them have a great deal to tell us […] Reasons, motives, meanings; all
too often these are missing from the picture, and all to often leaves graffiti carrying its label
as ‘mindless, senseless vandalism’. I am not going to get out the violins and over-roman-
ticize things here. Graffiti is ‘vandalism’ no matter how you look at it. […] It is dangerous,
uninvited and illegal. But it is far from mindless or senseless.9

Macdonald’s research also suggests that the graffiti subculture is dependent upon a
separation from what she defines as the “Outside World.” According to Macdonald,
graffiti as a subculture thus “turns inwards and positions itself as a ‘world apart’, a
society distinct from the one which houses it”.10 Macdonald, however, points out that
this distance is also built on firm ties and intrinsic links, and concludes that the out-
side world “must be near for the subculture to be far”, and she makes use of this ob-
servation to disentangle and identify a diversity of positions within the subculture.11
I agree with Macdonald that graffiti is more complex than many immediate descrip-
tions would suggest. The main motivation in this project, however, is neither to prove
that this is the case, nor to describe the subculture of graffiti. Rather, the interest in
this study lies in the “firm ties” and “intrinsic links” between the graffiti world and
mainstream society, as identified by Macdonald.
More specifically, the intention is to study the area of relationships between this
subcultural production of meanings, values, texts, and pictures, and the various in-
stitutions of official power engaged in defining and framing the former; it entails
studying the implicit and explicit negotiations and transactions between these appa-
rent worlds apart, and the conceptual transformations these negotiations produce. In
order to access this in-between, graffiti is acknowledged as a transnational, subcultural
practice with local variations, but studied as a construction produced by subcultural as
well as various institutional agents.
Nancy Macdonald also points out that the separation between the subculture and
the outside world is dependent on distancing through mutual stereotypification. Ac-

10
cording to her, stereotypes are employed both to characterize graffiti practitioners in
mass media, and from the subcultural point of view to homogenize “outsiders” into
one mass of “conformists”, the latter used to denounce any criticism of graffiti as ig-
norant and thus irrelevant.12
The dichotomy of graffiti as vandalism or art presented in the introduction could
thus be paralleled with one between the cultural mainstream and subculture. It might
seem tempting to equate these and assume that there simply are two contexts – one
institutional, where graffiti is vandalism, and one subcultural, where graffiti is art. But
studying graffiti as an object produced by subcultural as well as institutional agents
opens up for the possibility that the subcultural outsiders, or in this case the establis-
hed institutions, also may have conflicting agendas and interests, and may approach
graffiti differently. And while Macdonald uses her analysis of the distance to point out
a diversity of positions within graffiti as a subculture, I am also interested in disen-
tangling differences among various institutions. The contradiction of graffiti as crime
and as art, and the ambiguity it creates in the example of the Hollywood melodrama
At First Sight above, would hardly be possible without certain institutional support
for both of the opposing statements. An underlying hypothesis is that the dichotomy
of graffiti vandalism and graffiti art on a fundamental level functions as a duality; as
equally important and interdependent nodes that constitute graffiti as a contemporary
phenomenon.
The intention is to do this by looking at relations and negotiations between agents
within the graffiti subculture – with their own diverse manifestations and complex
logics – and official institutions of power. The latter refers to political, cultural, and
social organizations (such as political parties, media enterprises, art institutions, law
enforcement agencies, commercial corporations, transit authorities) with enhanced
possibilities, resources, and means to interact, frame, and define various phenomena.
It is assumed that these institutions may have different, and conflicting, interests,
agendas, and approaches regarding the graffiti subculture, and that the interactions
consequently also may differ.
Two areas of relations are thus of central interest and regulate the underlying ob-
jectives and questions. The first is the relation between contemporary graffiti and insti-
tutions. The other is the relation of the concepts graffiti vandalism and graffiti art. The
overarching questions could be summarized in the following way: How and in what
contexts are various descriptions of graffiti constructed? Which kinds of statements
regarding graffiti are produced in these specific contexts? Which institutional and
subcultural structures can be identified in this production and what interests, agendas,
and approaches can be identified? How can the relationship between the conflicting
claims about graffiti be described?

11
 1.2 Theory and Methodology
1.2.1 Discourse Theory
This study’s main theoretical grounding is discourse theory, as it was developed by the
French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault. It is, however, not a discourse
analysis in the way it has been developed within the social sciences, but a contextuali-
zing art-historical study where Foucault’s discourse theory is used as a point of depar-
ture, and where some of its specific concepts are operationalized in order to visualize
and verbalize the object of study.
On the most general level this generates an interest in the function of regularities
and similarities between specific texts and pictures, as well as conceptual transforma-
tions and negotiations within these regularities. The grounding in discourse theory
means that the study foremost examines certain objects – that is, specific texts and
pictures – to see how they may function as statements, related to different discursive
practices in the sense that Foucault presents in L’Archeologie du savoir (1969). A state-
ment is from this perspective an aspect working through a specific enunciated verbal
or visual object – for example, a linguistic phrase or a picture – an aspect that both
relates it to other objects and that functions in a way that allows us to understand it as
making sense.13 From the perspective of the statement it is possible to see how verbal
and visual objects that both may be produced and apprehended as particular claims or
enunciations actually make sense through a more general function.
For the purposes of this dissertation, discourse theory means that instead of trying
to find out what a specific claim actually means – or for that matter, if it is true or false
– the intention is to focus on how something is made significant and in what context
it is/was used or is being/has been made intelligible. To a certain degree it is also of
interest by whom it is/was used (i.e. in what institutional or social role this person acts
while producing the statement, or from which position). An example often used in
the graffiti literature, which is also discussed in this thesis, is New York City Council
President Sanford Garelik’s claim in 1972 that “Graffiti pollutes the eye and mind and
may be one of the worst forms of pollution we have to combat”.14 The intention is not
to research if this statement should be considered true or false. Nor is it primarily to
trace or lay bare meanings and interests that may lie behind such a claim. The interest
lies rather in looking at it in relation to other claims and phrases that have made
Garelik’s claim meaningful and useful in various contexts.15 These other claims and
phrases express other statements, and the statements are interrelated to each other
through what Foucault calls discourse.

1.2.2 Graffiti as a Discursive Formation

Foucault’s use of the term ‘discourse’ is complex, as he employed it in several ways,
and emphasized different aspects of it.16 For the concerns of this study, the aspects
of discourse that are most important are those of discursive formation and discursive

12
practice. The underlying assumption in this thesis is that the various statements about
graffiti relate to each other and constitute a discursive formation within which several
different series of statements may be enunciated, thus producing different discur-
sive practices. A discursive formation may therefore accommodate several series of
incompatible statements. The latter is an important aspect regarding the statements
on graffiti. Garelik’s claim is an example of a rejecting discursive practice, in this case
describing graffiti as pollution. It is incompatible with, but from the perspective of a
discursive formation also related to, claims such as Richard Goldstein’s, that graffiti is
a “genuine teenage street culture”.17 Within this consenting discursive practice graffiti
is often referred to as a culture or art.
My suggestion is that these are examples of what Foucault refers to as points of dif-
fraction within a discursive formation, “characterized in the first instance as points of
incompatibility”.18 Statements of graffiti as vandalism and graffiti as art cannot enter
into the same series without apparent contradiction or inconsequence. Such points are
central to the discursive formation, as they may function as places from where series
of specific statements may be systemized:

…on the basis of each of these equivalent, yet incompatible elements, a coherent series of
objects, forms of statement, and concepts has been derived (with, in each series, possible
new points of incompatibility).19

Even if graffiti vandalism and graffiti art are incompatible, they are thus in this project
regarded as belonging to the same discursive formation on the basis of interdepen-
dence, visible in each of the two discursive practices through, often indirect referen-
ces to the other. This may for example take the form of attempts to undermine the
other’s legitimacy, as when one of New York’s anti-graffiti police officers was invited
to Stockholm to speak at the Scandinavian conference on graffiti vandalism [Nordisk
konferens om klotter], where he is reported to have stated that:

You will never hear me, nor any of my colleagues, use the word graffiti art. Graffiti is not art.
It’s a crime. Graffiti is destruction of public or private property.20

The actual validity of this statement is for the purposes of this thesis less interesting
than the police officer’s need to explicitly deny that graffiti is art. It is difficult to ima-
gine that a police officer in any other context would make such a general rejection, for
example claiming that, “Breaking windows is not art. It’s a crime. Breaking windows
is destruction of public or private property,” or “Stealing bikes is not art. It’s a crime.”21
The claim renders its meaning and relevance from belonging to a discursive practice
where graffiti is talked about as a crime, but also from a discursive formation that also
includes statements declaring graffiti as art. This interdependence often works in a
more intricate and much less obvious way, and I would suggest that it is also through

13
 the unity of discursive formation that Virgil’s misidentification of a graffiti-tagged
truck as a modernist artwork gains meaning and relevance.22 The concepts of discursi-
ve formation and discursive practice can also explain how the same or at least superfi-
cially similar objects (verbal as well as visual, or a combination of different media) can
be understood completely differently, as well as how an object, physically the same,
but placed in different contexts, may be interpreted differently.

1.2.3 Production and Distribution of Knowledge

Discourses are regulated by what Foucault refers to as the archive, the previous sta-
tements connected to a discursive formation that construct certain knowledge. The
archive thus governs what can be stated, and how it can be stated.23 And if something
cannot be stated, it can neither be consciously reflected upon. Foucault refers to this
aspect of discourse as positivity. Discourse makes it possible to talk about and to re-
flect on discursive objects. From this point of view all systematic thought and reflected
descriptions are dependent upon discourse, and all sciences are according to Foucault
reliant on formalized discursive formations.24
A production of knowledge through discursive formation is thus a process that goes
in both directions: discourse makes it possible to reason and reflect about certain ob-
jects, and at the same time these objects, as we understand them, are dependent upon
various discourses. Knowledge is therefore both produced by discourse, and producti-
ve in discourse.25 The archive is not a static volume but a pattern of statements under
constant cultural, social, and institutional renegotiation – statements that are syste-
matically used, denied, reclaimed, reused, rephrased, interpreted and reinterpreted. It
is also through the function of the archive of a discursive formation that statements
from various discursive practices, contexts and places relate to one another.
Graffiti is thus regarded as a discursive formation, created and distributed through
exchanges between local sociocultural circumstances, institutions, and mediated re-
presentations, and transnational networks of news media, book, and magazine dist-
ribution, and popular cultural image production and distribution. It is the concept
of the archive and the coexistence of incompatible statements within one discursive
formation that may explain Virgil’s misidentification of a graffiti-tagged truck as an
artwork.

1.2.4 Discourse and Art-Historical Methodology

According to Foucault, systematic academic studies are also dependent on discursive
elements, and it might also be worth pointing out that this specific study is situated
within a scholarly context that, like all other academic contexts, despite their respec-
tive diversity, accommodates specific epistemological presuppositions and makes cer-
tain methodological tools available – which in turn opens up for certain types of re-

14
search questions, allows some types of critical analyses, and renders others impossible.
Discourse theory provides this study with a specific analytical perspective, and ways of
formulating questions. The academic context of the study is, however, art history and
visual culture, two closely related academic practices encompassing a diverse range of
methods and perspectives, and vast fields of various empirical materials.
In this study the art-historical methodology involves a systematic and detailed ob-
servation of particular pictures and texts in order to see how meaning is constructed
in historically and aesthetically specific circumstances, including broader cultural and
societal structures. The particularity should, however not be understood as an inten-
tion to trace an original and essential meaning of a specific picture or text; it includes
social, cultural, and institutional uses, re-uses, negotiations, and reinterpretations in
space and time. Images are thus regarded as epistemological objects, equivalent to
verbal and textual sources; objects from which it is possible to extract intellectual con-
clusions, and whose construction and contexts it may be vital to understand in order
to conduct an analysis of a specific cultural or socioeconomic situation.
Art history gained autonomy as an academic university discipline in Germany
during the mid-nineteenth century, by a series of distinctions from already establis-
hed disciplines such as cultural history.26 Visual culture could be characterized as an
interdisciplinary research field rather than a discipline, and it was formulated as such
during the 1990s, by scholars from an array of different disciplines (besides art history,
sociology, media studies, and so on).27 W.J.T. Mitchell, often referred to as one of the
most influential scholars in visual culture, has said that visual culture can be thought
of “as art history in the expanded field” and a way of researching non-artistic as well
as artistic images in broader contexts.28 I understand visual culture studies similarly:
as a field of research where it is possible to study contemporary and seemingly verna-
cular objects with the same comprehensive interest and dignity as the masterpieces in
prestigious art museums, as well as the opposite – discussing perceived masterpieces
as vernacular and everyday objects.

1.3 Material
In order to study graffiti as a joint construction by subcultural and institutional agents,
this thesis analyzes material produced within subcultural as well as institutional
contexts. This also entails the examination of statements and descriptions regarding
graffiti as part of the phenomenon, rather than as something that simply denotes
already preexisting structures and phenomena. The study is thus built on a wide range
of primary sources – from particular artworks and monuments; documentation and
subcultural artifacts such as photographs, music records, books, and movies; to politi-
cal policies, anti-graffiti pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other mass mediated and
circulated texts and images. I have also used my previous network within graffiti to
get in contact with informants who, through for example interviews, have provided

15
 the study with particular material and important contexts regarding the various rese-
arched aspects.
Universities are also societal institutions and research is thus regarded as an impor-
tant field of interaction between the researcher and the researched, as significant as
all other relations. For example, Jean Baudrillard’s influential essay on graffiti, “Kool
Killer, or the Insurrection of Signs,” published in Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993)
[1976], could be useful as a primary historical source regarding the description and
interpretation of graffiti, just as it could be used as a secondary theoretical source. The
thesis is thus grounded in a deliberate meta-perspective that slants toward the fields
of critical historiography and the history of human science. This perspective is used to
create a meta-perspective on the relationships between graffiti and the institutions of
power. For example, one effect of the desire to describe the graffiti subculture is that
many of the books on graffiti include a glossary, so that the reader can understand the
subcultural language of the researched or journalistically described other. Also, many
of the books produced in a subcultural context contain such glossaries, sometimes
with the obvious intent of correcting previous and more widespread accounts, other
times perhaps with an educational motive to school younger participants (toys) and/
or a wider public. As a part of the meta-perspective, this study contains a compilation
of definitions of the 58 most frequently used words selected from these glossaries. One
idea of this glossary of glossaries is to highlight the relationship between researcher/
journalist and researched/described. It is also a way to materialize subcultural graffiti
as a discursive system in its own right, and to also see how these subcultural concepts
are maintained, renegotiated, and transformed over time.
For this reason previous research may at times occupy a double role – both as se-
condary and primary source. This double function might at times confuse the reader,
but by explicitly stating when academic research is used as a primary source, it will
hopefully be possible to get around most of this potential confusion. Many of the
subcultural and non-academic books and magazines on graffiti contain reflective and
intellectually trenchant discussions that form an undoubtedly important part of the
knowledge production on graffiti, and they may therefore also occupy a double role –
this time as both primary and secondary source.
Each of the cases surveyed in this thesis also interrelates with a specific, more de-
marcated, body of material, presented as an appendix. This material is more confined
and systematically collected than the rest of the material for each case. I will describe
them in more detail below, in relation to their role in each chapter, as well as to other
material.
The more particular and demarcated body of material regarding the history of New
York graffiti and the institutional art world (Chapter 2: Back in the Days) is a list of
exhibitions and other institutional activities regarding New York graffiti during the
years 1972–1992, either in New York or outside of the city, but always with artists refer-
red to as graffiti artists from New York. The list is derived from exhibition catalogues,

16
artist monographs, books on graffiti, and from interviews with various graffiti writers.
In the context of an artist monograph or a gallery catalogue, these resumes of a spe-
cific artist’s artistic activity show what one might call the institutional constitution
of an artist, or the artist as an institutional subject. The intention is in this context
instead to obtain a picture of graffiti art’s institutional presence, by gathering all the
individual resumes of different graffiti artists from New York, or a resume of graffiti
as an art-institutional subject.29 Other sources used in this chapter are, on the one
hand, subcultural books and magazines, as well as previous academic studies on this
matter, and on the other hand, art-historical surveys and material from museums and
galleries as well as more mainstream descriptions, such as newspaper clippings.30 This
material is further supplemented by interviews with three participants in the graffiti
scene in the 1970s and 1980s – Snake 1, Coco 144, and Part One.
The specific body of material for the chapter on the Swedish version of ‘zero toler-
ance’ is a collection of 219 articles and advertisements referring to graffiti, compiled
from all the editions of the daily newspaper Metro from its inception in January
1995 until December 1999. This newspaper is of central interest, since its inception
coincides with the launch of zero tolerance by Stockholm Public Transport [SL,
Storstockholms Lokaltrafik], and since it had a complex relationship with the same
authority. For example, SL had access to a free daily page to inform readers on new
policies and changes in the transit system. These articles are listed and indexed in ap-
pendix: “Articles on graffiti in the Newspaper Metro 1995 to 1999”. This material has
been supplemented with press material retrieved from targeted searches in a digital
media archive containing full text articles from a wide range of Swedish newspapers.
Another more diverse body of material in this case is different political policy doc-
uments, internal surveys, police reports, and press releases regarding graffiti during
the approximate period 1994–2010. Staffan Jacobson’s dissertation, Den spraymålade
bilden – graffitimåleriet som bildform, konströrelse och läroprocess (1996), contains a vast
and diverse bibliography, including a thorough chronological list of articles from the
Swedish debate on graffiti in the 1980s. These articles have, together with Jacobson’s
own discussion, been used as material to construct an historical background to the
chapter on zero tolerance in Stockholm in the 1990s.
The specific body of material regarding the reception of the graffiti on the Berlin
Wall is a collection of newspaper articles in English published between 1978 and
1990. The focus on English-language material, rather than German, is manly due to
the fact that this study focuses on the graffiti on the wall as an international media
phenomenon, and on subcultural graffiti as a transnational discursive formation where
English is the primary language. The point of departure for this part of the study is
also a graffiti-decorated Berlin Wall monument situated at the CIA’s headquarters in
Langley, Virginia.31
The primary visual source in Chapter 3 has been Heinz J. Kuzdas’ multilingual and
popular Berliner Mauer Kunst (1990/1998). Kuzdas began documenting the graffiti on

17
 the Wall in 1982 and continued into the nineties, and his photos are a great source of
information, especially regarding the large murals of the mid- to late 1980s produced
by artists such as Kiddy Citny, Nora Aurienne, and Thierry Noir. Kuzdas focuses
on the paintings in the central parts of Berlin (e.g. Kreuzberg and key sites such as
Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdamer Platz). Ralf Gründer’s Berliner Mauerkunst: eine
Dokumentation (2007) is probably the most ambitious book, with an extensive body
of both pictures and textual information. Neither Kuzdas nor Gründer show any
particular interest in the graffiti inspired by the New York hip-hop culture, a type of
graffiti that was foremost produced in more remote areas of West Berlin. To obtain
visual material concerning this type of graffiti I have turned to photo sources on the
Internet (foremost the now defunct www.streetfiles.org) and Olivia Henkel’s, Tamara
Domentat’s, and René Westhoff ’s book Spray City – Graffiti in Berlin (1994), which
contains a chapter on the Berlin Wall.
Four interviews have been conducted regarding the Berlin Wall; three with artists
who painted on the Wall during the 1980s (Thierry Noir, Crime TDC, and Bus 126),
and one with the curator Lutz Henke, who has worked to commemorate the Wall
and its graffiti, as well as graffiti and street art in Berlin in general. These interviews
have mainly been used as an orientation in order to gain a basic understanding of the
socio-cultural circumstances under which the graffiti was produced. A large number
of postcards have also been collected during three visits to Berlin in 2009 and 2010,
purchased at street shops around tourist sights in the City (in all almost more than
a hundred different motifs, though some are very similar). This material is regarded
from two perspectives: first and foremost as an example of how important and signif-
icant the graffiti on the Berlin Wall has become in stories of the Wall, and thus as a
part of the contemporary discourse on the Berlin Wall as a memory; and as a source
of information on the visual culture of the graffiti on the Wall, complementary to the
sources mentioned above. For the discussion of the use of the Berlin Wall as material
monument, I have visited different monuments (in Berlin, as well as the Vatican State,
Los Angeles, and New York), and searched the Internet for various other examples.
The visited monuments have been documented with photos.

1.4 Terminology
1.4.1 Graffiti and Street Art
The use of the word graffiti in contemporary parlance is complex beyond the point of
it being described as both vandalism and art. On the one hand, it is used to denote
the result of any unofficial or unauthorized, hence often illegal, writing or drawing
in a public space – regardless of technique, style, or medium.32 This usage of the word
has been traced back to archeologists, who during the Nineteenth century used it to
distinguish between official and unofficial messages in Pompeii.33 On the other hand,
the term ‘graffiti’ is used to denote a set of specific cultural and stylistic conventions

18
or imagery developed during the late 1960s, described above as subcultural graffiti,
conventions that in turn could be divided into different pictorial categories such as
pieces, tags, and b-boy characters. The pictures produced in these stylistic conventions
are often, but far from necessarily, the result of unauthorized, or illegal, writing or
drawing in a public space.34
The distinction between these two denotations is often blurred in contemporary
parlance, which has led many commentators to suggest that an alternative terminolo-
gy should be used for the latter phenomenon, or at least that the differences should be
made clear. For example, the cultural historian Joe Austin proposes the term graffiti
art and suggests that it should be framed in a context other than traditional graffiti
to avoid misconceptions.35 There is also a subcultural critique of the term graffiti.
Phase 2, usually referred to as one of the most influential graffiti artists, argues that
graffiti is a term launched by the mass media, and that it diminishes his field’s artistic
development. In an interview published in the German graffiti magazine On the Run
in 1993, he suggests that the correct term should be ‘aerosol art’: “…we didn’t give it
this title ‘graffiti’! If you check out this word in a dictionary it doesn’t substancicate
[sic] what we’ve brought this art to. […] get rid of this g-word”.36 By paraphrasing
the n-word and the f-word, Phase 2 suggests that graffiti should be understood as an
outright abusive word. Furthermore, the quote implies that the object that should not
be labeled graffiti is an art form developed by Phase 2 and others.
Phase 2’s alternative, aerosol art, is, however, just one of several suggestions, among
which the terms writing or style writing probably are the most widespread.37 But none
of these suggestions has managed to challenge the term ‘graffiti’, not even in scholarly
or subcultural contexts. This might be due to the fact that the mainly subcultural
proponents of alternative terms lack institutional resources, and thereby a substantial
platform for self-representation. It is partly in order to acknowledge these subcultural
counter-strategies that this thesis is titled “The G-Word”.
However, when researching the construction and negotiations of graffiti as a dis-
cursive formation, it is not a viable strategy to weed out some actions and objects de-
signated by the term ‘graffiti’, renaming them ‘aerosol art’ or any other of the manifold
suggestions that exist – not even if much of the graffiti in this study could be conside-
red graffiti art, using Austin’s term, or aerosol art, using Phase 2’s. To remain consis-
tent with the aims and objectives above, I have consciously adopted the strategy of
using graffiti as a tentative term, where the exact boundaries are less interesting than
the seemingly coherent, if also complex and contradictory, unity its usage implies.38
Some of the earliest examples of the use of the term ‘street art’ also seem to have
formed part of the strategies to circumvent the negative connotations of the word
‘graffiti’.39 Street art, however, did not come into wider circulation until later, then
denoting something apprehended as slightly different from graffiti. There is little, if
any, consent on how this difference should be understood and described. Peter Bengt-
sen (2014) frames street art as an autonomous social context (The Street Art World)

19
 whose members are concerned with both challenging and defending the boundaries
between this and other socio-artistic contexts – including an established art world
as well as graffiti. Cecilia Andersson (2006) uses street art (translated to Swedish:
gatukonst) as an umbrella term for different unofficial creative strategies in the public
sphere – including subcultural graffiti. Anna Waclawek (2008) suggests that street art
is an “evolution of, rebellion against, or addition to” subcultural graffiti, a contribution
that allows for greater diversity.40
I have in a similar manner discussed street art as graffiti art in an expanded field
(and as a set of artistic strategies rather than a stylistic tradition). I also concluded that
compared to graffiti, street art was rarely presented as controversial in mainstream
media, even when it had obviously been produced without permission.41 The latter led
me to suggest that street art not only is a phenomenon that developed later, but is also
at least partly constructed in and through another discourse. In the current project,
street art is thus used to denote a different, but overlapping and interrelated, discursive
formation, that partly relates to the same phenomena, activities, images, and so on,
and partly uses the same statements, but that is also built from other statements, re-
sulting in other logics and relations. In short, street art is suggested as a different, and
in some aspects less ambiguous, discursively produced context, one that has developed
later than graffiti.42

1.4.2 Institution, Subculture and Mainstream

Institution, subculture, and mainstream are three other terms whose uses deserve to
be briefly clarified. In common parlance the term ‘institution’ may refer to several
different interrelated concepts, and with these definitions – as a significant practice
– both graffiti and street art perhaps could be described as internationalized insti-
tutions.43 This kind of discursive understanding is, however, not what is referred to
when the term ‘institution’ is used in this thesis, but institution as an established or-
ganization. Institutions are thus organized political, cultural, and social organizations
such as political parties, media enterprises, art museums, law enforcement agencies,
commercial corporations, and transit authorities. In the study the term institution may
refer either to a specific organization (such as a particular art museum or a particular
unit within the police), but more often to a more general institutional structure (such
as the art world or the police).
Subculture is a diverse and complex concept within cultural and social theory. It is
often associated with the so-called Birmingham School and the Centre for Contem-
porary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, and with elabo-
rate theories of subculture as an expression of social subversion and resistance among
primary working class youths. Later research on subculture has contested, revised,
and confirmed various aspects of CCCS-theories.44 However, few of the scholars re-
searching graffiti refer explicitly to CCCS or other theories and most use the term

20
subculture as a relatively open and vague concept. I use the same strategy and adopt
the following, very open, dictionary definition: “a smaller cultural group with beliefs,
norms, practices, and rituals that are different from, and sometimes at odds with,
those of the larger culture”.45
The notion of mainstream should also be understood in relation to the concept of
subculture, as a term defining “the larger culture” – more or less everything that does
not belong to the specific subcultural context. It is used relatively often in discussions
regarding graffiti. As pointed out by Macdonald above, the separation of subculture
from the mainstream is built upon mutual stereotypification, and these concepts thus
may conceal both significant internal differences and the intrinsic links between the
contexts. From the subcultural point of view the mainstream may encompass both
large art-institutional structures as museums and commercial galleries as well as av-
ant-gardist and non-profit, artist-run spaces. I use the term mainstream restrictively,
and mainly to point out a generic difference.46

1.5 Previous Research

1.5.1 Knowledge Production on Graffiti and Street Art
The previous academic research on graffiti is significant and spans a range of dis-
ciplines, and even when narrowed down to the study of graffiti as a contemporary
sociocultural phenomenon it appears as a research topic in, for example, the fields
of sociology, ethnography, criminology, cultural history, and art history. Even if all of
these studies revolve around the same materials and similar phenomena, they tend
to construct slightly different objects of study, due to their various epistemological
presuppositions. Below is a survey of this research, across the disciplines, where I will
finish off by pointing out some tendencies that many of the studies have in common,
despite their varied disciplinary residency, and how this study both builds upon and
departs from these tendencies.
The study Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York
City (2001), by cultural historian Joe Austin, situates graffiti – referred to as writing
– in the wider political socioeconomic and cultural context of New York City in the
1970s and 80s: social and economic crisis, budget cuts, and city-renewal programs.
Austin combines a wide range of sources – interviews, press material, specialized graf-
fiti magazines – to contrast the (graffiti) writers’ own history with what Austin refers
to as the powerful “framing story” of the media industry. Dominant, if not entirely
unchallenged, this latter narration presents the phenomenon of graffiti as an epidemic
and a symbol of urban decline.
In Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City (2002), the cultural histori-
an Ivor L. Miller charts visual and cultural aspects of graffiti in New York from the
late 1960s until the turn of the millennium. Miller refers to the object of study as
aerosol art and frames it within the context of the wider subculture hip-hop, and in-

21
 terprets his findings in relation to different sensibilities developed within an African
American and Afro-Caribbean cultural continuum. He argues that this aerosol art
has been misrepresented as “vandalism” by New York City’s administration and the
society’s institutions at large. To create a counter-narrative to this conception, Miller
builds his discussion on a large number of interviews with graffiti writers conducted
between 1988 and 2001. He refers to the interviewees as his teachers – and applies a
methodology of letting them read the transcribed material, and then supplementing
the results with new interviews in order to “fill in missing pieces from the historical
narrative”.47 This way, Miller both provides a multi-dimensional picture of the early
New York graffiti writers’ historical self-understanding, and places it in a cultural and
aesthetic context.
Two similar studies are the aforementioned Nancy Macdonald’s The Graffiti Sub-
culture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York (2001) and Janice
Rahn’s Painting without Permission: Hip-Hop Graffiti Subculture (2002). Both of these
ethnographic studies build upon extensive interview material, and frame graffiti as
a subcultural community. Both Macdonald’s and Rahn’s interest lies in the role this
subculture plays in the social lives of the often adolescent individuals participating,
and they share an ambition of giving voice to these participants. Like Miller, Rahn si-
tuates graffiti in the wider context of hip-hop – and refers to the discussed subculture
as hip-hop graffiti. Rahn primarily studies the graffiti scene in Montreal, Canada, and
focus on aspects of collaboration, community building, and learning processes, while
Macdonald’s main contribution to the research field is a theorization of gender roles
in graffiti. Of these two studies, Macdonald has been the most useful for this project,
and as mentioned earlier, the study has been crucial for this project in the theoretical
construction of the relationship between the structures of subculture and mainstream.
Both Janice Rahn and Ivor Miller refer to Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York
(1982), by sociologist Craig Castleman, as the first scholarly work on this type of
graffiti. As an academic dissertation it is somewhat unorthodox, as, for example, the
whole first chapter consists solely of the graffiti writer Lee’s (Quinones) story about
how he and his group paints one side of an entire subway train. Castleman conducted
his study in New York City during the late 1970s, and it is mainly built on interviews
with graffiti writers and officials (police officers, MTA employees, etcetera). He ana-
lyzes this material in combination with articles from newspapers and magazines, as
well as various public documents, and organizes his study around themes such as
“Writing”, “Writers”, “The Politics of Graffiti”, and “The Police”. For the present stu-
dy, Getting Up has been important in two ways. Firstly, Castleman places subcultural
graffiti within a complex network of various institutional agents and youths writing
graffiti. Even though he does not develop this structure into an explicit argument or
conclusion, Castleman implies that graffiti is created through an interaction between
subcultural practices and institutions, and this implication has been important for the
constitution of this thesis. Secondly, Castleman’s outspoken descriptive modus makes

22
his work an important source of information on the social fabric of early subway
graffiti in New York.
Graffiti a New York [Graffiti in New York] (2012) [1978] is a book based on the Ital-
ian author Andrea Nelli’s bachelor’s thesis, and an early attempt to construct a concise
history of subway graffiti in New York 1968–1976 and its social contexts. The book
follows a basic academic structure and was published as early as 1978, thus preceding
Castleman’s study by several years, and even as a piece of undergraduate work, it could
be considered the first published academic study on this new type of graffiti. That it
has not been noticed as a scholarly work is probably primarily due to the fact that the
book was released in Italy and in Italian, and that the publisher went bankrupt a few
months later. In 2012, Nelli’s work was reissued in an English translation, with contex-
tualizing introductions and extended visual material, but with the text unrevised, “to
offer the reader an original thesis that belongs to a specific time frame”.48
Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970’s (2009), by Jack Stewart, is
a posthumously published book, based of the first dissertation with an art-historical
approach to subcultural graffiti: Subway Graffiti: An Aesthetic Study of Graffiti on the
Subway System of New York City, 1970-1978 (1989). Jack Stewart was an artist and art
teacher who began gathering material for the thesis as early as 1970, by photographing
graffiti and interviewing graffiti writers, but did not start working on his dissertation
until 1975, when he was promoted to vice president and provost of Rhode Island
School of Design. Given Stewart’s position within art and design education, it is
perhaps not surprising that he tries to situate graffiti within or in relation to various
artistic concepts, practices and contexts – for example self-taught art, folk art, and
lettrism – and discusses the difference between graffiti on trains and on canvases in
galleries. His main concern, however, regards aesthetic content in subway graffiti and
what he identifies as stylistic changes over time, or in his own words its “evolutionary
development”, which he divides into different periods. For this project, the periodiza-
tion of graffiti is more interesting as material than as previous research, but Stewart is
the first scholar who problematizes graffiti as an artistic phenomena, and he tries to
situate it in an art-historical context.
German art historian Johannes Stahl’s Graffiti: zwischen Alltag und Ästhetik [Graf-
fiti: between everyday and aesthetics] (1990) surveys graffiti from an array of perspec-
tives – for example as a sociological and juridical problem and as a motif in Western
art. The study contains a brief chapter on the Berlin Wall, discussed as a “chaotic
gesamt-kunstwerk”, and it is this chapter that has been the most important for the
present study.
Swedish art historian Staffan Jacobsson’s dissertation Den spraymålade bilden – graf-
fitimåleriet som bildform, konströrelse och läroprocess [The spray-painted picture - graffiti
painting as imagery, art movement and learning process] (1996) studies graffiti as a
global contemporary phenomenon, and argues that graffiti in most contexts has been
described as senseless destruction, but instead ought to be considered a meaningful

23
 activity. Jacobson introduces the term TTP graffiti to distinguish between the ar-
cheological term graffiti, used to denote private messages in the public realms in for
example Pompeii, from the kind of graffiti often referred to when the word is used
in contemporary vernacular language. TTP is an acronym for Tags, Throw-ups, and
Pieces – the specific set of subcultural visual conventions developed in Philadelphia
and New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that was globalized in the
1980s. As his title suggests, Jacobson claims that TTP graffiti simultaneously func-
tions as a specific type of imagery, an art movement, and a learning process. As an
example of the two first aspects, he points out the convention of wildstyle as the
most original innovation. Jacobson’s work has functioned as an important source of
inspiration for this project, especially in an ambition to consciously chart graffiti as a
transnational cultural structure developed both as a subculture and within a fine-art
context. But whereas Jacobson in my opinion has a slight tendency to downplay the
tensions and ambiguities that arise through the interactions between the institutional
art world and subcultural graffiti, this project’s intention is to point out and analyze
these ambiguities as productive elements of graffiti.49
The Department of Criminology at Stockholm University had a research project
on graffiti funded by the regional public-transit organization, SL, Stockholm Public
Transport [Storstockholms Lokaltrafik], that resulted in two studies, both building
on Jacobson’s definition of graffiti but focusing on the social structure and function
of TTP graffiti for its practitioners in Sweden. In Swedish Graffiti - A Criminologi-
cal Perspective (2003), David Shannon identifies two diametrically opposed views on
graffiti present in public debate and previous research; one where graffiti is regarded
as an artistic and creative subculture, and may function as a “positive developmental
environment” for young people on the way into adulthood; one where graffiti is a
“criminogenic environment that serves to funnel youths into a career as long-term de-
linquents”.50 Shannon analyzes material collected between 1994 and 2000 from three
different sources: police records on people arrested for conducting illegal graffiti, a
nationally representative self-report survey of high-school pupils’ involvement in ju-
venile delinquency, and interviews with graffiti writers. He concludes that the result
supports neither one of the two opposing views, though there are indications that
could be used to support both in various sections of the material. He also argues that
the social structure of Swedish graffiti combines values that are conventional within
capitalist society (stressing competition, productivity, and individual originality) with
values more common within delinquency in general (such as physical risk-taking).
Shannon’s identification of and attempt to simultaneously analyze the diverging no-
tions regarding graffiti are relevant to this study, but whereas Shannon’s ambition is to
falsify or validate the claims, the ambition here is to look at them as interdependent
constructions.
The other study produced in this research project was Michael Johnson’s Inblick i
en ungdomskultur – Samtal med graffitimålare [Insight into a youth culture - Conver-

24
sations with graffiti writers] (2006) built on interviews done between 1998 and 2000
with graffiti writers from Stockholm and Copenhagen. The primary objective is to
identify fundamental mechanisms and driving forces of the interviewees’ activity by
analyzing graffiti as a phenomenon from the three different perspectives of setting
(the graffiti subculture), self (the subculture’s role for the individual participant), and
context (the subculture in a wider socio-political setting). He proposes that graffiti
should be understood as one of several youth cultures, developed as an answer to a
rapidly changing society where the parent generation lost its traditional function as a
role model. Graffiti culture provides a scene in which the individual graffiti writer is
able to receive validation and attention. Johnson puts this in a career perspective and
argues that graffiti writers seek confirmation from their role models, the older and
more skilled people on the scene. For the present study, Johnson’s most interesting
findings, however, concern the perspective of context, where he identifies a complex
interdependence between the subcultural setting and the various institutional an-
ti-graffiti agencies.
Other works in the vein of criminology that are important to mention are Nor-
wegian professor Cecilie Høigård’s Gategallerier [Street Galleries] (2002) and Jeff
Ferrell’s Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality (1996), which
examine various anti-graffiti strategies in Oslo, Norway, and Denver, Colorado re-
spectively. The most recent is Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Un-
derground (2009) by sociologist Gregory J. Snyder, a study built upon ethnography
produced during the seven years the author spent “immersed in graffiti culture”.51
Snyder divides his study into three parts where the last part – on how graffiti writers
use their experiences to develop careers within different creative industries – is the
most important for the present study.
The concept of street art, closely related to graffiti, has also been taken into schol-
arly consideration during the last few years. Rådjur och raketer: gatukonst som estetisk
produktion och kreativ praktik i det offentliga rummet [Roe deer and Rockets: Street art
as creative practice and aesthetic production in the public space] (2006) is a thesis in
educational science where Cecilia Andersson applies methods from ethnography to
describe how young people use public space as an arena for informal image making,
and aesthetic learning processes. Andersson suggests that street art should be used as
an umbrella term, denoting many kinds of informal image production in the public
realm: posters, stickers, stencils – including, for example, pieces and throw-ups.
Peter Bengtsen’s PhD dissertation, The Street Art World (2014), departs from How-
ard S. Becker’s concept of art worlds in claiming that the identification of certain
objects as artworks is the result of social interaction of subjects belonging to a specific
art world. Bengtsen thus suggests that street art is a socially constructed category pro-
duced by the members of a street-art world, and he studies this primarily by analyzing
everyday dialogues and debates by participants on different Internet forums dedicated
to street art. This way Bengtsen is able to chart a range of complex notions within this

25
 social context, regarding for example art markets and museums, as well as a struggle
among these members to challenge and defend boundaries of street art.
One important study with the ambition to bridge the closely-related concepts of
street art and graffiti is Anna Waclawek’s From Graffiti to the Street Art Movement:
Negotiating Art Worlds, Urban Spaces, and Visual Culture, c. 1970–2008 (2008), and it
does this primarily by linking them in a chronological order, where street art is re-
ferred to as post-graffiti. This chronological perspective does not imply that street art
has replaced graffiti, but rather that it is produced by artists breaking with the stylistic
conventions established by the graffiti tradition, and that it could be understood as
an artistic progression. But Waclawek does not only study graffiti and post-graffiti as
different, if related, artistic practices; she also utilizes different theoretical perspectives
and methodological tools, and divides the study into two parts. Graffiti is primarily
studied by reviewing previous research and using various subcultural theories, while
post-graffiti is mainly researched through interviews with street artists and utiliz-
ing theories from visual culture and critical perspectives on public space. Waclawek’s
study thus shows a tendency to become two different studies, bridging street art and
graffiti chronologically rather than conceptually. The first part of this study, on graffiti,
has been valuable for the present project, especially in its juxtaposition of graffiti and
art-historical sources.
Beside the academic studies surveyed above, there exists a vast body of in-depth
work regarding graffiti, in what could be regarded as an area of scholarly but non-ac-
ademic consumption.52 This field includes surveys with an ambition to cover graffi-
ti and/or street art as international phenomena, such as Nicholas Ganz’ two books
Graffiti World: Street Art From Five Continents (2004) and Graffiti Woman: Graffiti and
Street Art From Five Continents (2006), and aforementioned art historians Johannes
Stahl’s Street Art (2009), Anna Waclawek’s Graffiti and Street Art (2011) and Rafael
Schacter’s The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti (2013).53 The first publication in
this vein is Henry Chalfant’s and James Prigoff ’s Spraycan Art (1987). The latter partly
follows the structure of the book often referred to as the most important in this field:
Henry Chalfant’s and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art (1984). But whereas Spraycan Art
has an international scope, Subway Art focus solely on New York subway graffiti circa
1975–1983.
Subway graffiti in New York occupies a pivotal position in the field, and it has been
the subject of many other books. Norman Mailer’s The Faith of Graffiti (1974), built on
photo documentation by Jon Naar and design by Mervyn Kurlansky at Pentagram,
was the first to describe it as a phenomenon specific to New York, and as different
from previous types of graffiti. The phenomenon of subway graffiti in New York has
also been as historicized from a practitioner’s point of view by, for example, Phase 2
in Style: Writing from the Underground – (R)evolutions of Aerosol Linguistics (1996) and
Eric & Luke Felisbret in Graffiti New York (2009); from a similar subcultural point of
view but with broader scopes come Roger Gastman’s & Caleb Neelon’s The history of

26
American graffiti (2010), and Todd James’ & David Villorente’s Mascots & Mugs: The
Characters and Cartoons of Subway Graffiti (2007). Similar projects, but focusing on
this type of graffiti in other parts of the world, are Andrea Caputo’s All City Writers:
The Graffiti Diaspora (2009), Malcolm Jacobson’s and Tobias Barenthin Lindblad’s,
Overground: 9 Scandinavian Graffiti Writers (2003),Björn Almqvist’s and Torkel Sjö-
strand’s Overground 3: Trans Europe Express (2008), and Duro Cubrilo’s, Martin Har-
vey’s and Karl Stamer’s Kings Way – The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne
1983-93 (2009), where the two former titles document different European takes on
this type of graffiti, while the latter chronicles the graffiti in Melbourne, Australia.
These are just a few titles in a constantly expanding body of work.
A large number of art museum catalogues and artist monographs are also in dist-
ribution. Froukje Hoekstra’s and Frans Haks’ Coming from the subway – New York
graffiti art : Geschichte und Entwicklung einer aussergewöhnlichen Bewegung (1992), was
produced for an exhibition at Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Netherlands;
Cedar Lewisohn’s Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution (2008) accompanied an exhibition
at the Tate Modern in London, and Jeffrey Deitch’s, Roger Gastman’s and Aaron
Rose’s Art in the Streets (2011) was published as a catalogue for the exhibition with the
same name, at MoCA in Los Angeles; Sean Corcoran’s and Carlo McCormick’s City
as Canvas: New York City Graffiti From the Martin Wong Collection was released for an
exhibition at The Museum of the City of New York in 2014. Three artist monographs
have been particularly useful to the present project: Andrew Witten’s & Michael
White’s Style Master General: The Life of Graffiti Artist Dondi White (2001), Alain “Ket”
Maridueña’s Part One – The Death Squad (2009), and Keith Haring’s and John Gruen’s
Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography (1991).
All of the works surveyed above are comprehensive books that have various aspects
of graffiti and/or street art as their main subject. Beside these books, there exists a
number of scholarly articles and smaller publications, as well as cases where graffiti
is used more in passing for other purposes, and some of these are worth mentioning
here. The most famous of these is probably Jean Baudrillard’s “Kool Killer ou l’insur-
rection par les signes” (1976) [commonly referred to in its English title “Kool Killer,
or The Insurrection of Signs” (published 1993)]. In the text, Baudrillard claims that
the new type of graffiti that developed in New York in the early 1970s are “empty
signifiers” with neither connotation nor denotation. This claim has been criticized by
both Johannes Stahl and Staffan Jacobson, where the former argues that Baudrillard’s
conclusion mainly is an outcome of the French philosopher’s own illiteracy regarding
the cultural context of graffiti.54
In the introduction to The Practice of Cultural Analysis: Exposing Interdisciplinary
Interpretation (1999), Mieke Bal uses a “graffito”, described as a “text-image” written
on a brick wall, as an example to characterize the aims and methodology of cultural
analysis, and to theorize the concept of display. Both Bal and Baudrillard could thus
be said to use (different types of ) graffiti as building blocks in their theoretical and

27
 methodological framework. Sonja Neef ’s “Killing Kool: The Graffiti Museum” (2007)
departs from both Jean Baudrillard’s philosophical interpretation and Mieke Bal’s
cultural analysis to situate contemporary graffiti as a counter-system to the official
city signs, and as a part of a global network. For the purposes of this study, Neef ’s
article is highly interesting for several reasons. She discusses graffiti in relation to
Bal’s conceptual metaphor of the museum, but expands her discussion into the use
of the Internet as a museum, in a way that makes it interesting both for this study’s
examination of the image-collection process and graffiti as a transnational structure.
Neef also considers the graffiti on the Berlin Wall in retrospect – in a way that uses
the images of graffiti as a part of her analysis and argumentation.
There are several other articles that in different ways make inquiries regarding the
graffiti on the Berlin Wall, where the two most useful have been Benjamin Drechsel’s
“The Berlin Wall from a visual perspective: comments on the construction of a politi-
cal media icon” (2010), and Mary Beth Stein’s “The Politics of Humor: Berlin Wall in
Jokes and Graffiti” (1989).
Aside from their comprehensive books, both Ivor Miller and Joe Austin have pub-
lished several articles that have been of relevance to this study, such as Miller’s “Cre-
olizing for Survival in the City” (1994), and Austin’s “More to see than a canvas in a
white cube: For an art in the streets” (2010). The latter was published in an issue of the
interdisciplinary academic journal City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy,
action, which contained a feature called “graffiti, street art and the city” with substan-
tial articles by urban strategist Scott Burnham, criminologists Alice Young, Mark
Halsey and Jeff Ferrell, cultural geographers Kurt Iveson and Luke Dickens, and so-
ciologist Robert D. Weide. The two Australian criminologists Alice Young and Mark
Halsey, mentioned above, have also previously published several articles on graffiti of
relevance for this study.
Björn Jonsson, a Swedish researcher in the field of social work, has written Graffiti
eller klotter?: en diskursanalys av politisk debatt och lokala praktiker [Graffiti or doodle?: a
discourse analysis of political debate and local practices] (2004), on the distinction in
the Swedish language between of the two words ‘graffiti’ and ‘klotter’. This work has
been useful in the chapter on the Swedish zero-tolerance policies. In order to situate
zero tolerance in relation to anti-graffiti policies in New York City, two articles written
by criminologist Ronald Kramer have been central: “Moral Panics and Urban Growth
Machines: Official Reactions to Graffiti in New York City, 1990–2005” (2010), and “Po-
litical Elites, ‘Broken Windows’,and the Commodification of Urban Space” (2012).
Two other specific articles that have been used in the project are the sociologist
Richard Lachmann’s “Graffiti as Career and Ideology” (1988), which looks at different
groups of graffiti writers in relation to an art world as well as a deviant subculture,
and “Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime and Art” (1988), where Susan Stewart uses
graffiti as a means of discussing value hierarchies regarding the status of the artwork
within the postmodern commodity system. She grounds her discussion empirically in

28
Craig Castleman’s Getting up, as well as the photo book Subway Art (1984) by Henry
Chalfant and Martha Cooper.
To summarize, a few more general tendencies in the graffiti research described
above might be pointed out. First, and as mentioned already in the beginning of this
thesis, almost all of the studies identify and try to tackle the problem of the polarized
image of graffiti, albeit in different ways. Many of them tries to distinguish between
artistic graffiti, and types of non-artistic graffiti, or to point out that there are different
perspectives on the phenomenon of graffiti. But Susan Stewart is probably the first
to theoretically acknowledge the duality of graffiti, not as different types of graffiti,
or as opposing viewpoints, but as “gestures” of dismissal and veneration that “are part
of a reciprocal and interdependent system of axiological practices”.55 My approach,
to study the polarized descriptions of graffiti as a discursive formation with different
practices, primarily builds on this identification by Stewart, and I will return to this
article in section 2.3.
Second, many researchers argue that contemporary graffiti is a marginalized and
largely misunderstood subculture, suffering from undifferentiated and stereotypical
representations, and more complex than most commonsensical approaches reckon. At
least partly as a consequence of this, there is a clear tendency to primarily build the
studies upon interview material, with an implicit or explicit ambition to give voice to
the subcultural participants and their perspectives. For example, Nancy MacDonald’s
interviewees read and comment on her conclusions, and she submits these comments
in her published book. Janice Rahn goes the furthest, with nearly half of her book
consisting of briefly introduced, transcribed interviews with her informants, one at a
time. The marginalization is less relevant in this study, which tries to situate subcultu-
ral voices in relation to institutional claims. To a certain degree, I also use interviews,
but the main focus is on analyzing pre-existing material, usually produced to be circu-
lated within different media, or viewed by audiences.
Third, many of the studies make use of an extensive visual material, but the parti-
cular pictures tend to be treated rather haphazardly, or as more general illustrations
of findings from interviews or other non-visual sources, and to illustrate conclusions
made in the argumentation. I intend here to treat pictures as epistemologically valid
sources, of the same weight as their textual equivalents, and I use them as an integra-
ted part of the sources.
Fourth, even if most research acknowledges subcultural graffiti as a tradition with a
specific history, many studies remain fairly indifferent to historical changes in socioe-
conomic, cultural and political contexts. When historical changes are acknowledged,
they are usually restricted to a narrative of chronological and linear developments
of graffiti – for example, from rudimentary to more and more complex forms. Most
particular aspects of the subculture are thus treated as more or less ahistorical. For ex-
ample, Nancy MacDonald explicitly points out that the technological development of
communication media has changed graffiti, but she also acknowledges that her study

29
 does not take this into account.56 And Janice Rahn claims that “writers will go to great
extremes to escape the authorities”, and substantiates this by referring to Castleman,
a study published 20 years prior that regards graffiti as a local phenomenon in New
York City.57 I am not stating that this claim necessarily is incorrect, but validating it
by a decades-old study conducted in another place implies that subcultural graffiti is a
primarily ahistorical and static phenomenon. In the present study, graffiti is neither an
ahistorical phenomenon nor a linear development of styles, but a discursive formation,
a system under constant maintenance, negotiation, renegotiation and transformation.
Fifth, it should be mentioned that several later studies discussing contemporary
practices of graffiti and street art bring up questions of placemaking, and inequalities
in the access to urban space. These are not irrelevant aspects, but they are slightly be-
side the point in relation to the aims of this study. I would, however, suggest that the
discursive practices that are studied, for example in the chapter on Swedish zero-to-
lerance policies, have a direct relevance to the possibilities of access to public realms.

1.5.2 Research on Hip-Hop and Other Cultural Contexts

In more specialized circumstances, the graffiti subculture is often understood as part
of the wider subcultural context of hip-hop. It is then aligned together with MC-
ing and DJ-ing (or rap music) and b-boying (or breakdance).58 And just like graffiti,
hip-hop has been subject to a great deal of scholarly interest. During the last decade
this interest has grown into something that is best categorized as an interdisciplinary
research field: hip-hop studies – scholarly surveys of hip-hop culture as, for example,
an aesthetic expression, a cultural influence or social movement, as well as studies of
various cultures and histories from a hip-hop perspective.59 It is also to some extent
with inspiration from this scholarly field that this study focuses on the relationships
between the subculture and institutions of society.
Tricia Rose’s Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(1994) was the first academic endeavor to systematically and theoretically situate hip-
hop in a broader sociocultural framework, and as a topic worthy of inquiry. Two more
recent studies from this field that have been of use are Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture
and Politics of Rap (2007), by cultural historian Jeffrey Ogbar, and Foundation: B-boys,
B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (2009), by music-ethnologist Joseph Schloss.
Two other books has also been useful in situating hip-hop and graffiti in a European
context: the anthology Hip-Hop in Europe: Cultural Identities and Transnational Flows
(2013) edited by Sina A. Nitzsche and Walter Grünzweig, and Ove Sernhede’s & Jo-
han Söderman’s Planet Hiphop: om hiphop som folkbildning och social moblisering [Planet
Hip-Hop: On Hip-hop as Folkbildning and Social Mobilization] (2010).
Graffiti is discussed within hip-hop studies, but the majority of the comprehensive
works focus on music, and to a certain extent dance. I hope be able to contribute to
this field by placing graffiti in relation to these studies.

30
 Hip-hop is, of course, not the only historical or social context of relevance in this
study. For example, Frances Stonor Saunders’ Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cul-
tural Cold War(1999), and Penny M. Von Eschen’s Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz
Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004), have been central to contextualizing the graffiti
on the Berlin Wall.

1.5.3 Art History and Visual Culture

There are several studies in art history, beside those specifically devoted to the subjects
of street art and graffiti (Stahl, 1990; Jacobson, 1996; Waclawek, 2008; Bengtsen, 2014)
that have been important in the present study. One book that has profoundly influen-
ced this project was James Elkins’ Stories of art (2002), on how art history is construc-
ted through various narratological structures, dependent on ideological assumptions
and interests, and thus sometimes becoming conflicting stories. This was a book that
I read during my first year as an undergraduate student in art history, and at once it
struck me how the history of graffiti that I had learned as an informal, subcultural
student of graffiti seemed to be dependent on similar narratological patterns. Stories of
art has, together with Dan Karlholm’s Handböckernas konsthistoria [The art history of
the art historical surveys] (1996), and Art of illusion: the representation of art history in
nineteenth-century Germany and beyond (2004), inspired the use of a meta-perspective
in general, and in particular a critical historiographical approach regarding the pre-
vious descriptions of the development of subcultural graffiti. Karlholm’s two studies
have also been methodologically important in their combined use of visual and textual
sources.
One last work that has been crucial to this project, though not extensively used, but
should be mentioned is David Freedberg’s The Power of Images: Studies in the History
and Theory of Response (1989). Freedberg’s work is on the history of relations between
images and people, a history built on categories of reactions, by individuals as well as
socially and culturally ritualized responses, such as censorship, idolatry, iconoclasm,
and consecration. It suggests, among other things, that opposition to a type of image
is a response as important as a respectful preservation; that analyzing extreme emo-
tional responses such as aggressive destruction and zealous, silent devotion of images
may reveal just as much of images as sophisticated, learned and seemingly disintere-
sted interpretations. Freedberg’s work has been the primary inspiration for one of the
fundamental assumptions of the thesis: that the significance – and possible artistic
power – of graffiti imagery is created by the joint processes of individual graffiti prac-
titioners as well as agents from police forces, graffiti removal organizations, and art
institutions.

31
 Endnotes
1
The specific headline, randomly chosen, is
derived from Mike McEwen’s article “Graffiti:
art or vandalism?” published in The Advertiser,
1986-10-06. This antithetical description has also
been discussed in scholarly contexts, e.g. Susan
Stewart writes about two descriptions of graffiti,
as dirt and as art, in her essay “Ceci Tuera Cela:
Graffiti as Crime and Art”. See Susan Stewart
(1988), “Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime and Art”,
in John Fekete (ed.) (1988), Life After Postmoder-
nism: Essays on Value and Culture. Basingstoke:
Macmillan Education.
2
The script for At First Sight is based on the essay
“To See and Not to See” from the book An anthro-
pologist from Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
(1995) by Oliver Sacks, a physician and professor
of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University
Medical Center.
3
Irwin Winkler, Oliver Sacks & Steve Levitt (1998),
At First Sight, Transcript from a DVD released
2004, MGM Home Entertainment 1:07:30-1:08:04.
4
The featured work is by the French artist Jean
Dubuffet (1901–1985). It is possible to identify it as
“Groupe de Quatre Arbres” located at The Chase
Manhattan Bank Plaza in the Financial District of
Manhattan, New York.
5
Winkler, Sacks & Levitt (1998), 1:08:04-1:08:14.
6
For example, Joe Austin writes, “The new writing
that appeared on New York City’s public walls in
the late 1960s and early 1970s (hereafter, graffiti
art) was unprecedented in modern history”. See
Joe Austin (2010), “More to see than a canvas
in a white cube: For an art in the streets”, City:
Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy,
Action, 14:1–2, p. 33–47. The internationalization
of this graffiti has been described by for example
Staffan Jacobson (1996) and Cecilie Høigård
(2002).
7
Ivor L. Miller (2002) argues that subcultural graffiti
should be called aerosol art to avoid misrepresen-
32
tations of it as vandalism, while David Shannon
(2003) discusses two diametrically opposed views
on graffiti as a phenomenon, one as a creativity
and one as a criminogenic environment.
8
Craig Castleman, (1982), Getting Up: Subway
Graffiti in New York, p. x, emphasis in original.
9
Nancy Macdonald, (2001), The Graffiti Subcultu-
re: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and
New York. Basingstoke: Palgrave, p. 2-3.
10
Macdonald (2001), p. 157.
11
Macdonald (2001), p. 163.
12
Macdonald (2001), p. 154-156.
13
Michel Foucault, (2002) [1969/1972]. The Archa-
eology of Knowledge. London: Routledge p. 97.
14
Castleman (1982), p. 136. Originally published
as “Garelik Calls for War on Graffiti”, in New York
Times, 1972-05-21.
15
Of course, the placing of this claim in a discur-
sive perspective is very likely at odds with the
original intent and it might reduce its argumentati-
ve power, and therefore be comprehended as less
valid. It is, however, not the same as saying that it
is false in a more positivistic sense.
16
Clare O’Farrell, (2005), Michel Foucault. London:
Sage pp. 77-79.
17
Richard Goldstein: “This Thing Has Gotten
Completely Out of Hand”, New York Magazine,
1973-03-26.
18
Foucault (2002), p. 73.
19
Foucault, (2002), p. 73.
20
Laila Väisänen (Ed.), documentation from the
Nordic conference on graffiti, October 15-16, 1998
[Nordisk konferens om klotter den 15–16 oktober
1998], summary in Swedish, published by the City
Council of Stockholm and Stockholm Public Trans-
port, November 1998: “Ni kommer aldrig att höra
mig eller någon av mina medarbetare använda
ordet graffitikonst. Graffiti är ingen konst. Det är ett
brott. Graffiti är förstörelse av allmän eller enskild
egendom” (translation by author).
21
Various artistic endeavors have in fact resulted
in police investigations and various lawsuits. For
example, in a discussion of the concept of art,
Monroe Beardsley use an example of an artist who
had been arrested by the police, after installing
an explosive device on Brooklyn Bridge and
presenting it as a work of art. See “Redefining
Art” in Monroe C. Beardsley (1982), The Aesthetic
Point of View: Selected Essays. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press. Another more recent example
is the case of the Swedish artist Anna Odell who
was found guilty of a minor type of fraud [oredligt
förfarande] conducted during her production of
the work Okänd, kvinna 2009-349701. See Fredrik
Öjemar “Odell dömd till böter” Dagens Nyheter,
2009-09-01. But even if specific artists at times
transgress the borders of the law in their work, I
would suggest that the relationship between police
authorities and graffiti is different from any other
artistic context.
22
This might actually also be dependent upon the
juxtaposition of two different discursive forma-
tions, beside that of graffiti, one on modern art
containing statement on modern art as being
somewhat childlike scribbling.
23
“The archive is first the law of what can be said,
the system that governs the appearance of sta-
tements as unique events. […] it is that which diffe-
rentiates discourses in their multiple existence and
specifies them in their own duration.” Foucault,
(2002), pp. 145-146.
24
Foucault writes about how discursive formations
may be transformed into sciences through a series
of thresholds: positivity, epistemologization, scien-
tificity, formalization. Foucault, (2002), pp. 205-206.
25
The dialectical relationships between discourses
and social structures have been discussed and
developed by Norman Fairclough. See especially
Norman Fairclough, (1992), Discourse and social
change. Cambridge: Polity, p. 63-65.
26
Dan Karlholm (2004), Art of Illusion: The Repre-
sentation of Art History in Nineteenth-Century
Germany and beyond. Bern: Peter Lang pp. 11-13.
See also Michael Hatt & Charlotte Klonk (2006), Art
History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods.
Manchester: Manchester University Press pp. 21-
22 and, Donald Preziosi (ed.) (1998), The Art of Art
History: A Critical Anthology. Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press p. 9.
27
Nicholas Mirzoeff (1999), An Introduction to
Visual Culture. London: Routledge p. 3. Whether
Visual culture should be considered an interdis-
ciplinary field or a discipline in its own right with
its own methods is still subject to debate. For ex-
ample Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk write that
there are claims that “visual culture is a fundamen-
tally new discipline with radically new methods.
Perhaps that will prove to be true in the future but
as it stands, this claim is premature: what methods
of ‘visual culture’ might be has not yet been wor-
ked out.” See Hatt & Klonk (2006), pp. 2-3.
28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9-c1vfyk-
hw&feature=relmfu [retrieved 2013-12-13].
29
The impulse to compile these exhibitions comes
from the Swedish art historian Staffan Jacobson,
who in his dissertation shows how New York graffi-
ti was exhibited in museums across Europe during
the 1980s. See Jacobson (1996), Den spraymålade
bilden: graffitimåleriet som bildform, konströrelse
och läroprocess. Diss. Lund: Lund University, p.
154.
30
To find these articles I have primarily used the
digital newspaper database provided by LexisNex-
is and searched for various keywords.
31
The articles have been collected through a
targeted search on “Berlin Wall” Graffiti, in news-
paper material from the English-langue database
Lexis-Nexis Academic. The first search gave 988
hits, but by limiting the search to the period 1978-
1990, and to those newspapers that had at least
three hits, the material was narrowed down to 162
articles in 20 newspapers from USA, UK, Cana-
da, and Australia. A full list of the names of these
33
 newspapers and number of hits for each of them,
as well as a selection of general statements from
this material are found in the appendix: “Selected
quotes on Berlin Wall graffiti 1974–1990”.
32
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003)
defines graffiti as “an inscription or drawing made
on some public surface (as a rock or a wall)”.
Catherine Soanes’ & Angus Stevenson’s Oxford
Dictionary of English (2003) has a similar defini-
tion: “writing or drawings scribbled, scratched,
or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a
public place.”
33
Jacobson (1996), p. 10.
34
I have previously discussed this distinction, see:
Jacob Kimvall (2012), “Graffiti in the Public Re-
alms”, in Nilsson, Håkan (ed.) (2012), Placing Art in
the Public Realm. Huddinge: Södertörn University
in collaboration with Konstfack University Collage
of Arts, Crafts and Design.
35
Austin (2010).
36
Unsigned article, “Phase 2”, On the Run Special
Double Issue 1/ New York, September, 1991.
Phase 2 expresses similar viewpoints in several
other accounts. See for example an unsigned
(byline Breen M) interview with Phase 2 published
in Herald Sun, 1988-06-29: “Phase 2 empathically
rejects the term graffiti, dismissing it as a media la-
bel that doesn’t justify the complexity of the work:
‘What we do is not scribble-scrabble’.”
37
The graffiti writer Keo suggests: “Style writing is
a better term for it. […] Because anybody can do
graffiti. Anybody. You know if I leave this spray can
here, a kid could pick it up, first time, and go make
graffiti. But style writing, what I do, I have been
doing for 30 years, since 1979, and I still haven’t
mastered it. I am still learning.” Transcription from
video published at: http://vimeo.com/8303019
[retrieved 2014-06-05].
38
This strategy is inspired by Foucault’s famous
passage: “I shall accept the groupings that history
suggests only to subject them at once to interro-
34
gation; to break them up and then to see whether
they can be legitimately reformed; or whether other
groupings should be made; to replace them in a
more general space which, while dissipating their
apparent familiarity, makes it possible to construct
a theory of them.” Foucault, (2002), p. 20.
39
The term street artist is for example used in
Craig Castleman’s Getting Up (1982), but it seems
to be a synonym to graffiti artist/writer. See Castle-
man (1982) p. 127.
40
Waclawek, Anna (2008), From Graffiti to the
Street Art Movement: Negotiating Art Worlds,
Urban Spaces, and Visual Culture, c. 1970 – 2008.
Diss. Montreal: Concordia University
41
Kimvall (2012), p. 119-120.
42
Joe Austin mentions a book by Allen Schwartz-
man called Street Art, released already in 1985,
and claims that it documented a crossover and
an “important exchange between [graffiti] writers
and traditionally trained artists”. This is probably
the earliest account of the term with a use similar
to the contemporary, as to distinguish something
related to, but also separate from graffiti. See Joe
Austin (2001), Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art
Became an Urban Crisis in New York City. New
York: Columbia University Press p. 190.
43
There is, for example, a possible default dis-
tinction between an institution as “a significant
practice, relationship, or organization in a society
or culture” and “an established organization or
corporation (as a bank or university) especially
of a public character”. See Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary. (2003), Springfield: Merri-
am-Webster.
44
For a survey of contemporary subcultural theory
see Erik Hannerz, (2013), Performing Punk – Sub-
cultural Authentications and the Positioning of
the Mainstream, Diss. Uppsala: Uppsala Universi-
ty, pp. 29-42.
45
Davis, M 2002, ‘Subculture’, in The Concise Dic-
tionary of Crime and Justice, Sage Publications,
Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 253-4, viewed 10
April 2013, doi: 10.4135/9781452229300.n1825.
46
Social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz has pointed
out that perhaps all cultural contexts in fact should
be considered as subcultures, albeit with different
institutional power: “And as (in an era of na-
tion-states) a language is sometimes defined as a
dialect with an army, a ‘mainstream culture’ can be
seen as a subculture in command of a more widely
reaching cultural apparatus.” See Ulf Hannerz
(1992), Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social
Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia
University Press p. 91-92.
47
Ivor Miller (2002), Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Pa-
inters of New York City. Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, p. 15.
48
Andrea Nelli (2012), Graffiti a New York. Rome:
Whole Train Press, p. 6.
49
In his concluding remarks, Jacobson himself do
point out that graffiti entail a number of contra-
dictions and ambivalences, and relates this to the
concept of art and the art institutions, but he do
not go further into analyzing why these ambiguities
may arise.
50
David Shannon (2003), Swedish Graffiti: A
Criminological Perspective. Diss. Stockholm:
Stockholm University, 2003, p. 153.
51
Gregory J. Snyder (2009), Graffiti Lives: Beyond
the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground. New
York: New York University Press p. 2.
52
I am here referring scholarly as it is defined by
Cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary (2003):
“containing a serious detailed study of a subject”.
These works are scholarly since they usually are
built on years of following graffiti and contain de-
tailed informed discussions relating to a relatively
well-defined body of knowledge. They could be
conducted by subcultural agents, as well as aca-
demic researchers, journalists, or any interested
person devoting the time and energy to produce
such a work. It is thus scholarly in the sense that
it can be distinguished from on one hand more
general journalistic endeavors, and on the other
hand strictly academic studies.
53
I have contributed to Schacter’s The World Atlas
of Street Art and Graffiti with a “city report” on my
hometown Stockholm.
54
Stahl writes that Baudrillard “…equated the revo-
lutionary aspect with the inability of the visitor from
Europe to grasp their meaning fully. Admittedly, he
lays himself open to the reproach of being conten-
ted with this theoretically highly consistent result
- indeed, he does not even try to understand the
message.” See Johannes Stahl “My Name in Lights
- On the Impact of American Graffiti on Europe”,
retrieved from http://www.j-stahl.de/texte/graf-
gron-e.htm [2014-05-28]. This essay was originally
published in German in Froukje Hoekstra & Frans
Haks (1992), Coming From the Subway – New
York Graffiti Art : Geschichte und Entwicklung
einer aussergewöhnlichen Bewegung. Erlangen:
Karl Müller Verlag.
55
Susan Stewart “Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime
and Art”, in John Fekete (ed.) (1988), Life After
Postmodernism: Essays on Value and Culture.
Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, p. 162.
56
Macdonald (2001), p. 231.
57
Janice Rahn (2002), Painting without Permis-
sion: Hip-Hop Graffiti Subculture. Westport:
Bergin & Garvey p. 13.
58
See for example Rahn, (2002), pp. 1-4.
59
The term “hip-hop studies” was introduced in
Murray Forman’s and Mark Anthony Neal’s (2004)
That’s the Joint - the hip-hop studies reader.
The second revised edition (2012) also includes
an introduction of hip-hop studies as a scholarly
field, including both a characterization and a brief
history.
35
36
2. BACK IN THE DAYS

2.1 The Transnational Subculture of Graffiti

One thing that sets this project apart from most of the earlier research on graffiti
is that I as a researcher have a background in the graffiti subculture. To get this
lived experience of graffiti – central for my role as researcher, and for the dissertation
as a whole – on the table, I will briefly begin this section by describing my personal
background in the graffiti subculture and juxtapose it with results in previous research.
I will use this combination of previous research and personal experience to build a
model of graffiti as a subcultural social and discursive structure. The subsequent dis-
cussion will also be used to set this structure in a larger context that is of relevance to
the other chapters in the thesis.
I got into the subculture of graffiti as a teenager in Stockholm in the mid-1980s. This
was a process that took several years and in retrospect I can see that it included a both
a conquest and a relinquishment of an array of different positions in the sociocultural
structure. I went from being a fascinated but somewhat naïve bystander who regularly
rode the subway to an active admirer (a shift visible only in retrospect). At about this
time I found myself as a disciple of a slightly older boy. He was an experienced graffiti
writer who taught out a number of tactics (both strategies and techniques) in writing
and drawing graffiti – as well as an array of literally unwritten social rules and cultural
concepts, for example learning that one was not suppose to bite another writer’s style
or name. I had become a student of graffiti and started taking photos of graffiti pieces,
reading books and making copies of images from these sources by writing hand styles
and drawing sketches (mainly Subway Art, on subway graffiti in New York; Spraycan
Art, on the transnational adaptation of subcultural graffiti in different countries across
the globe; and Dansk Wildstyle Graffiti, on the adaptation of subcultural graffiti in
Denmark). VHS copies of different movies and music videos also circulated in these
circles of friends, and the most important was the movie Style Wars – a documentary
that had been aired on Swedish television in September, 1984. This meant navigating
on a local scene situated in a complex but fairly scattered transnational network.
All these described positions – viewer, admirer, photographer, student, disciple –
could from the position of the graffiti writer be described as within the realm of the
toy – “the inexperienced or incompetent [graffiti] writer”.1 I refer to this as the schoo-
ling realm of graffiti. By 1988 I had gotten a disciple of my own, and this confirmed

37
 my identity as a graffiti writer, in my own eyes and in the eyes of my peers. This meant
entering the realm of graffiti writing, which in turn included a range of different po-
sitions based on social, cultural, and artistic practices and hierarchies: teacher, artist,
bomber, king of the line, etcetera.
This is my personal history, but many graffiti writers would probably recognize the
basic pattern and have similar experiences. Based on this description it is possible to
point out a range of different positions that could be structured into two fairly distin-
ctive realms: graffiti schooling and graffiti writing. Even if this structure is seldom ex-
pressed in this manner, the description will probably not raise major objections from
anyone within the subculture of graffiti – it is in line with the subcultural descriptions
found in books such as Subway Art and Spraycan Art. It is also consistent with the re-
sults from previous research. Nancy Macdonald describes graffiti as a subculture with
a career path containing various stages, such as “Seeing the ad”, “Choosing a name”,
and “Making a name”, where the first two in my description could be placed in the
realm of schooling, while the latter belongs to the realm of writing. 2 Staffan Jacobson
discusses graffiti as an unconventional learning process and points out an informal
apprenticeship system.3 He describes a learning process in four steps where the three
first roughly correspond with the traditional apprentice system within craftsmanship:
1) toy/apprentice, 2) homeboy/journeyman, 3) king/master. The first step corresponds
with the realm of schooling in my model; the second and third to the realm of writing.
Jacobson refers to a fourth and last step as post-graffiti, and it involves a professiona-
lization – that the writer becomes an established artist or designer.4 Gregory J. Snyder
(2009) divides his study into three parts, roughly following his own and his infor-
mants’ mutual history, getting in, getting up, and getting out. As a sociologist about to
research graffiti, Snyder first had to become “a student of graffiti“, a process similar to
the one I described above, and the two first parts of his structure corresponds roughly
with what I have already discussed.
In the early 1990s, with the emergence of computerized and fairly accessible
publishing tools, I started producing a graffiti magazine by the name of Underground
Productions/UP. This magazine was founded together with a few friends I had made
in the realm of graffiti writing, and thereby I soon gave up doing graffiti for the task
of interviewing graffiti writers, writing about graffiti, photographing and collecting
photos of graffiti, and publishing the result of this work. This labor took place on a
semi-professional level, as we produced and distributed magazines to various small
retailers around Sweden, and exchanged copies of our magazines for copies of maga-
zines by other producers across the globe. This kind of activity has also been addressed
by previous research, where Joe Austin has a longer section on the development of
“Writers’ zines and videos”, concluding that this development has implicated changes
in the subcultural structure, for example in providing new teaching mechanisms.5
Nancy Macdonald points out that graffiti magazines often have an international
readership, and suggests that magazines have united a geographically diverse subcul-

38
ture.6 She also quotes the two photographers Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper,
but mainly uses their experiences as sources to describe graffiti writing, and she is less
interested in their own practices as documentarians. Ivor L. Miller writes explicitly
about Chalfant as a documentarian, and claims that he has “helped many begin and
maintain their careers as artists, and without him (or photographers Marty Cooper
and Jack Stewart), our understanding of this art form would be severely diminished”.7
Gregory Snyder addresses graffiti magazines in his third part, “getting out”. He
situates it in the context of using experiences of “writing as a springboard for other
related career paths”, and suggests that magazine production has led some graffiti
writers into careers in the publishing industry.8 Snyder acknowledges that graffiti
magazines (exemplified by On the Go) and websites (exemplified by Art Crimes) have
specific functions, for example decriminalizing graffiti by bringing it out of its physi-
cal context. At the same time, however, he paradoxically diminishes the role of graffiti
media by claiming they “do not create a subculture so much as document and disse-
minate it to other members”.9
The activities of documenting, archiving, and distributing graffiti are thus often
recognized, but I would claim that it has still received insufficient theoretical reflec-
tion in graffiti research, both as a structure and as an activity. In this thesis, books like
Subway Art, magazines like On the Go, and websites such as Art Crimes, are framed as
a part of the subcultural sphere of graffiti production, and it is assumed that their role
goes well beyond that of simply documenting and disseminating graffiti. It is consi-
dered as a cultural practice in its own right. Instead of terms such as documenting
or archiving, collecting what often, implicitly or explicitly, is described as an already
existing object, I would suggest that the term chronicling is more accurate because it
emphasizes that it is an active practice involving a number of technologies combined
with complex narratological, typological, and discursive structures.
To the two previous realms – graffiti schooling and graffiti writing – it is thus
possible to add a third: graffiti chronicling, a realm of documenting practices with
collectors of graffiti photographs (their own photographs and photographs produ-
ced and traded by others), producers of magazines, websites, blogs, books, and video
documentaries who interview graffiti writers, reproduce and re-contextualize their
images, and put them in circulation. It is, as we can see, probably the widest of the
three realms when it comes to the variety of positions. As Gregory Snyder has pointed
out, people have turned their position in this part of the structure into a profession or
part of a profession.
Most of the graffiti chroniclers are however, like the graffiti writers, amateurs – in
the meaning that chronicling usually is an unpaid, part-time pursuit. As a cultural
practice, chronicling might have developed later, but framing it as mere documenta-
tion instead as a part of the subcultural structure seems to me to be as odd as framing
music records and fanzines as documentation of music-oriented subcultures, rather
than a part of the cultural context. It is thus these three realms of schooling, writing,

39
 and chronicling that altogether form the transnational subculture of graffiti as it is
understood in this thesis, and in the present chapter, the products of chronicling as
well as books will be examined in relation to institutional accounts on graffiti as well
previous graffiti research.

2.2 Narratives of Subcultural Graffiti Art

A prominent feature in books and magazines on graffiti, as well as in the broader
cultural context of hip-hop, is an emphasis on the history of the subculture. This is
often referred to as Back in the Day, or Back in the Days, a concept that has lent this
chapter its title.10 Gregory Snyder for example defines the term toy as a “neophyte
writer with no skills and little clue of the history of the culture.”11 It is thus hardly a
coincidence that one of the first popular books on hip-hop (here including graffiti)
had the word history in its title – Steven Hager’s Hip hop – the Illustrated History of
Break Dancing, Rap Music, And Graffiti (1984). This interest in history and its role in
the subculture has been addressed by previous research. The cultural historian Jeffrey
Ogbar links the role of history within hip-hop to the notion of authenticity: “…an
emotional ‘those-were-the-days’ conversation about the ‘golden age’ when the hip-
hop nation was not divided […] these discussions pivot on the notion of hip-hop’s es-
sential character – its authentic expression.”12 Susan Stewart writes specifically about
graffiti and suggests that the “…graffiti writers themselves explain their tradition in
terms of individual and regional styles; and the apprenticeship and black book aspects
of their work commit them to a certain linear and even patriarchal view of their place
as writers.”13
The intention of section 2.2 is to study the basic discursive structures of this kind
of linearity, and interest in history of graffiti, by analyzing images and texts referen-
cing historical or chronological aspects. The previously mentioned book Hip hop – the
Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, And Graffiti also contains one such
image – an image that also could be seen as an example of what Susan Stewart above
referred to as individual styles. The work is by Phase 2 (an artist quoted already in the
introduction of this thesis) and entitled “Phase 2: The Evolution of a Style, 1971–1982”.
The image displays twelve different interpretations of the word Phase 2, rendered
with increasing complexity. Even if it is not explicitly stated, one could assume that
the twelve interpretations correlate to the twelve years mentioned in the title. This
suggests that graffiti is based on individual development – or even an evolutionary
progression from simple bubble letters to complex wildstyle pieces.
The graffiti writer Chris Pape, alias Freedom, has combined explicit history writing
with an artistic interpretation. In 1986 he painted a gigantic piece called The History of
Graffiti in an abandoned train tunnel beneath Riverside Park in New York. This piece
was documented and published in Henry Chalfant’s and James Prigoff ’s book Spray-
can Art (1987), and as a picture of a picture it could be viewed all over the world. As is

40
Figure 2.1: The History of Graffiti by Freedom (1986). Originally published in Spraycan Art by Henry
Chalfant and James Prigoff (1987).

often the case in graffiti, the perceived “title” of the piece is also the main motif – the
words “The History of Graffiti” are painted in black, white, and silver, forming bold,
clearly legible, capital bubble letters. Above the bold letters, Freedom has rendered
meandering subway cars, and on and in between these trains painted smaller words in
bright colors. These words are names of writers commonly held in high regard in the
subcultural tradition, painted in styles mimicking the style of each individual writer:
Taki 183, Barbara 62, Stay High 149, Phase 2, Caine I, Cliff, Tracy 168, In, Blade, and
Lee.
The names are placed from left to right in a sort of chronological order, based on
their first appearance within New York subway graffiti history and/or the achievement
that each individual is associated with. For example, Phase 2 is among New York
writers and in the graffiti literature known as one of the earliest pioneers, and he is
often referred to as the inventor of bubble letters, and either inventor, or developer, of
a number of other formal crucial aspects of wildstyle.14 In Freedom’s visualization of
graffiti history, Phase 2 is consequentially placed as the last of the first group of names,
as well as the first who is rendered in bubble letters, with volumes created by fading
purple into pink and by using highlights. The name of the last writer, furthest to the
right – Lee – is instead rendered in a more realistic 3D-effect, implying evolution
from calligraphed tags to realistic masterpieces. Furthest to the left in the piece, be-
fore the beginning of the history from a chronological perspective, stands a lamppost,
situated as a visual counterpart to the verbal metaphor “shed a light on…” Freedom’s
signature of the work appears on the base of the lamppost, as if to suggest that history
writing is an artful labor, done in retrospect. Freedom’s piece could be interpreted
as a tribute to the individual named writers, as well as to the graffiti history of New
York. The work by Freedom could thus be seen as an example of what Stewart above
referred to as regional styles – though admittedly from a region with a central position
in subcultural graffiti.
This way of emphasizing stylistic development and visual diversity, and combining
it with the appointment of a lineage of influential predecessors with extraordinary ar-
tistic abilities, is common in subcultural accounts of graffiti (as well as an in most tra-
ditional Western art-historical narratives, one could add). The particularities may vary,

41
 depending on factors such as geographical and generational position of the chronicler,
and his/her scope and objectives. But the basic patterns remain similar. As a compa-
rison, one could use the example of graffiti history from a Scandinavian perspective.
In his master thesis, the Finnish graphic designer and graffiti writer Anssi Räisänen
has constructed what he calls a Graffiti letterform evolution map, an attempt to trace
the stylistic changes in graffiti lettering in space and over time. There are several ob-
vious differences between Freedom’s and Räisänen’s visualizations: even if Räisänen
has an obvious aesthetic ambition – one that could be briefly summarized as combi-
ning pedagogic function with an elegant graphic design that mimics its own content
– he has constructed a schematic map rather than an artwork, and the objective is
to analyze rather than pay tribute. Most of the writers from Freedom’s piece can be
found in various positions on the map, but instead of Freedom’s ten pioneers, it ac-
commodates around 100 graffiti writers, from the late 1960s until the late 1980s. Apart
from New York City, this map also includes graffiti writers from England, France,
Holland, Germany, and Sweden. Räisänen thus also has a broader geographical scope,
and a prolonged chronology – and the chronological and geographical aspects are
explicit. The analytical ambition is also evident in that some names – Riff 170, Top
Cat 126, Bando – can be found in several positions, suggesting that these writers have
participated in several steps of the described evolution; and that the names of four
writers – Top Cat 126, Super Kool 223, Phase 2, and Bando – are typed in bold letters
below the names of what Räisänen identifies as seven different stylistic traditions.
The map is constructed as a part of a master thesis in graphic design discussing
similarities between graffiti and graphic design, and the context could be understood
as part academic and part subcultural. Both the purpose and the function are thus
fundamentally different from Freedom’s – but the general structure is still strikingly
similar. Both Freedom’s and Räisänen’s visualizations focus on stylistic development
and visual diversity, and combine this with a chronological structure of influential
individuals. On a more particular level, Räisänen’s map’s most odd feature is probably
Sweden’s seemingly important position at the very end of the chronology, probably
largely a result of Räisänen’s own geographical position and objectives. By using the
same method, it would most likely be possible for a graffiti chronicler in, for example,
southern Europe or Australia to produce a comparable map, but that ends in their
respective region.
Both of the visualizations above also describe graffiti as a reasonably distinct object
of knowledge – based upon a narrative of stylistic development created by distinguis-
hable individuals.
This basic pattern of describing graffiti’s development appears in most accounts on
graffiti, subcultural as well as academic. In his sociological study, built primarily on
interviews with graffiti writers, Craig Castleman portrays the same type of develop-
ment, but also combines it with a description that contain elements of explanation.
Analyzing Castleman’s description, one could say that the development of graffiti is

42
Figure 2.2: Graffiti Letterform Evolution Map by Anssi Räisänen (2013).

propelled by a combination of three elements: a desire to be recognized by other wri-

ters (fame), the invention of new techniques (e.g. the fat cap), and visual experimen-
tation (style).15 Applying this explanation, the initial driving force is recognition by
one’s peers; more writers then get into graffiti which leads to intensified competition,
and some writers start to experiment with size and color, lettering styles, and different
visual concepts and formats. Castleman claims that Phase 2 was the first graffiti writer
who developed the concept of the masterpiece (soon to be called piece), by building
on Super Kool 223, and followed by Pistol I, who did the first 3D piece. This is descri-
bed as starting a stylistic development:

At this point a new term entered graffiti language: style master. Previously titles of honor had
been granted to writers only on the basis of the number of pieces or tags they had managed
to get up. Now style was also a route to fame and ‘style wars’ began.16

This way, the subculture of subway graffiti in New York would be the result of a mix
of communal efforts, competition, and individual achievement, within an overarching
pattern of stylistic development, often with evolutionist undertones.
This is a narrative that with some variations is found in almost any of the books on
graffiti over the last 20 years, even if not always with the same visual and conceptual
detail as in the examples above. Simplified into fable of a few sentences: Graffiti is a
creative subcultural expression that started in Philadelphia and developed from cal-
ligraphed tags to elaborate, complex pieces through a “war of styles” in New York City
during the late 1960s and 70s. As an already developed subculture, as well as a part of
the broader subculture of hip-hop, graffiti spread to the rest of America (North and
South), Western Europe and Australia during the 1980s, and then to Eastern Europe
and parts of Asia and Africa in the 90s. Some accounts contest parts of this narrative;
for example, it has been pointed out that punk rockers in Holland were doing graffiti
that could be considered as calligraphed tags as early as the late 1970s, without any

43
 particular knowledge of the graffiti scene in New York, but these kinds of counter
claims have not been able to challenge the basic structure.17
Jack Stewart is the first academic researcher who approaches this subcultural histo-
ry from an art-historical standpoint. In his study Subway Graffiti: An Aesthetic Study
of Graffiti on the Subway System of New York City, 1970-1978, Stewart suggests that the
development of subway graffiti should be systematized into different periods by fol-
lowing a traditional art-historical pattern: the high period (1972­–1974), the synthetic
period (1974–1976), and the late period (1976–1978). 1971–1972 is discussed as a period
of intense development, and post-1970s graffiti is, for Stewart, marked by decline.
When comparing his dissertation and the book Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass
Transit Art of the 1970’s (2009), the periodization varies slightly, and the discussions
regarding the artistic decline are absent in the latter, suggesting that Stewart changed
his opinion on the matter. The most significant difference in content between them,
however, lies in that Stewart in the dissertation at great length also discusses what he
refers to as traditional graffiti, which he claims is characterized by a remarkable “sam-
eness” that it throughout an 8000-year history “easily [can] be classified into a small
number of categories, and it remained so unevolved that it seems impossible to date
any of it on stylistic grounds alone before 1971”.18 Thus, for Stewart, subway graffiti
in New York in the period 1970–1978 is an unparalleled and “unique phenomenon of
historic importance”.19 Stewart is not the only one to frame graffiti in such a grand
linear perspective. It is often done either by describing the start of the graffiti tradition
as cave paintings, or tracing it to Roman Antiquity and Pompeii.20 Subcultural graffiti
could in this perspective either be contextualized as a development of, or a departure
from, what previously had been labeled as graffiti.
A variation of the narrative surveyed above would be to describe graffiti as a de-
velopment from streets and subways into art galleries and museums. Adopting this
model, graffiti is most often described as an artistic expression that develops from
rudimentary calligraphy to visual art during the 1970s, and as such an art form moves
into the galleries as art in the 1980s. The media researcher Sonja Neef uses this kind
of narrative as a contrast to her own more metaphoric concept of a graffiti museum:
“From the 1980s onwards several art galleries in New York became interested in ‘graf-
fiti-as-art’, and moved graffiti from the ‘ghettos’ to the museum”.21 Jack Stewart also
discusses a movement from subway to galleries, a change he, however, is explicitly
skeptical to. Rather than a development, he seems to consider it one of the causes of
what he perceives as the decline of graffiti:

These graffitists didn’t realize that when they moved from public walls to their own canvases
in a studio environment they ceased to make graffiti and began making paintings of graffiti.
Graffiti simply became their subject […] The first obvious loss in their work was freshness
and the highly charged sense of excitement that became characteristic of subway graffiti.22

44
Figure 2.3: Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr., Cover of the ex- Figure 2.4: Graffiti and Street Art, poster by
hibition catalogue Cubism and Abstract Art, MoMA Daniel Feral (2011).
1936. The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.
MA143 © 2014. © Photo Scala.

This kind of skepticism towards graffiti in galleries, on the behalf of graffiti, is so-
mething we will see more of in the debate onwards.
Another way of describing graffiti – without necessarily contradicting the narra-
tive described above – would be to put it in relation to different established cultural
contexts, creative streams and artistic movements. In these descriptions the perceived
individual achievements are usually set aside in favor of what is perceived as more
general tendencies. The graphic designer, writer, and curator Daniel Feral has created
a poster putting graffiti in a broader fine-art context, in what could be characterized
as the perhaps most consistent and pervasive of any such attempts. The poster Graffiti
and Street Art (2011), is a paraphrase of the famous chart created by Alfred H. Barr Jr.
for the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, which took place at Museum of Modern
Art in New York, in 1936. Barr’s chart is one of the most influential, and reproduced,
images of modern art. It is a chart that many students of art history have been in-
troduced to, and which probably most people interested in Western modern art can
relate to.23 Both Barr’s and Feral’s charts combine a chronological perspective (scoping
45 respectively 70 years) with geographical locations, a few specific artists, and artistic
and cultural contexts on two different levels.
Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s chart presents a number of different-isms in modernist art
(Cubism, Orphism, Constructivism, etcetera) in black letters underlined by half
circles, and four boxed concepts in red representing influential notions outside of
Barr’s concept of modernist art – Japanese Prints, Near-Eastern Art, Negro Sculpture,

45
 and Machine Esthetic. In Feral’s poster the red typography instead denotes techni-
ques such as collage, and what best could be summoned as broader cultural, aesthetic
and theoretical streams (punk and hip-hop, lowbrow art, semiotics), as well as one
technological aspect – the invention of spray paint. The black typography represents
a combination of institutionalized notions in contemporary art with various more
subcultural counterparts.
The poster Graff iti and Street Art could be said to gain both argumentative power
and a certain pedagogical clarity from its famous predecessor. Feral uses an already
established model to create a context where graffiti and street art is described as
being in direct contact with some of the most established, not to say canonized,
elements of modern and contemporary art: Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual
Art, and Pop Art – implying relations of mutual interdependence, of both receiving
and distributing influences. Aside from paraphrasing Cubism and Abstract Art, Fer-
al’s poster could also be seen as a continuation of the former – respectively leaping
from 1890 to 1935, and from 1940 to 2010, and thus both establishing a connection
between a recent past to the immediate present of each image’s formulation. Daniel
Feral presents an art-historical narrative connecting contemporary notions with
already established positions in modern art, in a chart where the unities Graffiti and
Street Art are placed together with of Pop Art, in a privileged position at the very
center of contemporary art.
From a contemporary art-institutional perspective, Daniel Feral’s chart might ap-
pear as a thought-provoking visualization of an alternative description and/or histor-
ical trajectory describing a shift from modern to contemporary art. From the view-
point of subcultural graffiti and street art, it could be said to possess a subversive
quality, illuminating possible relations often neglected in broader art-historical, criti-
cal, and theoretical accounts. Both internal subcultural descriptions, such as Freedom’s
piece, and Anssi Räisinen’s map, and the fine-art approaches, such as Daniel Feral’s
paraphrase of Barr’s chart, are complex descriptions, combining textual and visual
information, built on detailed knowledge and thorough reflection, and thus examples
of scholarly but a primarily non-academic history of graffiti.

2.3 Art and Vandalism

The visual and verbal descriptions of graffiti history surveyed in the previous section
primarily remain within the boundaries of a consenting discursive practice that pro-
duces descriptions of graffiti as something valuable, based on virtuosity and creativity.
But as already mentioned, such statements are directly and indirectly contested by
another – rejecting – discursive practice, with statements proclaiming graffiti as van-
dalism, crime, and pollution – as a violation. Some sources treat the two statements
declaring graffiti art and vandalism as two separate phenomena – the phenomenon
of as graffiti as art and the phenomenon of graffiti as vandalism. This way, graffiti

46
tends to become two separate objects: Graffiti Art and Graffiti Vandalism.24 In other
cases, one of these objects is comprehended and rendered as correct, and the other
denounced as illegitimate or a misunderstanding. The police officer quoted in Chap-
ter 1.2.2 dismisses the statement of graffiti as art, and proclaims that it is a crime.
Contrary to such claims is the cultural historian Ivor Miller, referenced in Chapter
1.5.1, who suggests that graffiti should be labeled ‘aerosol art’, and that this art has
been misrepresented as vandalism. As a sort of middle-ground position between these
opposite claims would be to frame all of them as various subjective viewpoints, or a
matter of taste. The criminologist Michael Johnson proposes such a position by sug-
gesting that opinions on what is art or not are subjective experiences dependent on
individual taste.25 The art historian and sociologist Anna Waclawek similarly suggests
that graffiti is both abhorred and adored.26
As described in the introduction, the approach of this thesis is, however, to ac-
knowledge both graffiti art and graffiti vandalism as existing discursive practices, built
on incompatible but interdependent statements, and jointly comprising a transna-
tional discursive formation. The following section will develop this concept, in rela-
tion to both previous research and to various primary sources.
The conflict between both discursive practices are sometimes brought to the fore,
as when the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MoCA) arranged an
ambitious and extensive exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art. At Art
in the Streets, the visitor could find Daniel Feral’s poster for sale in the museum’s
bookstore, and as a whole the exhibition could be said to be the most elaborate
attempt to display subcultural narratives on graffiti and street art in an art-insti-
tutional context.27 However, in this institutional and prestigious context, the lack
of statements of disavowal could be apprehended as more problematic, at least for
some visitors. City Journal’s contributing editor Heather Mac Donald chastised the
exhibition in two lengthy articles, accusing it of being celebratory of vandalism and
“urban sabotage”:

…Art in the Streets has no response to the argument that graffiti is a scourge on cities,
because it simply chooses to ignore any idea that contravenes its simplistic celebration of
property defacement. […]
The only other coy reference to graffiti’s illegality is a small collection of anti-graffiti signs
mounted outside the book store. The retro typeface of the exhortations to respect your
community leave no doubt that the curators feel nothing but postmodern superiority to
these Father Knows Best fifties- and sixties-era attempts to rein in juvenile delinquency.28

This specific critique may come as little surprise, considering that City Journal is a
magazine published by the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute of Policy
Research, and prides itself on having influenced the former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani and his zero-tolerance policing.29 But to simply dismiss this criticism in re-

47
 Figure 2.5 and 2.6: Anti-graffiti posters displayed at Art in the Streets, Museum of Contemporary Art in
Los Angles, April, 2011.

gard to a certain political agenda would be to make it all too easy – Mac Donald raises
understandable objections.30 If one were to object to Mac Donald’s critique, one could
argue that claims such as “graffiti is a scourge on cities” are not in any obvious way
more complex or diverse than a “simplistic celebration” of graffiti as art.
As a visitor of Art in the Streets, I was also slightly taken aback by the curatorial
selection of vintage anti-graffiti posters, as well as the display of them in a corner of the
exhibition, partly obscured by a staircase (figures 2.5 and 2.6). No further explanation or
contextualization of these posters was offered, and the overall impression was that the
statement of graffiti as vandalism belonged in a context of old and seemingly irrelevant
so-called “moral panics”, such as the debates that, for example, followed fantasy role-
playing games and heavy metal in the 1980s, or rock and roll in the 1950s. The curatorial
selection and display of the anti-graffiti campaigns thus largely ignores the contempora-
ry proliferation of the rejecting discursive practice, and the statements produced within
it – often with a direct and strong support from various institutions of power.
In his study Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York
City (2001), cultural historian Joe Austin acknowledges that what he defines as “the
history of writing” and “the graffiti problem” are interconnected objects, but he also
states that they are not the same thing. He suggests that if graffiti would have been
recognized “for what it was, it could have been promoted as a homegrown public art
movement”.31 It is easy to agree with Austin – graffiti could be interpreted as a grass-
root public-art movement, but considering the many statements proclaiming that
graffiti is art, one could also claim it partly has been recognized as such.
In her essay “Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime and Art”, Stewart offers two radi-
cally different and at the same time interrelated descriptions of graffiti in New York
in the 1980s:

…at the present time graffiti is both outlawed and venerated […] It is not that the dismissal
and veneration of graffiti are two oppositional gestures: rather, these gestures are part of a

48
 reciprocal and interdependent system of axiological practices tied into the larger values of
commodity culture.32
Stewart refers to these two descriptions as “divergent attitudes”, and seems to view
them as a novelty of the 1980s, as she sets the illegal graffiti in the subway in relation
to the graffiti on canvases on display in galleries to discuss “a current crisis in the
situation of the artwork”.33
Without strictly opposing Stewart, I have used her identification of graffiti as van-
dalism and as art as constructed through “an interdependent system of axiological
practices” as a point of departure to move beside it, and describe them as the incom-
patible discursive practices described in the introduction (rather than as attitudes).
And, contrary to Stewart’s implicit claim, I would suggest that they are not a novelty
of the 1980s but can be traced back to the early 1970s. In an article titled “Garelik Calls
for War on Graffiti”, published on May 21, 1972, New York’s City Council President
Sanford Garelik made an often-quoted claim that graffiti on the subway trains was a
form of visual and mental pollution:

Graffiti pollutes the eye and mind and may be one of the worst forms of pollution we have
to combat.34

This quote is, if not the first, at least the most widely acknowledged of the early
examples of the statement that graffiti is vandalism. This specific claim was announ-
ced from a position within a political institution, and Austin describes how Garelik’s
declaration of “War on Graffiti” was raised both in mass media, and in the context
of official anti-graffiti strategies.35 But this discursive practice is often found within
popular culture. Joe Austin writes about Charles Bronson movie Death Wish (1974) in
the article “Moral Panics and the ‘Wars on Graffiti’”, and claims that it produces an
image of the graffiti writer that has distinct ethnic and social overtones, and builds
on the stereotype of “the boogie man” – a dangerous man of color from a poor neig-
hborhood.36
But as has already been pointed out, there exists a consenting discursive practice
that, by contrast, describes graffiti as an exciting artistic expression by creative youths.
And this practice is not solely restricted to the subcultural contexts presented in the
beginning of this chapter. One of the earliest and most widely disseminated examples
of this practice was produced in March of 1973, in the form of an article in New York
Magazine. In a quote that can be considered especially illuminating as a contrast to
Garelik’s statement, the journalist Richard Goldstein argues that graffiti is the healthy
and genuine expression of a youth culture:

Graffiti is the first genuine teenage street culture since the fifties […] it just may be that the
kids who write graffiti are the healthiest and most assertive people in their neighborhoods37

49
 In this article, there is also an often-quoted statement by the artist Claes Olden-
burg in which he compares subway graffiti to colorful flower bouquets from South
America.38 This consenting discursive practice contains ethnic and social assumptions
similar to those in its rejecting counterpart, even if they are not as stereotypical. But
the practitioners are not anonymous vandals, and instead often allowed to appear as
distinct subjects. In the same issue of New York Magazine, four graffiti writers – Nova
1 (Steve), Phase 2 (Lonnie), Snake 1 (Eddie) and Stay High 149 (Wayne) – are inter-
viewed. Each one is presented as an individual with a black and white portrait-photo,
tag, name, as well as geographic location.
Thus, the construction of graffiti as a discursive formation with two separate and
incompatible but interconnected discursive practices is most likely constructed in
New York City during the early 1970s, and continuously rephrased and developed
throughout the subsequent decades, without ever transforming the basic structure
– an opposition between the statements of graffiti as art and graffiti as vandalism.
Studying graffiti from this discursive perspective, it is less interesting to examine
what graffiti really is, what it once was, or how it really should be interpreted. Graf-
fiti is a word used to denote a range of notions, activities, objects, images, identities,
subject-positions, etcetera. Not even in subcultural accounts is graffiti described as
one single thing. There are distinctions made, for example, between tags and pieces,
kings and toys, bombing and burning, nor is graffiti necessarily discussed as art.
When Phase 2 advocates the term ‘aerosol art’ in the subcultural magazine On the
Run, he is challenged by the interviewer, who asks if one really can consider tagging
an art form.39
The remaining sections of this chapter study the complexities of these two incom-
patible but interconnected discursive practices, and how they both produce and are
a product of specific cultural events and objects, by looking at the art-historical ac-
counts of graffiti as well as specific cases where graffiti has been actualized as art and
as crime in New York during the period 1972–1987.

2.4 Crack Is Wack Playground (Take 1)

Haring deals with the issues of today. In the mid eighties the disaster of crack was invading
the city. Haring’s work spoke to people living on the fringes of society. To children. To mi-
norities. As Haring gained their respect he felt the responsibility to speak out on the issues
that touched their lives.
Elisabeth Aubert, Drawing the Line, (1989)40

Don’t ever mention Haring to a graffiti writer, by the way, or Basquiat either. Not unless
you’re ready for a tutorial about how those guys were chumps, never hit trains, didn’t hang
out at the Writers’ bench on 149th and Grand Concourse, only painted where it was safe,
fronted like they were real heads and made millions while the real heads are real broke

50
Figure 2.7: The first version of Crack Is Wack, painted by Haring, July 27, 1986.

heads, some of them with real broke heads.

Adam Mansbach, Rage is back (2013)41

Crack Is Wack Playground is a small park with handball- and basketball courts located
at the junction of Second Avenue, 127th Street, and Harlem River Drive in New York
City. It got its name from a painting done by the artist Keith Haring, who painted
a freestanding handball-court wall in the park on June 27, 1986. The purpose of the
mural was to raise awareness of the problems of the drug crack cocaine – and what
has been dubbed the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Haring did the painting without the
permission of the owner of the wall, the New York City Parks Department, and was
arrested and charged for defacing public property.42
The image Haring painted (fig. 2.7) is seemingly simple with black brush-lines
on an orange-red base, colors that lend it an overall impression reminiscent of a big
warning sign. He is using imagery from vernacular and commercial visual culture
such as danger skulls and dollar-bills on fire. Simple and legible capital letters get his
message across: “CRACK IS WACK”, framed by a cloud coming from a crack pipe
in the lower-left corner. But Haring is also referencing at least one iconic piece from
fine arts. The gaping “horse head” on the upper-right side of the image is a paraphrase
of a detail in Pablo Picasso’s monumental anti-war painting Guernica – a work that
Haring held in high regard.43 As a reference, it could be interpreted as a symbolic
link between the dangers of crack cocaine and the tragedies of modern warfare with
innocent civilian victims. The entire right flank visualizes a figure hanging upside

51
 Figures 2.8 (left) and 2.9 (right) display the two different Crack Is Wack murals painted by Keith Haring
in October 1986 (photographed in 2013). The north side of the wall is to the left and the south side to the
right. Photo by author.

down and being fed to a monster with sharp teeth, as in some medieval depictions of
the judgment day, rendering the painting a scent of sermonizing religious pathos.44
Keith Haring was, at the time, a rising star in the international art world. During
the previous winter and spring, Haring had finished two large solo exhibitions in Eu-
ropean museums (Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux and the Stedelijk Muse-
um in Amsterdam); in April, 1986, Haring had opened his own store – The Pop Shop
on Lafayette Street – where he sold t-shirts, pins, accessories, and other merchandise;
he had commissions to make installations at nightclubs, and inspired by the contem-
porary graffiti, he was painting un-commissioned illegal works such as Crack Is Wack
out in the streets.45 Haring was thus in a position where he operated in what at least
in hindsight seems like three fairly different fields: the international fine-art context
of high-end art galleries and museums, the world of popular culture with celebrities
and mass-produced items, and the subcultures of hip-hop graffiti and underground
music clubs in New York City.
The legal case that followed the production of Crack Is Wack reached Manhattan
Criminal Court on September 18, 1986, where Haring pleaded guilty to a reduced
charge. Instead of the initial charge of defacing public property, he was convicted of
disorderly conduct and a small fine of $25. The judge is reported to have said that even
if the artist’s intentions were good, “a handball court was a handball court, and there-
fore, a trangression [sic] had been committed” – and that Haring should find another
wall for his message.46 The original painting was destroyed and subsequently painted
over with grey paint by New York City Parks Department. The Parks Commissioner,
however, invited Haring to paint another mural with the same message. Haring was
offered eight different sites, the paint and the use of a van – but Haring is reported
to have been “persistent” on that he wanted to use the original site.47 And in October
3, 1986 Haring was back in the original park to paint with the consent of the Parks
Department, who also invited news media to cover the process.48 This time Keith
Haring painted two new murals, one on each side of the freestanding handball court
wall, both overlooking Harlem River Drive (figs 2.8–2.9).
Today the park is named after the painting: Crack Is Wack Playground. Crack Is

52
Figure 2.10: The official sign outside Crack Is Wack Playground (the picture was taken in 2005, in 2013 the
sign was gone, probably stolen). Photo by Angus McIntyre in 2005.

Wack has thus gone from being a painting and a committed crime resulting in con-
viction to the legal production of two official murals, and finally to being a landmark
monument naming the entire park. This could seem like a somewhat exiting and
intriguing history with a happy ending: it is the story of a socially conscious artist with
an urgent message of awareness of a new and hazardous drug; and that of a legal and
administrative system acknowledging the importance of the message and therefore
reducing the degree of the crime committed, and finally coming up with a permanent
solution.
But this is not the only possible interpretation, since Keith Haring is also a contro-
versial figure among graffiti writers in New York City. On the one hand, he worked
closely with and befriended several graffiti writers.49 On the other hand, he is descri-
bed as an outsider who became famous for what graffiti writers had created, and the
mere mentioning of his name may stir up heated emotions among graffiti writers in
New York.50
One anecdotal example from the gathering of material for this thesis may be used
to illustrate the problem. At one time I passed by Crack Is Wack by car, together with
the graffiti writer Part One, and I overheard a subtle utterance, almost a sotto voce:
“That sure is Wack”, followed by a resigned sigh. When interviewing Part One (also
known as Enrique Torres) a few days later I followed up on this remark and asked
him about Keith Haring and the painting we had passed. Part One expressed a calm
but upfront critique. He regarded Haring as an artist from a different context who had
used and capitalized on what the graffiti writers – in many cases from what Part One
referred to as the ghettoes – had created, while very few of the latter had been given
any chance to make a living from their art. Part One considered it particularly pro-

53
 Figure 2.11: Tragic Magic, black book-drawing by Part One (1995). Photo by author.

vocative that New York City had landmarked Haring’s work while the city continue
to combat the graffiti writers who inspired him: “And then for the city to acknowledge
him… you know, that’s… that’s insanity”, he concluded, with a reference to Crack Is
Wack.51 In our discussion, Part One stressed both socio-spatial and stylistic differences
between Haring and graffiti writers such as himself – Haring came from a different
sociocultural and geographical context, and his work belonged to another tradition.
In the subcultural graffiti of New York City, Part One is referred to as a style master,
and his chief artistic interest lies, as for many of the graffiti writers in New York City,
in the development of different styles of letters, and creating words with a stylistic
flow.52 This interest in letters is evident in Part One’s black-book drawing Tragic Ma-
gic, from 1995, where each letter is shaped as an individual character, and at the same
time interlocks with the next through an intricate rhythm of shapes, where orna-
mental arrows, swirls, and bars flow in-between, behind, under, and over the letters,
as when the superscript dot over the letter “i” in the word “Magic” becomes a swirl
interconnecting with the upper part of the adjacent “c”. Part One refers to his own
particular version of graffiti as semi mechanical swirl.53 Keith Haring does not seem
to have had any particular interest in creating letters, using words only occasionally,
and when he did, primarily rendering simple letters in order to get a legible message
across (as in the case of Crack Is Wack). In the interview, Part One said that he was not
particularly fond of Haring’s art, but he was also keen on making clear that the matter
was neither Haring nor his art, but the labeling of it as graffiti.54
In the context of New York City and the history of graffiti writing, the case seems
to indirectly raise complex and even troubling questions regarding the broader under-
standing of graffiti as art, its relationship to art institutions, and the aesthetics as well

54
as hierarchies of class and race. But even if the case of Crack Is Wack is a precarious one
– for the purpose of this thesis, it also provides a possibility to cross-read subcultural
graffiti history and institutional art history. The complex and ambiguous character of
these questions could also be pointed out in New York City Parks Department’s own
explanation of Haring’s artistic path when describing Crack is Wack Playground:

In 1978, Haring came to New York with a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts. The
graffiti he saw throughout the city immediately appealed to Haring’s artistic sense of spon-
taneity and the possibilities for political messages. Haring began using building facades and
subway walls as canvases for his own graffiti art. Most of his subway graffiti was benign, as
it was done in white chalk on the blank black background of unused advertising panels.55

The use of the word benign implies difference between Haring’s graffiti, or at least
most of it, and another type: indirectly malignant graffiti (assumingly the graffiti that
inspired him). This structure is similar to the model of graffiti as a discursive forma-
tion with two main discursive practices, presented in the introduction of the thesis
(and developed further above), with the slight difference that it suggests a distinction
between two concurrent types of graffiti.
The explicit argument for Haring’s graffiti as benign is based on material (chalk)
and location (unused advertising panels). And without doubt, Keith Haring is famous
for the drawings he did with white chalk on unused advertising panels.56 But he also
used markers, spray paint, and primer, and he was arrested several times for doing
illegal graffiti. The mural Crack Is Wack is one such case – and a work that obviously
is not produced using chalk. So is it really the chalk that makes his graffiti “benign”?
This division of graffiti into two types (benign and, even if implicitly, malignant),
and the framing of Haring’s graffiti of benign perhaps more dependent on an insti-
tutional interest to explain how an illegally produced mural has been transformed
into an officially sanctioned public mural, and transformed again into a landmark
monument. But considering Part One’s claim that most of the graffiti writers at the
time were from “the ghettoes”, this could also be interpreted as class-based patronage.
At the very least, it makes a clear distinction in favor of Haring ahead of the (other)
graffitists.

2.5 Graffiti in Art-Historical Narratives

That subcultural graffiti also has an institutional history has previously been acknowl-
edged and described in various degrees of detail by Craig Castleman (1982), Staffan
Jacobson (1996), Joe Austin (2001), Ivor L. Miller (2002), and Anna Waclawek (2008).
This section largely builds on the results presented by these researchers, but with
the ambition to situate them in active relation to how this history is approached in
art-institutional accounts. The art-institutional accounts in the following section are

55
 primarily extracted from art-historical surveys, and other books with the ambition of
surveying aspects of the art scene in New York of the 1970s and 80s.
The accounts of graffiti in art-historical surveys have previously been addressed by
Staffan Jacobson (1996), and Anna Waclawek (2008), albeit with contradictory results.
Jacobson claims that most art-historical surveys of today include a section on graffiti
art in the final pages.57 Contrary to this claim, Waclawek writes that such surveys omit
graffiti and street art, and suggests that this is a problem, since “students are denied an
opportunity to learn about an art movement that has subsisted in major cities around
the world for almost forty years”.58
Art-historical surveys are by default concise works, and these have been criticized
for omitting many other, and admittedly broader issues and phenomena than graffiti
and street art. Feminist critiques have, for example, been directed at H. W. Janson’s
The History of Art, a survey that in 1979 had not yet included one single woman artist
in its several thousand years of history.59 Art historian Dan Karlholm has discussed
the role of surveys in general in his study Art of illusion: the representation of art history
in nineteenth-century Germany and beyond (2004). He suggests that survey texts have
a precarious role of both being central in education and at the same time denied as
valid sources, and thus function as a discursive structure constructing the areas of
elementary knowledge for any professional art historian.

Art history survey texts are something like the discursive diapers of the discipline, highly
useful at a transitional stage in the maturation of the art-historical human being, thereafter
not a topic of conversation.60

Thus, if Waclawek’s claim is correct, that the surveys omit graffiti, the structure she
identifies probably entails consequences that go far beyond what at first might seem
to be at stake when a student of art history is left without the possibility to learn
about graffiti. The structure has implications on graffiti art as a plausible object for any
professional within art history, not only the students.
For the purpose of this study, a total of nineteen art-historical surveys, published
between 1992 and 2012, have been searched for references to graffiti.61 Seven of these
did not contain any reference to graffiti, while the twelve others did mention graf-
fiti – however, in most cases very briefly, and it was often referred to as a source of
inspiration for artists who themselves are not necessarily framed as graffiti artists.
The most commonly referred-to artists are Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat,
sometimes contextualized as graffiti artists, other times as artists inspired by graffiti
(the further implications of these different ways of describing Haring and Basquiat
will be addressed below).
The by far most detailed description of graffiti and of street art, comprising four
full pages, can be found in Stephen Farthing’s Art: the whole story (2010). This survey
is also the least academic, and most likely not the survey teachers would recommend

56
to undergraduate students of art history. And vice versa: among the books that omit
graffiti, we find books written or instigated by some of the most renowned art histo-
rians, such as Hal Foster and Ernst H. Gombrich.
Another interesting finding is that Marilyn Stokstad’s and Michael Watt Cothren’s
Art: a brief history (2010), does not mention graffiti, while Marilyn Stokstad’s, Michael
Watt Cothren’, and Frederick M. Asher’s Art history (2011) does. Thus, there are two
surveys by partly the same authors, and published during subsequent years, where one
references graffiti while the other, referred to as a “brief history”, does not. This sug-
gests that graffiti is perceived as one of the less important aspects of art history, one
that could be left out when art history has to be told succinctly.
This review of art-historical surveys could thus be said to support both Jacobson’s
and Waclawek’s contradictory claims. The majority of the examined surveys do in-
clude graffiti art, but most of them only contain brief information. Furthermore,
several of the most widely used surveys in undergraduate university classes do omit
graffiti and street art, just as Waclawek claimed.
The discursive pattern identified in relation to Crack Is Wack is often also present in
these art-historical surveys, where Keith Haring is either situated as an artist who is
part of what is described as a graffiti-art movement, and someone who then evolved
out of it, or as an artist inspired by graffiti (graffiti that is then not necessarily framed
as art in itself ).62
Regarding the relationship between Haring and the community of graffiti writers,
the latter description is more in line with how he is perceived among the writers ac-
tive at the time whom I have interviewed, and how his role is contextualized in more
specialized accounts.63 It is also the description that seems closest to Haring’s own
understanding. For example, in an interview with the adult comic magazine Heavy
Metal, he was asked if he aligned himself with graffiti artists: “I always tried to. I don’t
think I fit in the same category necessarily, but I respect graffiti to the extent that I
was here [in New York City] for two years before I felt that I had something to con-
tribute in the street.”64
To be clear here, Haring did images in the public realm using techniques and meth-
ods that could be regarded as graffiti, his work was associated with graffiti, and he had
an ambition to align with graffiti artists. At the same time, both the graffiti writers
and Haring himself regard him as someone doing something that is different from
graffiti. One difference that has been brought to the fore by Joe Austin is that most
graffiti writers start writing in their teens, while Haring was in his early twenties,
and already an artist trained within higher-art education, when he started working
in the public realm.65 This is also related to one of two arguments put forth by Part
One, that Haring had a different background from the graffiti writers, the other being
that Haring’s work differs from the imagery developed within the context of subway
graffiti. This is also the context were one could frame Haring’s own claims of being
reluctant “to contribute in the street” – he was somewhat of an outsider in relation

57
 to subcultural graffiti, as a late beginner who was also not from New York City. The
difference is also visually present in the works of Haring; whereas graffiti writers
commonly sign larger graffiti works with their tag, Haring often uses the more art-in-
stitutionally grounded convention of signing with his initials, or his name. On the
other hand, Haring considered himself to have a tag of his own – a dog that he drew
with a marker on the streets.66
Just like the New York City Parks Department, few of the art-historical surveys re-
strict themselves to setting Haring in relation to the graffiti writers. Most of them also
directly or indirectly make various kinds of value judgments. Keith Haring is thus often
described as either a unique talent among graffiti writers or a remarkable talent using the
inspiration of graffiti to do something that goes way beyond his sources of inspiration.67
In Art Today Edward Lucie-Smith situates Haring as one of several artists “influenced
by graffiti even if not actual participants of the teenage craze which so disturbed the
authorities.”68 Even if Lucie-Smith’s description of graffiti as a disturbing teenage craze
is patronizing, his account of graffiti is actually one of the more detailed in any of the
studied art-historical surveys. He describes it both as a street or subculture and an art
movement with institutional connections. Lucie-Smith mentions that Razor Gallery
has the first graffiti art exhibition in September 1973 (however, without naming any of
the participating artists). When summing up the graffiti movement as art, he concludes
that: “Very few of these young artists showed any stamina in the New York art world”,
but points out Jean-Michel Basquiat as the “most conspicuous exception”.69 And with-
out a doubt, within the institutional art world of galleries and museums (which is what
Lucie-Smith primarily writes about), Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat are the
most famous artists associated with graffiti. Perhaps this is true – at least in this institu-
tional context, they seem to have had stamina unparalleled by any other artist from, or
associated with, graffiti as art. However, the very notion of stamina is problematic, since
it implicitly places the entire responsibility of artistic success on the individual’s capacity,
and ignores wider social and discursive structures.
Keith Haring, as well as Jean-Michel Basquiat, are often absent in popular and
subcultural accounts of graffiti. Haring is not mentioned in any of the two widely
spread books Subway Art (1984) or Spraycan Art (1987), nor in the academic thesis
Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York (1982). And neither Haring nor Basquiat is
part of Freedom’s or Räisänen’s visualizations of graffiti history, analyzed above. Thus,
within the context of the New York graffiti subculture Haring seems to be considered
an outsider, and is many times completely omitted. Among the internationally most
famous graffiti writers in these sources are instead Dondi (White), Lee (Quinones),
Phase 2, Case 2, Seen, Blade, and Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara), and another half dozen
writers. Perhaps slightly less internationally famous, but often mentioned in the New
York graffiti history, we find names such as Coco 144 (who participated at the afore-
mentioned show at Razor Gallery), Doze, Doc, Mare 139, and Part One, just to name
a few. All of these artists, or writers, may have a way less prominent position in the

58
galleries and museums, if one sees them as the New York art world, but they certainly
have built a strong position in the world of graffiti.
The relationship between Haring and Basquiat on the one hand, and the canon-
ized names in subcultural graffiti on the other, has also been addressed by previous
research, perhaps most thoroughly by Ivor L. Miller. In his analysis, Haring and Bas-
quiat have been positioned as the central figures of graffiti, primarily by the forces of
the art market, during the 1980s. This positioning comes at the expense of “the actual
innovators” of graffiti, who are written out of history by scholars relying on accounts
produced within journalism and through marketing strategies.70
I would here like to once again return to Edward Lucie-Smith, who in Art Today also
provides this chapter with the rough time span for the history: “In the 1970s and early
1980s there was a short lived but hectic fashion in the New York art world for subway
graffiti”.71 For a more exact periodization, we could use Lucie-Smith’s own dating of the
exhibition at Razor gallery in 1973 as a starting point. Neither Haring nor Basquiat were
a part of this exhibition (or any of the other graffiti-related exhibitions of the 1970s). So
if we then consider that Jean-Michel Basquiat (by Lucie-Smith pointed out as the most
prolific exception of the graffiti artists) has his first New York City solo exhibition in
1982, and continues to exhibit throughout the decade until his untimely death in 1988,
we have a period stretching roughly fifteen years (1973–1988). By applying Lucie-Smith’s
definition and empirical references and examples, this “short lived but hectic fashion”
spans over at least a decade. Within the context of nineteenth and Twentieth century
contemporary art movements and –isms, it is difficult to view both ten and fifteen years
as an especially short period. It is the relationships between graffiti and art institutions
during these roughly fifteen years, as well as the accounts that attempt to describe and
historicize these relationships, that are under scrutiny in this chapter.
The exhibition at Razor gallery pointed out by Lucie-Smith is also within the more
specialized graffiti or street-art literature usually regarded as the first exhibition, at least
in the context of a gallery.72 It was curated by Hugo Martinez, a sociology student at
the time, who developed an interest in graffiti while teaching at a summer school.73
Martinez founded United Graffiti Artists (UGA) after meeting the two graffiti writers
Stitch I and Snake 1, and then creating the first organization for graffiti writers.74 UGA
was a meritocratic, perhaps even elitist organization, open only for the most prominent
writers, based on peer evaluation, regardless of their ethnicity, location, or social back-
ground.75 That the majority of the members were young Caribbean and African Ameri-
can males from areas such as Harlem, Washington Heights, and the South Bronx, could
thus be considered indicative of the fact that writing graffiti was most common among
young men of color living in working class and perhaps lower-middle class areas. While
Martinez’ aim seems to have been for the UGA to be an exclusive group restricted to
the most important graffiti writers, it is probably at the same time best referred to as a
self-organized artist collective, whose members varied over time, but with twelve writers
at its core: Stitch I, Snake 1, Cat 87, Coco 144, Amrl (Bama), Flint 707, Lee 163, Mico,

59
 Figure 2.12 (left): UGA at Razor Gallery, 1973. Figure 2.13 (right): UGA together with the dance company
The Joffrey Ballet, 1973. From the archive of Snake 1.

Phase 2, Sjk 171, T-Rex 131, and WG (Wicked Gary).76

UGA made its first public appearance in December of 1972, with an exhibition at
City College of New York.77 In March of 1973, UGA were invited to contribute to
a performance by the dance company The Joffrey Ballet. The choreography, Deuce
Coupe, was by Twyla Tharp, and UGA participated by painting live on stage while
the dancers performed.78 When the show at Razor Gallery opened, in September,
1973, UGA had already been an active group of artists for almost a year, and in the
next few years, their activities resulted in several exhibitions in different locations.
The most thoroughly documented of these exhibitions took place in September, 1975,
when UGA opened the autumn season at Artist Space in Soho.
In the mid-1970s, Artist Space was an avant-garde, artist-run venue where art stu-
dents, artists, critics, and scholars were deeply involved in discussions soon to become
labeled as the postmodern turn in art and art theory. Barbara Kruger was one of the
last artists to exhibit during the spring season of 1975. A few weeks after UGA’s ex-
hibition, Artist Space hosted a discussion on “Critics’ Responsibility to the Artist”,
with a panel that included the theorists Rosalind Krauss and Douglas Crimp (who
soon thereafter worked closely together in the early stages of the influential journal
October). Others involved in the programming of Artist Space during the autumn of
1975 included Robert Motherwell, Hans Haacke, and Robert Morris.79
The exhibition United Graffiti Artists 1975 was curated by Edit deAk from Artist
Space and the renowned art critic Peter Schjeldahl (the latter had two years prior re-
viewed UGA’s show at Razor Gallery for the New York Times).80 UGA also produced

60
Figure 2.14: Flyer for UGA’s exhibition New York Graffiti Writers 1972-1984, at Gallozzi-LaPlaca Galley,
May 1984. The reproduced piece was a joint production by UGA, and originally created in 1975. It was also
used for the catalogue at Artist Space, September 1975. From the archive of Snake 1.

a catalogue for this exhibition with essays by Hugo Martinez and Peter Schjeldahl.81
Soon after the show at Artist Space UGA slowly dissolved, and did not do any more
exhibitions during the rest of the 1970s.82 Since then they have, however, reunited
several times. For example, they had a retrospective in 1984 called New York Graffiti
Writers 1972–1984, at Gallozzi-LaPlaca Gallery.83
UGA’s early shows primarily took place at non-profit driven, artist-run or alterna-
tive spaces, and could thus be interpreted as part of an experimental art context, and
part of a discourse to redefine the concept of fine art. Other artists acknowledged in
the same geographic and historic context were, for example, the loosely nit network
of Fluxus, or individual artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark (who himself displayed a
profound interest in graffiti as subject for his own art in hand-colored photos such as
Graffiti: E-Z 29, from 1973).84
The UGA member Snake 1 says that the UGA openings always attracted large
crowds, but that not many of the visitors were graffiti writers, and that it probably “…
mostly [were] people involved in the art world who came to the shows”.85 The appa-
rent lack of interest from the graffiti community does not necessarily imply a lack of
impact. Craig Castleman devotes much space to UGA in Getting Up. According to
Castleman, the group was important for the artistic self-confidence of its members:
“The UGA writers grew as artists – not only in their painting skills but in their con-
fidence and sense of being serious artists”.86
But even if several UGA members, perhaps most notably Phase 2 and Coco 144,
continue to produce and exhibit works up until this day, none of them pursued art as
a full time profession.87 Whatever the reasons – lack of art-institutional backup, for
example, or interest or disinterest from the artists themselves – this is a fate shared
by many other artists, perhaps even a majority – and many educated in academic art
schools. We may here differ between artist as profession and artist as identity. Snake 1

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 explained that UGA’s “…paintings were selling, left and right…”. At the same time,
he stressed that, “…the money part was not the only important thing. We got recog-
nition, that’s more important.”88
Perhaps the latter is UGA’s most lasting contribution to graffiti – a performative
aspect – of recognition of graffiti as art: that UGA’s activity, which to a certain degree
was very successful activity, one might add, contributed to confirm not only their own,
but many graffiti writers’ identity as artists, as well as an acceptance that graffiti could
be considered art by the general public. This, of course, does not imply that every graf-
fiti writer necessarily needs to identify him or herself as an artist, but rather confirms
the possibility. Nor does it imply the opposite – that the early graffiti writers could not
have developed an artist identity and understanding of their activity as art themselves,
without the institutional art world.89
This should be understood as a process going in both directions, where their exhi-
bitions on the one hand may have helped to establish the idea of graffiti’s potentiality
as contemporary art, as something to be taken into serious consideration within in
the institutional art world and, to some extent, among a wider public; and that these
exhibitions on the other hand functioned to confirm an understanding among the
graffiti writers, that their activities could be considered art. Schjeldahl has testified
that the show he curated with UGA at Artist Space “got reviewed a lot”, even though
he also states that most of the reviewers were critical.90 This way of understanding
the role of institutional graffiti is similar to the argument posed by Anna Waclawek,
who suggests that an exhibition called Post-Graffiti that opened in 1983 at Sidney
Janis Gallery, reformulated graffiti into art, and that with this, “a rupture emerged in
the subculture”.91 The primary differences are that I would like to suggest that this is
a process that started already in the 1970s, and that it is not so much a rupture as an
ongoing process of transformation.
One interesting, if also anecdotal, example of graffiti writers seeming to adopt a
fairly traditional identity as artists as early as in the 1970s can be found in an interview
with vandal-squad police officer Conrad Lesnewski in Craig Castleman’s Getting Up,
who relays that graffiti is often produced by groups, where each person has his/her
own assignment, and some function as assistants and others as artists, or artistic di-
rector:

Each kid has his own job and knows what to do. […] Sometimes when you catch a kid or
make a raid, one kid will say, “I wasn’t painting, I was just filling in.” He doesn’t consider
himself painting because the other guy did the artwork.

Lesnewski seems slightly fascinated that the offender at the same time denies and
admits his/her guilt. I would suggest that the situation described by Lesnewski is cre-
ated by a collision of the incompatible elements produced within the two discursive
practices built around the statements of graffiti art and graffiti vandalism. From the

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perspective of graffiti as an artistic practice, questions about artistic quality and au-
thorship become important, and somebody “just filling in”, or assisting, could hardly
claim authorship. From the perspective of a police officer investigating graffiti as a
crime, such distinctions are less interesting, since both the “assistant” and the “artist”
participated in the crime. This would suggest that the statement on graffiti as art is
connected to and productive in processes of forming identities as artists; and vice
versa, that the statement on graffiti as vandalism, is connected to and productive in
processes of identities of being a criminal.
Of course, such a notion of an artistic identity as the one described above may have
been developed in an autonomous, subcultural context, but my suggestion is that it is
the result of a complex play of interaction between a context of subcultural graffiti and
art institutions. And the display of graffiti in art exhibitions must be considered a very
convincing and powerful example of the statement that graffiti is art.
It might also be important to mention that UGA did not make the only attempt to
display graffiti in an art institutional context during the 1970s. In July, 1974, NOGA
– the Nation of Graffiti Artists – was founded. The instigator, Jack Pelsinger, had
followed UGA since 1972, and was inspired by their work, but he stated to Craig Cast-
leman that the organization should be seen as an alternative to Martinez’ and UGA’s
manifest elitism, and NOGA welcomed everyone as a member.92 Despite this, the
organization’s activities were similar to UGA’s – with meetings, a collective workshop,
and group exhibitions. But the more open access also seems to have made NOGA less
relevant as a strict graffiti organization. Joe Austin claims that the organization was
important as a meeting ground but “more like a community youth art program”, where
the participants were free to use whatever medium or style they preferred.93
Neither UGA’s nor NOGA’s activities surveyed above quite fit into a description of
a hectic teenage craze in the art world, but should rather be described as grass rooted,
experimental, and tentative attempts to organize subcultural graffiti in an institutio-
nal-art context. They also seem to have been insufficiently funded, and if it was not
completely lacking, they did not gain sustainable institutional support.94
But in the first half of the 1980s, this relationship between graffiti and the insti-
tutional art world seems to have changed, with many new exhibitions and events
taking place. The shift is so significant that institutional graffiti in the 1970s and 1980s
often is perceived and treated as two completely different historical contexts with
little or any connection or relation.95 There are some valid claims for such a divide.
The interactions between graffiti writers and art institutions were without any doubt
more intense in the 1980s. There were more exhibitions, with more artists and more
institutional actors involved. Many of the graffiti writers that dominated the art scene
in the 1980s were slightly younger than the members of UGA and NOGA, and from
a subcultural point of view, belonged to a different generation.
Other types of interests and institutions were also active – ones that were more
resourceful, with the potential to bring artists abroad as well as into more prestigious

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 contexts, and some with a more obvious commercial agenda. All of the documented
exhibitions in the 1970s are group shows, but from 1980 and onwards there are a large
number of solo exhibitions by graffiti writers, often at galleries more or less speciali-
zed in graffiti, with Fun Gallery in New York and Yaki Kornblit Gallery in Amster-
dam as the most noticeable examples.96 Most of the art critics in the early 1980s also
seem oblivious to the art-institutional graffiti activities of the previous decade and
relate to the exhibitions as a novelty.97 These types of framings might have amplified
the impression that the graffiti exhibitions of the 1980s were something completely
different, even among those who had knowledge about UGA’s and NOGA’s activities.
But the shift from avant-garde and artist run non profit spaces to more conventio-
nal gallery spaces also coincides with changes in the New York art scene as a whole,
where the 1980s are often referred to as an art boom, primarily a commercial one,
fuelled by President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, whose political strategies also entailed
cuts in public funding of art projects.98 These changes in where and how graffiti is
exhibited can thus be said to operate within a broader structural change of the insti-
tutional art world.
There are only two years – 1977 and 1978 – without any documented graffiti-rela-
ted exhibitions. This could indicate a break, but also provide an explanation why the
exchanges between graffiti and art institutions may be apprehended as two different
phenomena. Considering that so many of the people involved in graffiti were relati-
vely young, these two years might within the graffiti subculture be perceived as a long
time, and for a teenager almost an era in itself. Put in an art-institutional or historical
perspective, two years is, however, not in any way a remarkable lacuna, but rather so-
mething that could be attributable to events beyond the specific artistic context. And
considering that both UGA and NOGA were non-profit organizations exhibiting in
alternative spaces, and the few economic resources they had seem to have come from
grants and public funds, it is very possible that the fiscal crisis in New York in the mid
to late 1970s is the primary cause behind the lack of exhibitions.99 Another plausible
factor could be that the riots and looting following the blackout of New York City
in July, 1977, had made organizations and institutions shun anything that could be
associated with vandalism.100 This lacuna is thus also fully possible to attribute to
institutional and structural factors beyond the specific context of graffiti.
Aside from the obvious differences, it is possible to also see certain continuity,
especially in a discursive perspective. When Castleman writes his dissertation in the
late 1970s, NOGA is still operating, albeit with limited resources.101 One of the twelve
core members of UGA – Phase 2 – is a part of many of the exhibitions in the 1980s.102
Several of the writers that are to become central in the institutional graffiti of the
early 1980s – such as Dondi, Futura 2000, and Quik – are in 1979 already organized in
a group called Soul Artists (also referred in some sources as Soul Artists of Zoo York)
that seems to have had a structure similar to UGA and NOGA.103
The first exhibitions in the 1980s are group exhibitions taking place in alternative,

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artist-run, and non-profit spaces, and thus both in format and context similar to the
exhibitions in the 1970s. And in spite of the existence of solo exhibitions at specialized
galleries, the group show is the format that continues to dominate throughout the
1980s and into the 1990s, often with a curatorial focus on the participants’ identities as
graffiti writers, or their works as graffiti-related.104
Within this overarching pattern of the group exhibition, it is, however, possible to
trace two different transformations. In the early 1980s, there are several successful and
influential exhibitions where a group of graffiti writers are exhibited together with an
avant-garde of often young, but college-educated artists, where everyone exhibits as
individuals, instead of as, like in the 1970s, part of a collective. The most renowned of
these is probably New York/New Wave, which was curated by Diego Cortez at the
alternative art center PS1, and opened in February, 1981.105 In this group exhibition,
graffiti writers such as Blade, Dondi, Futura 2000, Haze, Lady Pink, and Lee were
exhibited alongside iconic artists and poets such as William Borroughs, Nan Goldin,
Joseph Kosuth, Lydia Lunch, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andy Warhol.106 Included
in this his exhibition were also Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Another transformation is that both types of group exhibitions – the graffiti-spe-
cialized and those situating graffiti as a part of a broader avant-garde – are shifted up
from alternative spaces in New York into museums in Europe and other places outside
of the United States. The exhibition that is referred to as the first displaying graffiti in
a museum context opens in October, 1983, at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in
Rotterdam. This is group exhibition includes Blade, Crash, Dondi, Futura 2000, Lee
(Quinones), Noc 167, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen, and Zephyr.107 The museum
group exhibitions often appear to be touring exhibitions built on private collections,
and they continue to exist throughout the decade and into the 1990s.108
The result shows that it is plausible to frame the relationship between the insti-
tutional art world and the graffiti subculture within a pattern of continuity, albeit
with shifts, negotiations, and transformations. These changes concern graffiti and the
art-institutional structures, as well as broader cultural and social contexts. So rather
than two short periods of interaction – one experimental, in the early 1970s, and one
more hectic and commercially driven, in the early 1980s – I would suggest that it is
more productive to understand this as an ongoing process. This would also entail that
the interactions between subcultural graffiti and the art world take place in a far more
stable structure than previous research has suggested.

2.6 Descriptions of the Graffiti Writer’s Social Identity

Young Blacks and Puerto Ricans originated the movement, and the graffitists were parti-
cular to New York.
Jean Baudrillard, 1975.109

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 …everybody thinks a graffiti writer is black and Puerto Rican and that’s like, you know… it’s
wrong, you know. A lot of white people are writing.
Graffiti writer Sach, in Style Wars, 1983110
In Jean Baudrillard’s intriguing and influential, but also mostly unsubstantiated, es-
say on graffiti, the French philosopher claims that graffiti was originated by “Young
Blacks and Puerto Ricans” in the ghettoes.111 This is just one of many accounts – both
subcultural and institutional – that make unambiguous statements about the social
circumstances of graffiti. As already mentioned above, there is no doubt that many of
the most famous graffiti writers indeed were Caribbean and African American males.
But there are also accounts, as we shall see below, that assure that graffiti is a culture
with participants from all classes and races. Despite this significant interest in graffiti
writers’ ethnic and social background in New York in the 1970s or 1980s, there are no
systematic quantitative, empirical inquires substantiating any such claims. And since
graffiti often is executed without permission, and under a pseudonym, it must be said
to be difficult, if not impossible, to make any certain claims regarding the social iden-
tities of the practitioners. The following section discusses how graffiti writers’ social
identities in New York of the 1970s and 1980s have been described in subcultural and
scholarly accounts.
The absence of quantifiable data regarding graffiti writers’ socioeconomic and eth-
nic positions is pointed out by Craig Castleman in his study of subway graffiti (1982),
but by interviewing both police officers and graffiti writers he concludes that graffiti
writers come from “every race, nationality, and economic group in New York City.”112
Richard Lachmann (1988) also discusses the social and ethnic structure of graffiti
and collects qualitative data in a way similar as Castleman but with a different result.
When interviewing district attorneys in 1984, there was a consensus that not more
than 10% of arrested graffiti writers were “non-Hispanic whites”. Lachmann points
out that his result “might also reflect arresting officers’ own biases”.113
Like Castleman, Lachmann also conducts interviews with graffiti writers: 6 whom
he counts as a part of an “elite group” of totally 17 writers exhibiting in galleries, and
19 who did not belong to this group (by Lachmann referred to as “neighborhood-ba-
sed writers”). In both these groups the vast majority were “black or Hispanic”.114 In
contrast to Castleman, Lachmann also actively takes gender into this account, and
he identifies sexism among his interviewees: “most of the male writers interviewed
believe that graffiti writing should be restricted to men and would not train women or
accompany other men who brought along women. The male graffiti writers’ sexism is
integral to their bravura conception of the act of graffiti writing.” Only one of the 17
writers in the elite group identified by Lachmann was a woman.115
A late 1970s criminal profile reprinted in Jack Stewart’s Graffiti Kings identifies
the “common graffiti offender” as a male of variable age but “predominantly 13–16
years old” and of “lower social economic background”, and briefly under the headline
“Race” lists the offender as “Black, Puerto Rican, other (in that order)”.116 Stewart

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himself seems to disagree with this description. In another section of the book, he
writes that the special anti-graffiti police force founded in 1976 had produced “a pro-
file of the common graffiti offender that was informative, if not entirely accurate.”117
Stewart does not go further into the grounds on which he finds the profile inaccurate,
but seems to consider graffiti writing genuinely multiethnic, with slight differences
between white, black, and Puerto Rican kids when it comes to choosing pseudonyms
and nicknames.118
Jack Stewart’s own most explicit social distinctions are instead based on gender
and class. He identifies a similar discriminatory gender-based pattern as Lachmann,
pointing out that some male writers discourage females from writing graffiti due to
the risks of getting “hurt or arrested”, even if Stewart, unlike Lachmann, does not de-
fine this attitude as explicitly sexist.119 But Stewart also goes to some lengths trying to
scope out female contributions in his history of New York subway graffiti. He asserts
that even if graffiti “to outsiders [appears] to be a guy thing […] there were plenty of
girls in the mix”.120 And in his collection of names used by graffiti writers in the 1970s
he separates between “Graffiti Writers’ Names”, “Girls’ Names Written by Boys” (jud-
ging from the context this is not an outlet of an outspoken queer-, cross-, or trans-
gender practice, but rather names of girlfriends of male writers), and “Girls’ Names”.
The latter list includes almost 120 graffiti writers identified by Stewart as females.121
But considering the total amount of almost 3000 names and that the vast ungendered
category seems to be male, Stewart is perhaps, contrary to his own intentions, more
successful in pointing out an extreme domination of males than the contrary.
However, regarding the issue of race and class, Stewart also writes briefly about
a “promising” and “towheaded” graffiti writer named Link: “He was an anomaly: an
upper-middle-class kid who was a fashion model when he wasn’t spreading his name
on the East Side IRT trains”.122 So in spite of a seemingly massive male domination
of graffiti, a blonde, male graffiti writer from the upper-middle class, with looks suc-
cessfully living up to normative standards of white mainstream society, thus seems to
appear more strange as a writer to Stewart than one of the female gender.
Castleman (1982), Lachmann (1988), and Stewart (1989/2009) all write about graf-
fiti as a local phenomenon taking place in New York during the 1970s and 80s. Nancy
Macdonald’s study The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London
and New York (2001) was published almost two decades later, and frames graffiti as
an transnational subculture. Keeping these geographical and cultural differences in
mind, it is still interesting to compare Macdonald’s discussion on social categories
with the previously mentioned works. Macdonald claims that graffiti is a subcultu-
ral structure that transgresses borders of class and ethnicity, but only occasionally
those of gender.123 She criticizes earlier subcultural research in general for being too
oriented towards questions of class, and neglecting those of gender, even though the
vast majority of the participants in graffiti as well as most researched subcultures are
made up of young men. According to Macdonald, most previous researchers who have

67
 pondered the issue of gender have asked why so few women participate in subcultures,
but she suggests that a more accurate question would be to ask why so many males
participate.124 Her answer is that in the specific case of graffiti, the subculture involves
danger, challenge, and competition, and that it through these factors functions as
a tool in building a masculine identity for young males. Macdonald’s reading thus
indicates that female participants are marginalized, not foremost as a reproduction of
societal sexism, but because female presence has the power to reduce masculinity.125
This analysis is in line with Lachmann’s identified sexism as based on a “bravura con-
ception of the act of graffiti writing”, but at the same time seems more complex and
differentiated.
Returning to the more specific context of New York City in the 1970s and 80s, and
to briefly sum up: Apart from an explicit or implicit consensus that the majority of
the writers/artists/offenders are young males, the descriptions of the social context of
graffiti at the time are very diverse, from Castleman’s suggestion that any kid in New
York City could be a graffiti writer to Lachmann’s so called elite group where “15 of
17 are black or Hispanic”.126 These differences might, of course, reflect a change in the
social structure over time (Lachmann indirectly seems to bring up this possibility by
pointing out the time difference between his own and Castleman’s inquires).127 But
to claim that the writers come from “every race, nationality, and economic group”,
and that the majority of them are adolescent working-class males of African and
Caribbean descent is not, of course, entirely exclusionary. Castleman himself also
claims that “possibly most writers are poor blacks, Hispanics and whites”.128 He is
thus indirectly producing a structure very similar to the outspoken ranking in the
profile produced by the police: “Black, Puerto Rican, other” of “lower social economic
background”.129
A certain interest in race and ethnicity is also evident in the 1975 catalogue for
UGA at Artist Space. Each participating artist (all males) is presented with his full
name, tag/pseudonym, birth date, and ethnicity. Five of them are categorized as Black
Americans, three as Puerto Ricans, and the last four are Cuban, Colombian, Domini-
can, and Greek. All are born between 1953 and 1957 and thus at the time in their late
teens or early twenties. In Lachmann’s terminology, UGA would be an elite group
(though probably not the same one) consisting of five Black, one (non-Hispanic)
white, and six Hispanic artists.130
Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar discusses the ethnical diversity of writers in the larger context
of hip-hop and hereby provides an interpretation that could explain the diversity of
ideas and assumptions regarding the social context of graffiti. Ogbar describes early
hip-hop as a “multiethnic community” in New York consisting of rappers, deejays,
b-boys (more commonly known as breakdancers), and graffiti writers. But despite this
multi-ethnic make-up, soon “young African American working-class, urban males
emerged as the art’s central representatives”. This has in turn lead many observers to
“marginalize or entirely ignore non-African American contributions to hip-hop”.131

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This thus seems to be based both on a larger racialized pattern of cultural production
in the USA and an actual dominance of African American males.
Ogbar points out that an actual African American dominance is most obvious in
the music: “Though still central, African Americans have been less dominant in graf-
fiti art and b-boying, in which Latinos have had a long and visible presence since
the earliest years.”132 Ogbar traces the representative dominance of African American
males to forces within the market economy: “Corporate America has generally been
unable to market break dancing or graffiti art”, while the music quite smoothly could
fit into a preexisting structure, and thus rapping, “rooted in urban African American
‘badman’ narratives, gave hip-hop its force and character”.133
Combining the discussions of Ogbar with Stewart, Castleman, and Lachmann, one
could thus describe graffiti writing in New York in the 1970s and 1980s as a multi-eth-
nic and cross-class community of both sexes – but at the same time one that was most
likely dominated by working-class males of African and Caribbean descent, and with
a “young African American male” as the central representative within both mainstre-
am and subcultural descriptions. As a cultural phenomenon, graffiti is thus gendered
(male), racified (African American and Hispanic), and socially classed (working class)
irrespective of the individual writers’ own personal social background and identity. We
could assume that the graffiti subculture was governed by standards defined by this
matrix, but it was in many senses “open” to any young individual willing to conform
to these standards, even if this conforming might have included advanced individual
negotiations regarding gender, class, and race.

2.7 Crack Is Wack Playground (Take 2)

Considering the dominance of African American and Caribbean working class males
in graffiti culture of the 1970s and 1980s discussed in the previous section, it seems
troubling, or at lest peculiar, that one of the few official recognitions of graffiti is be-
stowed a work by a white, college-educated, middle-class artist. It should also be equally
disturbing that this artist is described as the “dean of the graffitists” in one art-historical
survey, and is one of two artists referred to in most other survey texts.134 It is in this
context one could best understand Part One’s resigned sigh, his claim that the city
landmarking Crack Is Wack was an outcome of “insanity” – as well as Haring’s contested
position in subcultural graffiti in general. And from this perspective it is time to return
to Crack Is Wack to look at it in relation to the socio-spatial borders of New York.
One could interpret the structures identified in relation to Crack Is Wack as either
one of two opposite, and extreme, positions. Either Haring was simply more talen-
ted, had more luck, or more ambition than any of the other graffiti writers; to echo
Lucie-Smith, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat “had stamina” unparalleled by
(other) graffiti writers.135 Or Haring’s position as the most talented graffitist was the
result of a process that has been conceptualized as “cultural banditry” or white co-op-

69
 tation – when institutions within mainstream society favor people who fall within
the borders of normative whiteness, such as the most successful and talented artists
within cultural movements otherwise dominated by people of color.136 From the latter
perspective, the official designation of Crack Is Wack as a landmark could be conside-
red, partly if not solely, the result of institutional racism.
Crack Is Wack is located on the corner of Second Avenue and 127th Street, and along
Harlem River Drive between Third Avenue Bridge (with southbound traffic from the
South Bronx to Harlem) and Willis Avenue Bridge (with northbound traffic from
Harlem to the South Bronx). It is the part of New York City known as East Harlem
(or Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio due to a predominance of Spanish speaking inhabi-
tants), but it borders Central Harlem, a neighborhood often referred to as the capital
of Black America. Haring was at the time residing in Greenwich Village, more than
a hundred blocks South West of the park.
The same year that Haring painted Crack Is Wack, he also did a painting at the Ber-
lin Wall, a painting he later described in the following manner:

The whole reason, almost, for doing the wall, was more for the idea of doing it. And almost
as a… a gesture, more than it was to actually paint a wall. I mean there is a wall represen-
ting the dividing of east and west, and this lack of freedom, and… and the conflict that is
all over the world.137

Considering Haring’s obviously conscious approach when doing site-specific works,

the choice of location for Crack Is Wack is probably not the outcome of pure chance.
Keith Haring, however, does not only choose to do this work in Harlem. It is also
situated between two central locations within contemporary graffiti culture. The sub-
way station 149th street and Grand Concourse, also known as the Writers’ Bench was
located a little more than a mile north of the playground. Here graffiti writers from all
over the city had gathered and socialized since the 1970s.138 And less than two miles
south of Haring’s painting, we find Graffiti Hall of Fame, a school-yard playground
where graffiti writers have been invited to paint under the slogan “Strictly Kings and
Better” since the early 1980s. The Graffiti Hall of Fame is usually repainted once a
year.139 Using a playground as an arena for graffiti is not unique for Haring, but rather
an outcome of his graffiti influences.
In this context, Haring’s use of language could also be of interest. The word ‘wack’
is listed in many of the glossaries in books on subcultural graffiti, and in this context
perceived as a part of a specialized terminology or jargon within graffiti and/or hip-
hop.140 It has also been linguistically categorized as AAVE (African American Vern-
acular English), more popularly known as Ebonics.141
Haring thus paints this anti-crack message on the border of El Barrio, the Carib-
bean, Spanish speaking part of Harlem, and the African American part of Harlem.
And he does it with a language associated with African American culture. Haring

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Figure 2.15: Stop Crack – Bio, Mack, Tony by Bio, Mack, and Nicer, the Bronx, New York (1986). Originally
published in Spraycan Art by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff (1987).
The message on the left and right side of the wall reads on the left side: A World So Different / Call It A
Wack ”Frustration” / To Live For A Rock / In Such A Hard Place / The World Goes Around / But Crack
Gets You Down!!! On the right side it says: For Those / Of You That / Meet Me You / Never Forget Me, /
I Become Your / Every Thought / Your Worries Your / Pain… But Once / You’ve Met Me Your Life / Will
Never Be The / Same… I Am Killer Crack.

thus clearly positions himself, socio-spatially as well as linguistically, in direct relation

to African American and Puerto Rican communities from which many, perhaps the
majority, of graffiti writers came.
Nor was Keith Haring the only one who used the concept of rhyming “Crack” with
“Wack” at this time. The rap crew BDP (Boogie Down Productions) used it in their
seminal song “South Bronx”, from the album Criminal Minded. Furthermore, and
more obviously relevant in this context, the three graffiti writers Bio, Mack, and Nicer
used it in a work with an anti-crack message, also produced in 1986. Just like Haring,
Nicer use an image of a crack pipe, but incorporated it into the word Tony by using
it to replace the letter “O”. Bio uses a tube of crack similarly – as a replacement for
the letter “I”. The graffiti piece also contains a poetic message, where the drug crack
becomes a subject, speaking to the beholder. Furthest down in the right corner, almost
like a signature, the message reads: “I Am Killer Crack”.
In comparison with Crack Is Wack, this piece is the result of a joint work by three
different graffiti writers, and it displays a wider diversity. This piece was, just like the
previously analyzed The History of Graffiti, published in the book Spraycan Art (1987),
and has been widely distributed as a picture of a picture, throughout the world. The
existence of this picture is thus far from neglected, but it is not present any of the
art-historical surveys, nor situated as the relevant counterpart to Crack Is Wack that it
could be argued to be.
A claim quoted earlier in this chapter suggested that most of Haring’s graffiti should
be seen as benign, since it was “done in white chalk on the blank black background of
unused advertising panels.” It has also been claimed that he and Jean-Michel Basquiat
had more stamina than (other) graffitists. This chapter suggests that the identification
of Haring’s graffiti as benign, as well as his perceived stamina, and the landmark de-

71
 signation of Crack Is Wack, depends on wide sociocultural and discursive structures,
where several different institutions are active. It suggests that Haring is one of few,
perhaps the only artist associated with graffiti who had solid art-institutional resour-
ces (in terms of e.g. social position, fame, knowledge, contacts, language, economy)
and thus possibilities to contextualize his intentions and make them understood as
something other than vandalism, even in the eyes of the law. In the discursive termi-
nology of this thesis, in the case of Crack Is Wack, Haring had institutional resources
to make the statement ‘this is art’ outdo the statement ‘this is vandalism’.
The results also display an extremely powerful and persistent disintegration between
the subcultural and art-historical narratives on graffiti. This might come as little sur-
prise, since the graffiti subculture and the institutional art world are fairly different
contexts. On the other hand, since the art-historical institutions often try to narrate
graffiti as an artistic phenomenon, these should be able to frame it in greater detail
and with more accuracy. Ivor L. Miller has claimed that the “more museums and art
histories focus on and theorize about Basquiat and Haring as representative of the
subway painters, the less the public knows about the dynamics of aerosol culture.”142
The approach in this present chapter has rather been to consider Basquiat and Ha-
ring part of the art-institutional dynamic, and the results suggest that it is a producti-
ve approach. To strive to replace them in art history with names from the subcultural
narrative seems, from the perspective of this thesis, neither plausible nor desirable.
An art-historical survey of the phenomenon of graffiti as art in the 1970s and 80s
that does not bring up the role of graffiti-related artists such as Basquiat and Haring
would be as insufficient as those historical narratives that omits groups as UGA and
NOGA, or anonymizes individuals such as Phase 2 or Lady Pink. From this perspec-
tive, any history of graffiti that does not also take into serious consideration the role
of the various anti-graffiti strategies, and other types of phenomena constructed in
relation to the rejecting discursive practice, would be full of shortcomings.

72
73
 Endnotes 20
For other examples see Eric Felisbret & Luke
1
Henry Chalfant & James Prigoff (1987), Spraycan Felisbret (2009), Graffiti New York. New York:
Art. London: Thames and Hudson, p. 12. Abrams, p. 4, and Chris Ganter (2013), Graffiti
2
Macdonald (2001) pp. 69–74. School: A Student Guide With Teacher’s Manual.
3
Jacobson (1996), pp. 54–55. Jacobson here London: Thames & Hudson, p. 10-11.
builds on the theories of German sociologist Tho- 21
Sonya Neef (2007), “Killing Kool: The Graffiti Mu-
mas Ziehe. seum”, in Art History 30:3 (June, 2007), p. 421.
4
Jacobson (1996), pp. 69–71. 22
Stewart (1989), p. 326.
5
Austin (2001), pp. 249–261. 23
Hans Hayden has pointed out that one important
6
Macdonald (2001), p. 91. difference between Barr’s chart and other state-
7
Miller (2002), p. 14. ments on the history of modern and modernist art
8
Snyder (2009), p. 147 & 157. at the time is that Barr’s chart was produced in an
9
Snyder (2009), p. 153. institutional context and therefore rendered credi-
10
See for example Rahn (2002) p. 20, and Joseph bility. This is not the case with Feral’s chart (even
G. Schloss (2009), Foundation: B-boys, B-girls if has been displayed in institutional contexts,
and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. Oxford: Oxford for example as sold in the book store of MoCA,
University Press (2009) p. 75. LA). See Hans Hayden (2006), Modernismen som
11
Snyder (2009), p. 201. institution: om etableringen av ett estetiskt och
12
Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar (2007), Hip-Hop Revolution: historiografiskt paradigm. Eslöv: Östlings bokför-
The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence: Uni- lag Symposion, p. 203.
versity Press of Kansas, p. 1. 24
This tendency of creating two objects is particu-
13
Stewart (1988), p. 172. larly evident in the Swedish material gathered for
14
When I interviewed the graffiti writer T-Kid, he the thesis, since the Swedish language uses two
called Phase 2 “the great grandfather of style”. See different words, graffiti and “klotter”, where the
Jacob Kimvall, “Jag syns alltså finns jag”, Kingsize latter could be translated as ‘scribble’, ‘doodle’ or
No. 16, June 2006. ‘scrawl’, but is in Swedish more or less conse-
15
Castleman (1982), pp. 53–55. quently used to denote what in English would be
16
Castleman (1982), p. 56. referred to as graffiti (vandalism). This distinction
17
See the documentary Kroonjuwelen: Hard between “klotter” and “graffiti” will be discussed
Times, Good Times, Better Times, released by more thouroughly in the chapter on Swedish zero
Stunned Film (2006). The whole film is publis- tolerance.
hed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ 25
Johnson (2006), p. 14.
watch?v=fQ_OMX_V32U [Retrieved 2014-03-17]. 26
Waclawek (2009), p. xvi.
See also Remko Koopman, Hein Sonnemans, Mar- 27
I reviewed Art in the Street for Journal of Art
cel van Tiggelen (2004), Amsterdam Graffiti – The History, and thought that it in its informed detail
Battle of Waterloo. Amsterdam, Stadsutgeverij. set a new standard for thematic graffiti exhibitions,
18
Jack Stewart (1989), Subway Graffiti: An Aest- but that it also had an art for art sake philosophy
hetic Study of Graffiti on the Subway System that minimized the impact of external factors.
of New York City, 1970-1978. Diss, New York See Jacob Kimvall (2011), “Art in the Streets”,
University, p. 148. Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History,
19
Stewart (1989), p. 497. 80:4, 253–255.

74
28
Heather Mac Donald, “Crime in the Museums –
America’s first major graffiti show celebrates urban
sabotage”. City Journal, 17 April 2011. http://www.
city-journal.org/2011/bc0417hm.html [Retrieved
2011-05-25].
29
“During the Giuliani Administration, the magazine
served as an idea factory as the then-mayor revivi-
fied New York City, quickly becoming, in the words
of the New York Post, ‘the place where Rudy gets
his ideas.’” http://www.city-journal.org/about.html
[Retrieved 2014-02-25].
30
New York newspaper Daily News referenced
Mac Donald’s critique, when published an editorial
fiercely opposing to the idea of taking Art in the
Streets from MoCA to Brooklyn Museum. The
show at Brooklyn Museum was cancelled. It is
unclear if the Mac Donald critique had any impact
on the decision. See Editorial in New York Daily
News: “Plan to bring exhibition glorifying graffiti
vandalism to the Brooklyn Museum should be
tagged No Way”, April 24, 2011. I discuss this
more thoroughly in the review of Art in the Streets
mentioned above.
31
Austin (2001), pp. 5–6.
32
Stewart (1988), p. 162. Joe Austin situates graffiti
similarly. See Austin (2001), pp. 5–7.
33
Stewart (1988), p. 162.
34
Castleman (1982), p. 136.
35
Austin (2001), pp. 83–84.
36
Joe Austin, “Moral Panics and the ‘Wars on
Graffiti’”, Elementary Magazine, spring 1997.
Reprinted in UP (Underground Productions) No.
21, December 2002.
37
Richard Goldstein, “This Thing Has Gotten
Completely Out of Hand”, New York Magazine,
1973-03-26.
38
Goldstein (1973). The quote was used for ex-
ample on Swedish television, as early as Decem-
ber 15, 1974, in the program Kulturmagasinet
(episode re-released on the DVD Metagraffiti by
Dokument Press in 2009).
39
Unsigned article, “Phase 2”, On the Run Special
Double Issue 1/ New York, September 1991.
40
Aubert, Elisabeth (1989). Drawing the Line – A
Portrait of Keith Haring. Transcript from DVD, rele-
ased unknown date by West Long Branch: Kultur.
41
Adam Mansbach (2013), Rage is back: a novel.
New York: Penguin Group, p. 7.
42
Marvine Howe & Frank J. Prial, “$25 Fine Or-
dered For ‘Crack Is Wack’ Artist”, The New York
Times, 1986-09-19.
43
Keith Haring & John Gruen (1991), Keith Haring:
The Authorized Biography. London: Thames and
Hudson, p. 58 and pp. 84-85.
44
The pictorial convention of painting humans han-
ging upside down is a motif building on the manner
of defaming criminals, and has been connected
to the tradition of pittura infamante or “effigies of
shame”. See Samuel Y. Edgerton (1985), Pictures
and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution
During the Florentine Renaissance. Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, pp. 106 & 111–122.
45
Haring & Gruen (1991), pp. 145–150.
46
Howe & Prial, (1986).
47
Marvine Howe & Kathleen Teltsch, “Anti-crack
Mural Will Rise Again”, The New York Times,
1986-10-02.
48
PR Newswire, News Advisory, 1986-10-01: “Artist
Keith Haring will meet Parks Commissioner Henry
J. Stern at Harlem River Park, where Haring will
repaint an anti-crack mural warning of the dangers
of the drug on an unused handball court wall in the
half-acre playground”.
49
Several graffiti writers have witnessed that
Haring was an important connector between the
graffiti subculture and art institutions, and an ad-
vocate of an understanding of graffiti as a culture
with important artistic values. Futura 2000 claims:
“Keith Haring probably gave the movement its
greatest exposure […] Keith was the catalyst!” See
See Haring & Gruen (1991), p. 74.
50
See for example the quote from Adam Mans-
75
 bach’s novel Rage is back in the beginning of
this section, and Tommy Tee, “There is only one
teacher”, Fatcap, No. 2, 1992: “Rest In Piece Keith
Haring, ’cos while you were alive we were dissing
you and when you’re dead it’s no different”.
51
Interview with Part One (Enrique Torres) conduc-
ted in New York City, USA, 2009-10-16.
52
Alain “Ket” Maridueña (2009), Part One – The
Death Squad. Berlin: From Here to Fame publish-
ing, p. 47. On the concept of flow see Castleman
(1982), p. 25 and Tricia Rose (1994), Black Noise:
Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary
America. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, pp.
38-39.
53
Interview with Part One (Enrique Torres) conduc-
ted in New York City, USA, 2009-10-16.
54
Ibid.
55
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M208E/histo-
ry [Retrieved 2012-01-15].
56
This series of work are collected in the book Art
in Transit published in 1984, with photographs by
Tseng Kwong Chi and an introduction by Henry
Geldzahler.
57
Jacobson (1996), p. 188 & pp. 201–202.
58
Waclawek (2008), pp. 8–9.
59
Nanette Salomon, “The Art Historical Canon:
Sins of Omission”, in Donald Preziosi (ed.) (1998),
The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press p. 357.
60
Dan Karlholm (2004), Art of Illusion: The Representa-
tion of Art History in Nineteenth-century Germany and
Beyond. Bern: Peter Lang. p. 39 [emphasis in original].
61
The studied surveys have been selected by their
availability on university libraries in the Stockholm
region. The surveys that did reference graffiti were:
Lucie-Smith, Edward (1995), Art Today. London:
Phaidon; Hjörvarður H. Árnason & Elizabeth
Mansfield (1998), History of Modern Art: Painting,
Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. London:
Thames & Hudson; Kemp, Martin (ed.) (2000), The
Oxford History of Western Art. Oxford: Oxford
76
University Press; Rita Gilbert, (2001), Gilbert’s
Living With Art. Boston: McGraw-Hill; Heartney,
Eleanor (2001), Postmodernism. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press; Laurie Schneider
Adams (2006), Art Across Time. Boston: McGraw-
Hill; Julian Bell (2007), Mirror of the World: A New
History of Art. London: Thames & Hudson; Eleanor
Heartney (2008), Art & Today. London: Phaidon
Press; Wilkins, David G., Schultz, Bernard &
Linduff, Katheryn M. (2009), Art Past Art Present.
Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall; Penelo-
pe J.E. Davies (2010), Janson’s History of Art: The
Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson
Education; Stephen Farthing (ed.) (2010), Art: The
Whole Story. London: Thames & Hudson; Marilyn
Stokstad, Michael Watt Cothren & Frederick M.
Asher, (2011), Art History. Upper Saddle River:
Prentice Hall/Pearson.
The surveys that did not reference graffiti were:
Frederick Hartt (1992), Art: A History of Painting,
Sculpture, Architecture. Englewood Cliffs: Prenti-
ce Hall; Paul Johnson (2003), Art: A New History.
New York: HarperCollins; Fred S. Kleiner, Christin
J. Mamiya & Richard G. Tansey, (2003), Gard-
ner’s Art Through the Ages: Vol. 2 The Western
Perspective. Belmont: Wadsworth / Thomson
Learning; E. H. Gombrich (2006), The Story of Art.
Pocket ed. London: Phaidon; Hugh Honour & John
Fleming (2009), The Visual Arts: A History. Upper
Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall; Marilyn Stok-
stad & Michael Watt Cothren (2010), Art: A Brief
History. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall; Foster,
Hal (2012), Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimo-
dernism, Postmodernism. 2nd, rev. ed. London:
Thames & Hudson.
62
Arnason (1998) describes Haring as the “dean
of the graffitists”, p.715; while Wilkins, Schultz, &
Linduff (2009) claims that he “was inspired by the
daring of street graffiti”, p. 593.
63
For example, Joe Austin situates Haring as one
of several “traditionally trained young artists” using
methods of graffiti to “make art more relevant and Artists Return to Artist Space: 25 Years, New
accessible to everyday life. See Austin (2001), p York, Artist Space, p. 68. Peter Schjeldahl claims
189–190. that this was his one and only attempt to curate an
64
Amy Lipton: “American Graffiti”, Heavy Metal, exhibition, and that the experience have given him
August, 1983. In the posthumous, authorized bio- “a lifelong respect for mediocre curators”.
graphy, built on interviews conducted with Haring 80
Castleman (1982), s. 122.
in the late 1980s, he talks about himself as admirer 81
Catalogue United Graffiti Artists 1975, publis-
and supporter of graffiti, and makes a statement hed by United Graffiti Writers Inc., 29 Jumel Place,
that also indicates a difference: “Now the Fun New York, N.Y. 10032.
gallery was mainly a graffiti gallery, and their first 82
Interview with Snake 1, conducted in New Jer-
few shows were by spray-gun graffiti artists. Still, sey, USA, 2009-01-09.
Kenny [Sharf] had a show there, and Jean Michel 83
Interview with Snake 1, conducted in New Jer-
and I were asked to have shows there too”. See sey, USA, 2009-01-09.
Haring & Gruen (1991), p. 89. 84
Lydia Yee & Whitney Rugg (2008), Street Art
65
Austin (2001), p 189–190. Street Life, New York, Aperture, p. 48–49.
66
Haring & Gruen (1991), p. 65. 85
Interview with Snake 1, conducted in New Jer-
67
I am aware that the relatively limited space of sey, USA, 2009-01-09.
art-historical surveys may not allow the most 86
Castleman (1982), p. 125.
nuanced discussions. I would claim, however, that 87
Names of more or less all of the members of
the structure discussed above is too simplified and UGA show up in my material during all of the de-
striking to be explained with arguments regarding cades. Phase 2 is a central part of the internatio-
limitations of the format. nalization of graffiti in the 1980s and early 1990s.
68
Edward Lucie-Smith, (1995), Art Today. London: In the work with gathering material for this thesis
Phaidon p. 308. 2008–2013, I have also visited several exhibitions
69
Lucie-Smith (1995), p. 308. by Coco 144, and had the fortune to meet both him
70
Miller (2002), pp. 168–170. and Snake 1.
71
Lucie-Smith (1995), p. 308. 88
Interview with Snake 1, conducted in New Jer-
72
Waclawek (2008), p. 128. sey, USA, 2009-01-09.
73
Castleman (1982), p. 117. 89
Joe Austin suggests that this early recognition
74
I have previously published an article on UGA of graffiti in the art press played “an important role
in graffiti specialized magazine UP, some of the in the general conceptualization of writing as art
shorter elements of reasoning and occasional among writers”. See Austin (2001), p. 72. Some of
quotes may be familiar to anyone who reads both my informants expressed a firm conviction that an
texts. See Jacob Kimvall, “The Creation of Graffiti outspoken artist identity existed among graffiti wri-
as Art”, UP No. 40, June 2009. ters previous to the recognition of the institutional
75
Interview with Snake 1, conducted in New Jer- art world, and I settle with the an assumption that
sey, USA, 2009-01-09. this played a role.
76
Castleman (1982), p. 119. 90
Gould & Smith (1998), p. 68.
77
Castleman (1982), p. 119. 91
Waclawek (2008), pp. 135–145.
78
Castleman (1982), p. 119. 92
Castleman (1982), p. 127.
79
Claudia Gould & Valerie Smith (1998), 5000 93
Austin (2001), p. 72.

77
 94
Castleman (1982), p. 119 (regarding UGA) and p.
133 (regarding NOGA).
95
For example, Anna Waclawek writes thoroughly
about UGA and NOGA in her dissertation, under
the headline “Early Forays Into Gallery Spaces”,
and frames the groups and their activities as a
precursor to what was to happen in the 1980s. See
Waclawek (2009), p. 124–125. Jacobson describes
the situation similarly. See Jacobson (1996), p. 149.
96
See appendix: “Graffiti as an Art-Institutional
subject 1972–1992”.
97
See for example Lars Nittve, “Daze! Crash!!
Lee!!! Noc!!!!”, Svenska Dagbladet, 1985-12-07.
98
Julie Ault, (ed.) (2002). Alternative Art, New
York, 1965-1985 – A Cultural Politics Book for the
Social Text Collective: The Drawing Center, New
York. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
p. 172-173.
99
Jack Egan, “Fundamental Reform Still Seen
As NYC’s Only Fiscal Solution”, The Washington
Post, 1977-06-26.
100
Unsigned editorial, “The Blackout”, The
Washington Post, 1977-07-16.
101
Castleman (1982), p. 133.
102
See appendix: “Graffiti as an Art-Institutional
subject 1972–1992”.
103
Austin (2001), p. 187-188. It is worth mentioning
that Soul Artists was a more traditional graffiti crew
in the early 1970s. See also Haring & Gruen (1991),
p. 73.
104
This tendency of superficially lumping together
graffiti writers from different generations and
artistic agendas has been brought to the fore by
Zephyr, criticizing the art institutions of being “…
unwilling or unable to present those artists as
individuals with a distinct vision”. His account is
specifically regarding Crash and Futura 2000, but
I interpret is as critique of the whole phenomenon
of group exhibitions. See Jeff Chang, (2005), Can’t
Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Gene-
ration. New York: St. Martin’s Press p. 181.
78
105
PS1 has undergone several transformations
since 1981, and is today known as an established
contemporary art institution that under the name
MoMA PS1, closely affiliated with the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. For more information see
http://momaps1.org/about/affiliation [retrieved
2014-03-14].
106
For a full list of the more than 100 participants
of “New York/ New Wave” see MoMA’s web resour-
ces: http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archi-
ves/ps1_exhibitions/exhibitions_1981 [retrieved
2014-03-14].
107
See appendix: “New York Graffiti as an art-insti
tutional subject 1972–1992”.
108
Between 1984 and 1992 there are documented
graffiti-related exhibitions at Louisiana, Humleba-
ek, Denmark; Groninger Museum, Groningen, Hol-
land (two times, 1984 and 1992); Mittelrheinisches
Landesmuseum, Mainz, Germany; Nordjyllands
Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, Denmark; Heine-Onstad
Kunstsenter, Høviksodden, Norway; Liljevalchs
konsthall, Stockholm; Leopold-Hoesch Museum,
Düren, Germany; Musée National des Monuments
Français, Paris, France. See appendix: “Graffiti as
an Art-Institutional subject 1972–1992” for more
information.
109
Jean Baudrillard (1993) [1976], “Kool Killer, or
the Insurrection of Signs” in Symbolic Exchange
and Death, London: Sage Publications, p. 76.
110
Henry Chalfant & Tony Silver (1983), Style Wars.
Transcript from DVD released 2004, by Public Art
Films.
111
Jean Baudrillard (1993) [1976], p. 76.
112
Castleman (1982), p. 67.
113
Richard Lachmann, “Graffiti as Career and Ideo-
logy”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94,
No. 2. (Sep., 1988), p. 235.
114
Lachmann (1988), p. 235.
115
Lachmann (1988), p. 235.
116
Stewart (1989), p. 87.
117
Jack Stewart (2009), Graffiti Kings: New York
City Mass Transit Art of the 1970’s. New York: 140
The setting of wack as both AAVE and speciali-
Melcher Media/Abrams, p. 167 Even if it is not ex- zed graffiti jargon is of course not a contradiction,
plicitly stated that the profile reprinted in the book especially not when considering the African Ame-
is the same that Stewart is writing about, I have rican presence in graffiti, and that the many early
here assumed that this is the case. accounts were written by people who not were
118
Stewart (2009), p. 28. graffiti writers. See “Wack” in appendix: “Glossary
119
Stewart (2009), p. 28. of Glossaries”.
120
Stewart (2009), p. 49. 141
Ogbar (2007), p. 47 and 51.
121
Stewart (2009), pp. 207–215. 142
Miller (2002), p. 169.
122
Stewart (2009), p. 112.
123
Macdonald (2001), p. 95.
124
Macdonald (2001), p. 96.
125
Macdonald (2001), pp. 149–150.
126
Castleman (1982), p. 67, and Lachmann (1988),
p. 235.
127
Reviewing these previous descriptions, it is also
obvious that social and ethnic categories are so-
cio-cultural constructions, and that both the words
used to label ethnic categories vary over time, as
well as what these labels may denote.
128
Castleman (1982), p. 67.
129
Stewart (2009), p. 87.
130
Catalogue United Graffiti Artists 1975, publis-
hed by United Graffiti Writers Inc., 29 Jumel Place,
New York, N.Y. 10032
131
Ogbar (2007), p. 39–40.
132
Ogbar (2007), p. 41.
133
Ogbar (2007), p. 41.
134
Arnason (1998), p. 715.
135
Lucie-Smith, (1995), p. 308.
136
Ogbar (2007), p. 56–62.
137
Elisabeth Aubert (1989), Drawing the Line – A
Portrait of Keith Haring. Author’s transcript from
DVD, released by Kultur, West Long Branch.
138
Castleman (1982), p. 85.
139
The paintings from the Graffiti Hall of Fame have
been documented in several books and magazines
on graffiti. In 2012, however, came the first publica-
tion solely dedicated to this place. Alain “Ket”
Maridueña (2012), Hall of Fame – New York City.
Berlin: From Here to Fame publishing.

79
80
3. THE RISE, FALL, AND AFTER-
MATH OF THE BERLIN WALL
GRAFFITI

The Wall, the greatest monument to the postwar world – a serpentine 99 miles long – has
riven Berlin for more than a quarter century. On the western side, it is mostly covered with
swirls of graffiti expressing a wide range of political, sexual and scatological desires. On
the eastern side, though, its cement-gray minimalist style remains pristine. Armed guards
imported from the provinces and stationed atop 285 watchtowers ensure that there are no
creative improvements.
Sidney Blumenthal, The Washington Post, January 6, 19871

3.1 Graffiti at the CIA Headquarters

Outside the CIA Headquarters in Northern Virginia stand three slabs of the former
Berlin Wall, covered with spraypainted images and words in various languages. Deve-
loped by CIA Fine Arts Commission, and inaugurated in 1992, the three blocks form
a perhaps awkward monument. It is surrounded by bench-height walls so that the
employees, according to the CIA website, “can sit and view the three segments and
think about their history”.2
Considering the slabs’ function, the description is not peculiar; the main purpose
of a monument is to remind its beholders about specific historical events. But it begs
the question: which history is it that CIA employees are supposed to contemplate
through this specific monument? The website gives a clear hint of how it is supposed
to be interpreted – the online visitor is told that the monument is “oriented as it was
in Berlin—the west side painted with graffiti and the east side whitewashed. The west
side of the Wall is covered with graffiti that reflects the color, hope and optimism of
the West itself. In stark contrast, the east side of the Wall is plain and devoid of color
and life”.3
The monument is thus supposed to work as a reminder of the ideological and po-
litical struggle between Eastern European socialism and Western capitalism during
the Cold War – and of the latter’s victory over the former, a victory in which the CIA
was involved. From this perspective, the message of the monument appears obvious
or even blunt – but it might still seem awkward in its appearance. Writing graffiti
on a monument is usually described as a severe act of vandalism, but in this case it
is framed as a central to the monument itself; as a signifier for hope and optimism

81
 Figure 3.1: Sceen shot from CIA-webpage about Berlin Wall Monument outside the CIA Museum, CIA
Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, USA.

that stands in contrast to a lifeless lack of graffiti. And since police agencies normally
discuss graffiti in the context of vandalism – not hope and optimism – it is unusual.
Benjamin Drechsel’s article “The Berlin Wall from a Visual Perspective: Comments
on the Construction of a Political Media Icon” (2010) interprets the Berlin Wall as
what the author refers to as a trans-media icon and “a constant stimulus for two of
modernity’s classic pictorial media: film and photography.”4 I would also state what
is implicit in Drechsel’s argument here – that the Berlin Wall due to its existence as
a transmediated icon is also a transnational image. Pictures of the Berlin Wall were,
and still are, found in many media in a wide range of countries.
Drechsel also remarks briefly on the graffiti on the Berlin Wall as an aspect of the
Wall’s complex visual significance.5 Sonya Neef has discussed the graffiti and some
of the specific motives painted on the Berlin Wall in greater detail, and suggests that
the graffiti transformed the Wall from “an identifiable, stable and fixed ‘place’, into
what Michel de Certeau has called a ‘space’ that is marked by movement rather than
by stability”.6 In his dissertation art historian Johannes Stahl discusses the graffiti on
the Berlin Wall as an organism created in the intersection of aesthetic, political and
social factors.7
The graffiti on the Berlin Wall is however scarcely described in the broader litera-
ture on subcultural graffiti. For example, Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff claim in
Spraycan Art (1987) that Berlin had “almost no spraycan decoration”, and that the Ber-
lin Wall had “degenerated into a curiosity tourist side-show.” 8 This chapter intends to

82
connect the transmediated representations of the Berlin wall identified by Drechsel,
and the complex significances of the local graffiti practices described by Neef to the
transnational discursive formation of graffiti, and to frame all of these aspects in the
context of the Cold War’s institutional cultural politics – or soft power in contempo-
rary political jargon. With these aspects connected and contextualized, we may return
to the Berlin Wall monument outside the CIA Headquarters.

3.2.1 Setting the Stage:

The Cold War and the Berlin Wall
To be able to contextualize the graffiti on the Berlin Wall, one has to briefly consider
the political polarization of the Cold War, where most European countries belonged
directly to one of the two blocs. Regarded as a unit, Germany, and the city of Berlin
in particular, stood in the unusual position of being on both sides in this conflict.
Soon after World War II, opposing interests between Soviet Union on the one hand,
and the other allies on the other, led to political conflict and military tension, and
by 1949 to a Germany split into two countries: Deutsche Demokratische Republik
[German Democratic Republic] and Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Federal Republic
of Germany] – more commonly referred to as East Germany and West Germany.
Geographically West Berlin became a small piece of West Germany located amidst
GDR territory (although it was formally still administered and run by the allied for-
ces). The Berlin Wall, erected by GDR in August 1961, was thus what separated one
bloc from the other.
However, due to West Berlin’s geographical position within East Germany, the
Berlin Wall did not simply divide the city into two halves; it also totally encircled
West Berlin, framing it from all sides. Perhaps not surprisingly, West Berlin was often
in Western media referred to as an island of the West inside the East.9 In the essay
“The Graffiti of the Berlin Wall: A Semiotic Approach”, Sigrid Mayer departs from
a popular multilingual book about the Berlin Wall, entitled The Wall Speaks, to raise
the question about who the addressee of the Berlin Wall might be. Her conclusion is
that it’s not one, but two:

In case of the Berlin Wall we find a curious situation of two different addressees or audien-
ces because the Wall speaks with a Janus face […] the message to the East is ‘You cannot
and must not go out’ while the message to the West is ‘You cannot and must not come in.’
Seen as such, the Wall itself is one gigantic traffic sign whose object is an interdiction and
whose message is at once one of inclusion and exclusion.10

With her image of a “Janus faced traffic sign”, Mayer thus address the important
aspect of the Berlin Wall as a visual sign or symbol. That its message differed depen-
ding on the perspective – from which side of the Wall it was perceived – can, however,

83
 hardly be regarded as unique to the Berlin Wall, but rather as a standard feature of
walls. A message of both “inclusion and exclusion” can apply to all city walls, and from
this perspective the Berlin Wall differs more in its massive size than in the function
it serves. As Mayer points out, its most unique feature is rather that it instills a per-
ception of being inside and outside of the Wall. The confined “island” of West Berlin
is described as the outside, while East Germany, surrounding it, is referred to as the
inside.
In her essay “The Politics of Humor: Berlin Wall in Jokes and Graffiti” (published
as late as April, 1989, just months before the opening of the German-German bor-
der), Mary Beth Stein discuss the role of the Berlin Wall in folkloristic humor in the
both Berlins of the late 1980s. Stein argues, like Mayer, that the Wall was perceived
radically differently on the two sides, but her analysis also differentiates between the
types of perception. In West Berlin the Wall was visible and incorporated as part of
everyday life, and more or less forgotten – although evoked as a symbol by politicians
on special occasions.11
In East Berlin the Wall was also everyday, according to Stein, though not visible
in the same sense. Rather than being forgotten, it was largely invisible as a physical
structure. Stein sums up her observations: “The Wall in the West is visible, everyday.
It is not a topic. The Wall in the East is invisible, everyday and a topic – which is very
much taboo.”12 The combination of presence, invisibility and taboo made the Wall a
common theme in East Berlin’s folkloristic humor, an aspect that was more or less ab-
sent in West Berlin. Instead, Stein finds western jokes about the Berlin Wall inscribed
as graffiti on its very surface.13
Two published pictures of Brandenburger Tor from the 1980s, from East and West
Berlin respectively, can be used to visualize the differences pointed out by Stein. The
late eighteenth-century monumental and ceremonial city gate Brandenburger Tor
stood on East German territory, but close enough to the border to be clearly visible
from both sides, and it was a central tourist site in the East as well as in the West.
The picture taken in East Berlin, published in an official GDR tourist guidebook
and previously discussed by Johannes Stahl, shows Brandenburger Tor from a frontal
perspective, and is in this aspect typical for a visual representation of an architectural
landmark.14 A strikingly strange feature is a flower border in the foreground, one that
overshadows the monument, but also obscures the Berlin Wall just behind it.15 It thus
depicts Brandenburger Tor as if the Wall didn’t exist and as if the viewer could pass
through the gate and walk into the park, Tiergarten, on the other side.
In the picture taken in West Berlin, on the other hand, Brandenburger Tor seems
to be of secondary importance, unconventionally represented at a slant, with the graf-
fiti-covered wall in the foreground and a big sign furthest to the right the announcing
the border in capital letters. The focus is not the monumental gate but the Wall,
which prevents citizens from using the gate and the tourists from reaching the land-
mark. This aspect is accentuated by the presence of a high-rise uplighter between the

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Figure 3.2 (left) and 3.3 (right): Two pictures of the historical landmark Brandenburger Tor, produced and
sold in East Berlin (left) and West Berlin (right) during the early to mid 1980s.

Wall and the gate, thus further obstructing the viewer from taking in the landmark
behind. By contrast, the East Berlin image depicts traditional, early Twentieth-cen-
tury street lamps, accentuating depth and leading the gaze of the beholder down and
through the gate.
Mary Beth Stein’s observations of the Wall as a physically visible but non topic in
the West and an invisible but ever present topic in the East could be used as a point
of departure for a more complex understanding of the Berlin Wall than the strictly
bipolar inclusion-exclusion relation of Mayer’s traffic sign. Because not only did the
Wall have diverse messages depending on perspective, it was also two different types
of images. This difference in type could be explained with W.J.T. Mitchell’s model of
a Family of Images presented in Iconology – image, text, ideology. Mitchell points out
that the word image refers to a wide range of cultural phenomena that he groups in a
family of five different categories – graphic, optical, perceptual, mental and verbal –
each one central to different intellectual disciplines.16
When combining Sigrid Mayer’s description of a Janus faced traffic sign and Mary
Beth Stein’s conclusions with Mitchell’s picture theory, the image of the Wall of the
East and of the West fall into different categories. In the West the perceptual (sense
data and appearances) and graphic (picture) imagery of the Wall dominated, while
in the east it was mainly represented through verbal imagery – largely invisible as a
physical structure but present through stories and jokes.

3.2.2 The Cultural Surroundings: Kulturkampf, Jazz,

New York Subway Graffiti and the Hip-Hop Subculture
Though only briefly touched on, the previous chapter makes clear how the Cold War
was not only a conflict between different geopolitical interests, but of course also
between different ideologies. The GDR and the East European countries had an offi-
cial ideology based in dialectical materialism. This ideology is explicitly referenced in
the opening sentence of the East German encyclopedia Lexikon der Kunst:

85
 The Art History of the German Democratic Republic considers it its duty to participate in
the development of a socialist German national culture, particularly the evolution of realistic
art and the dialectical-materialistic art theory, and to make the wealth of the world of art
accessible to the masses.17

By comparing Twentieth century art-historical surveys from Western Europe and

the United States with their Soviet counterpart Universal History of Art, (original-
ly Vseobshaya istoriya iskusstv), art historian James Elkins has pointed out that the
ideological polarization of the two blocs also shaped the writing of art history.18 He
characterizes the Soviet survey as a downright Stalinist project, “intended to prove
that Western art outside communist countries is aimless, purely formal, and decadent.
Communist art is the culmination of art history”.19 Elkins, however, does not use Uni-
versal History of Art to simply dismiss it as a politically tendentious survey, but as a
tool to point out that also the, to a Western reader, seemingly objective and apolitical
art-historical surveys of the west are biased – geographically as well as ideological-
ly, and “in parts virtually capitalist manifestos, excluding each and every one of the
movements that the Russian text includes”.20 From an art-historical perspective the
Berlin Wall is thus a border not only between different geopolitical and ideological
spheres – but different stories of art and culture.
In her book Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999), the British
historian Frances Stonor Saunders has described how the ideological aspect of the
Cold War had a direct practical impact when the CIA, through representatives like
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, financed an extensive cultural exchange in a wide
range of areas. This was partly as an answer to successful cultural campaigning by the
Soviet Union:

Experts in the use of culture as a tool of political persuasion, the Soviets did much in these
early years of the Cold War to establish its central paradigm as a cultural one […] concen-
trated on winning ‘the battle for men’s minds’. America, despite a massive marshalling of
the arts in the New Deal period, was a virgin in the practice of international Kulturkampf.21

The Cultural Cold War described by Saunders included a covert support by the CIA
of abstract expressionist painting, perceived by the intelligence agency as a contrast
to the social realism in Eastern Europe.22 This support partly funded international
touring exhibitions of abstract expressionism, such as Twelve Contemporary Ameri-
can Painters and Sculptors that toured Western Europe during 1953 and 1954, inclu-
ding artists such as Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky.23
In her book Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
(2004), the American historian Penny M. von Eschen maps out similar domestic
political circumstances, as well as the complicated logic behind the role of jazz mu-
sic in the foreign policy of the United States – including an artistically ambitious

86
touring program named Jazz Ambassadors, as well as Willis Conover’s Music USA.
The latter was a jazz program broadcast one hour a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a
year, through Voice of America, a publicly financed radio and TV station for broad-
casts outside the United States. Music USA reached large parts of Eastern Europe,
including some parts of the Soviet Union. When Conover passed away in 1996, the
New York Times wrote:

In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who
went on the air in 1955 and continued broadcasting until a few months ago, proved more
effective than a fleet of B-29’s.24

Von Eschen describes how Willis Conover partly saw his show as a political project,
while at the same time he refused to let it be used as pure propaganda, instead sug-
gesting that jazz, by default, was an individualistic and democratic form of music.
In addition to this, jazz was popular in many different parts of the world and it was
perceived as genuinely American music – while the Soviet Union and the Eastern
European nations could boast of opera, ballet, and folk music, the United States had
jazz. And according to Conover, its popularity had to do with freedom:

Jazz is a cross between total discipline and total anarchy. The musicians agree on tempo,
key and chord structure but beyond this everyone is free to express himself. This is jazz.
And this is America. That’s what gives this music validity. It’s a musical reflection of the way
things happen in America. We’re not apt to recognize it here but people in other countries
can feel this element of freedom. They love jazz because they love freedom.25

Von Eschen points out that many of the jazz musicians did not share Conover’s view,
but perceived democracy, civil rights, and freedom as yet unfulfilled promises that
were worth striving for, rather than as goals that had already been achieved.26 She also
argues that for the participating musicians, the Department of State’s tours meant an
official, institutional artistic acknowledgment that they previously had been denied.27
In the 1950s jazz was on the one hand perceived as a high-cultural modern art form
that crossed racial and class barriers, but on the other regarded as low-valued mass
culture, as well as being linked ethnically and socially to the African American wor-
king class in a time of harsh segregation. This ethnic link, however, became a political
asset for the U.S. Department of State – the presence of African American musicians
could be used as a counter-argument against the socialist countries’ accusations of
institutional racism. Von Eschen argues that the discourse around the freedom and
individuality of jazz contains obvious similarities to descriptions of abstract expressi-
onism, but also concludes: “…jazz could speak to America’s Achilles heel of racism in
way that a painting by Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock could not.”28
These structures of a Cultural Cold War, described by Frances Stonor Saunders

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 and Penny M. Von Eschen, are important acknowledge in order to historically fra-
me the mass-mediated representations of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall.
In an article for Miami Herald from August 1987, on Berlin’s 750th anniversary,
Peggy Landers and Steve Sonksy compare the Berlin Wall with a New York subway
car and describe is not as a monument over the Cold War but as one of “urban graffiti”
in itself.

Only in Berlin is there The Wall -- a 13-foot-tall, 30-mile line of concrete that divides the city
-- and the world. […] The entire Western expanse of it looks like a New York City subway
car, a monument to urban graffiti; not an inch of it remains unpainted. In the East, of course,
where one can’t approach it so readily, let alone express oneself freely through spray paint
or otherwise, the Wall is clean and gray.29

The passage of the article is a typical example of a perceived dichotomy between

colorful graffiti on the west side (linked to freedom of expression) and the “clean and
grey” east side of the Wall (linked to control and oppression), a dichotomy that we
already encountered in the Sidney Blumenthal quote in the introduction and that
we shall return to in the chapter on the reception of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall.
This is, however, not the main point here, but instead I would like to use Landers’ and
Sonsky’s explicit connection between the graffiti on the Berlin Wall and that of the
New York City subway system.
The latter graffiti could, as we have seen in Chapter 2, be described as a part of the
wider subculture of hip-hop, with roots in the Caribbean and African American com-
munities of New York, which apart from graffiti also includes rap music and b-boying
(more commonly known as breakdancing).30 By the late 1980s hip-hop had developed
into a transnational youth culture, and there were local hip-hop scenes in many cities
across Europe – including Berlin.31
Following the logic of the international cultural politics of jazz music, described
above, it is easy to see how graffiti, as a part of hip-hop, might find a function in the
logics of the cultural Cold War. Not because it necessarily existed within an institu-
tional memory, but through a discursive structure to which graffiti and hip-hop, with
its links to African American and Caribbean communities, easily could be attached.
Some of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall could be categorized as a part of this tradition,
though probably not the majority. However, contrary to the impression one might
get from Landers’ and Sonsky’s article, spraying graffiti on subway cars in New York
was in 1987 not viewed as free expression; it was heavily combated by New York City
officials and the Metropolitan Transit Authority in what has been called “The War
on Graffiti”.32
In sections 1.2.2 and 2.3 graffiti has been conceptualized as a discursive formation
comprised of two discursive practices built upon a polarity of the two statements
declaring graffiti as art and graffiti as crime. In this polarity, graffiti also has simila-

88
rities with the double understanding of jazz two to three decades earlier, discussed
by Penny M. von Eschen. And if one puts the subway graffiti of the 1970s and 1980s
into the broader context of hip-hop, this perhaps superficial similarity also develops a
deeper cultural significance. Hip-hop has much in common with jazz, socially as well
as esthetically and culturally. Hip-hop music partly builds on jazz and hip-hop origi-
nally had its social base in the African American and Latin American working-class
communities of North American industrial cities.33 Although no tours were launched
by the Department of State, hip-hop was used to represent the United States in seve-
ral important official contexts. The b-boy crew New York City Breakers were invited
to dance for President Ronald Reagan; and in connection with the Olympic Games
in Los Angeles in 1984, which for political reasons were boycotted by the Soviet Uni-
on and several Eastern European nations, a large group of breakdancers participated
in the closing ceremonies. I would thus suggest that hip-hop culture and New York
subway graffiti are important contexts for any deeper understanding of the reception
of the Berlin Wall in the USA.

3.3 The Graffiti on the Berlin Wall

3.3.1 A Brief History and Typology 1978–1992
Most of the photographs of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall published on postcards
and in books are from the 1980s, though it seems as if the Wall was used as a kind of
message board for political slogans already in the 1970s, and perhaps even earlier.34 In
Berliner Mauer Kunst, Michael Nungesser connects the beginning of the graffiti to the
student movement of the late 1960s, suggesting that it served as a “perfect medium
for visual protest”, but also claiming that the “heavy tattooing of the Wall began in
the late 70s when house squatters, tourists, and children started dashing off messages
and greetings”.35 This dating seems plausible, even though it’s not supported by visual
evidence – all the photos in Nungesser’s own book were taken between 1982 and 1990.
A postcard of the Wall sent from Berlin on April 12, 1978, depicts flowers and cros-
ses commemorating Peter Fechter, who was shot dead by East German border guards
when climbing the Wall from the east to west side of Berlin in 1962. A single mes-
sage, poetic as well as political, in white letters on the Wall next to the flowers loud-
ly proclaims, 13000 WIVES SEPARATED FROM THEIR HUSBANDS! HOW
MUCH LONGER? [13000 FRAUEN VON IHREN MÄNNER GETRENNT!
WIE LANGE NOCH?].36 The Wall seen on the postcard is relatively low, made out
of bricks and concrete and crowned by barbed wire. This raises the question if the
photo might be substantially older, and taken before the last generation of the Wall.
1978 is also the year of the oldest newspaper articles I’ve found in my research:
two short notices regarding East German authorities erasing political slogans on the
west side of the Wall in conjunction with U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s visit in West
Berlin, in July, 1978.37 A hypothetical assumption could be that the practice of people

89
 Figure 3.4: Sceane Crime (1987) by Crime TDC (The Denots Crew). In Berlin Graffiti Hall of Fame, loca-
ted close to Märkisches Viertel. Photo by Crime TDC.

writing graffiti on the Berlin Wall is older but that it was only in the late 1970s that it
was recognized as a phenomenon for the first time, at least in English-language press.
The early examples all regard what could be somewhat broadly categorized as folklo-
ristic graffiti, where the linguistic content tends to be more important than the visual
expression. At least those examples reported in Western media often address various
aspects of the Wall, and could thus be regarded as explicitly political. Mary Beth Stein
discusses this kind of graffiti during the late 1980s in “The Politics of Humor: Berlin
Wall in Jokes and Graffiti”. Stein did not meet anyone doing graffiti and bases her
argument solely on what she sees by visiting the Wall. But she does speculate about
who might be doing it. Based on “diversity of language and content”, and the fact that
none of the Berliners she interviewed admitted that they wrote graffiti on the Wall,
she suggests that most of the graffiti is done by tourists.38
Many images and textual messages thus were more or less spontaneously created
on the Wall, and most likely both by temporary visitors and by residents of the city.
But there were also a few groups that worked more regularly and deliberately, with
higher artistic ambitions, and for whom the Wall might have been viewed as much as
a somewhat paradoxical opportunity to express themselves as an obstacle to protest
against. One group were the graffiti writers – youths who, inspired by New York’s sub-
way graffiti through the expanding subculture of hip-hop during the early 1980s, used
spray paint to write tags, and to paint pieces and characters. These youths were mainly
active in suburbs such as Märkisches Viertel, Frohnau, and Schönholz in the north,
and Marienfelde in the south.39 In this context, this type of graffiti is categorized by
Staffan Jacobson’s term TTP graffiti (tags, throw-ups, pieces).40
Figure 1.1 shows the TTP piece Escape by Crime, Deza, and Crazy Colour of
The Denots Crew. This piece was painted circa 1985 in the Berlin Graffiti Hall of
Fame, located at the Berlin Wall, close to Märkisches Viertel. Furthest to the left
is a depiction of a graffiti writer with a spray can in his right hand, seemingly still
painting the very picture he is a part of, while at the same time stretching out both
arms to the side and bending his knees, as if ready to jump up and flee if caught in
the act of painting. His eyes are wide and gaze to the right towards the word ’Esca-
pe,’ but also beyond it, at two police men running towards him, one of them with a
whistle in his mouth, the other with a baton in the air. While the style of the letters

90
Figure 3.5: Paintings (alternative mural art) by Thierry Noir, Christophe Bouchet, and Michael Gremenz,
along Bethaniendamm in Kreuzberg (1986). Photo by Thierry Noir, taken from Georg-von-Rauch-Haus.
This photo also give a view of the two walls and the area between (often referred to as the Death Strip), as
well as a cleaning squad sweeping away waste thrown over from West-Berlin. © Thierry Noir / BUS 2014.

could be linked to the TTP graffiti developed in New York City, all three characters
are rendered in the style of the Belgian comics artist André Franquin. The clothes
and the characteristic hats further suggest that the two police officers are from the
French gendarmerie. This aspect is of significance since West Berlin throughout the
Cold War was administered by the Western Allies, and this piece was located in the
French sector.
The word Escape in the center of the piece thus activates two possible types of
escapes. On one hand, it could be read in relation to the very surface the piece is
painted on – the Berlin Wall and its function to obstruct movement of people across
the German-German border, upheld by the Grenzpolizei of the GDR. On the other
hand, it could read as a visualization of the tension between the statements of graffiti
as art and graffiti as crime, were the graffiti writer has to escape from the long arm
of the law.
The names and the creations by the graffiti writers such as Crime, Deza and Crazy
Colour doing TTP graffiti have been less recognized than those of the group of so-
mewhat older artists, who were mostly born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and
were connected to the West Berlin alternative movement, with names such as Thierry

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 Noir, Kiddy Citny, Nora Aurienne, and Christophe Bouchet. These artists painted in
central Berlin, often in Kreuzberg or at symbolically poignant places like Branden-
burger Tor, Potsdamer Platz, or at Checkpoint Charlie – the crossing point between
the earlier American and Soviet zones. Thierry Noir and his works are included in, for
example, Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire from 1987. I refer to this type of graffiti
as alternative mural art.
Toward the mid-1980s, the paintings on the Wall had turned into such a tourist
attraction that it in the autumn of 1986 provoked a group of exiled East German
dissidents to stage a protest called the White Stripe [Der weiße Strich]. To stress that
the Berlin Wall was a border fortification, and not a sightseeing object, they crossed
out the graffiti by painting a white stripe along the Wall.41
The different groups of artists and types of graffiti on the Berlin Wall during the
1980s resulted in the graffiti imagery constantly changing shape, and where various
images and texts commented and replaced each other in layer upon layer; where the
person who painted or wrote one day couldn’t rely on the image or text still being there
the next day. Some artists, like the above-mentioned Thierry Noir, chose to constantly
maintain and repair their paintings, while others instead painted new ones.42

3.3.2 Circumstances of Production

The fact that the west side of the Berlin Wall became covered with graffiti is pro-
bably due to a number of converging factors, mapped out henceforth, but the single
most important aspect is that the Wall belonged to East Germany and that the
ground on which it stood, as well as a few meters in the West-Berlin side of it, was
East German territory. Thus West German police didn’t have the authority to actu-
ally intervene against those who painted on the Wall; it fell within the jurisdiction
of the GDR’s border police, but they seem to have shown only random interest in
the matter. There were apertures in the wall so that the border police could get out
on the western side to inspect the Wall, and there are rumors about various arrests
by police using these. Mary Beth Stein, for example, refers to “legends” of “unfor-
tunate individuals who ‘disappeared’ after being discovered by and arrested by East
German Border Guards.”43 Keith Haring said, in an interview about his painting at
Checkpoint Charlie, that the border guards at first were suspicious but when they
“realized that what I was painting wasn’t […] insulting them in any way, they just
decided to let me alone.”44
One of my informants, the graffiti artist Crime, said that the border patrol did
occasional raids against those who painted the wall, and asked questions: “They asked
if it was against the East Germans, but as they realized that the graffiti people were
more against… what shall we call it, the Western capitalism and stuff, they were like,
‘carry on doing it’ [laughs]”.45 These statements reveal a notion among graffiti writers
on the west side of the GDR authorities caring less about people writing on the Wall,

92
and more about the content of the writing. Interestingly enough, the only recorded
arrest in the literature is that of Wolfram Hasch, one of the activists of The White
Stripe [Der weiße Strich]. The painting of the white stripe was stopped on the second
day, when the activists were discovered by the East German Border Police. Hasch was
arrested and later sentenced to twenty months’ imprisonment.46

3.3.3 Reception of Berlin Wall Graffiti

in English-Language Press
The wall’s graffiti are among the wittiest and most political anywhere in the world. Artists
pour petrol on the structure and set fire to it to make it seem to disappear. They daub it with
pictures of hope and despair.47

As described in the previous chapter, there existed a wide range of motifs and circum-
stances behind the production of graffiti on the Berlin Wall, and probably only a
minority of the pictures could actually be regarded as having straightforward political
messages. But as Mary Beth Stein has pointed out, the graffiti on the wall acquired
political significance, no matter the intentions or content:

The writing of graffiti [on the Berlin Wall] is a violation of the German-German border and the
defacement of East German property […] In this context, all graffiti acquire political signifi-
cance, regardless of content.48

Consequently, content perceived as political appears in most of the articles about graf-
fiti on the Berlin Wall in the U.S. and British press material that I’ve gone through.
In many cases the articles also coincides with, or could even be described as directly
dependent on, emblematic events and anniversaries with political significance. These
are also the events that Mary Beth Stein refers to as the few exceptions when the Wall
actually becomes a topic in West Berlin – and evoked as a symbol.49 This observation
is obviously also valid in terms of international media coverage. The reports in 1978
regard U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s visit to Berlin. The East German authorities
then erased political slogans from the west side of the Wall, an action Carter called
“indicative of deprivation of human rights”.50
Nine years later, in 1987, it was President Ronald Reagan’s turn to visit West Berlin.
Standing in front of the Wall covered with graffiti, including the “freshly painted
words ‘Welcome Ronald Reagan’ directly behind the speakers’ platform”, and Bran-
denburger Tor further behind, Reagan famously declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this Wall”.51 In this speech Reagan also quoted graffiti he claims to have seen written
on the Wall, rhetorically linking the graffiti-written message to the notions of faith,
truth, and freedom:

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 As I looked out, a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German Unity, I
noticed words crudely spray painted upon the Wall, perhaps by a young Berliner. [Short
pause] Quote: ‘This Wall will Fall - Beliefs Becomes Reality’. [Pause and applause] Yes,
across Europe this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand Faith, it cannot withstand Truth, the
wall cannot withstand Freedom.52

The 750th anniversary of Berlin in the same year also generated media coverage of
the Wall and its graffiti. Between the two presidents’ visits in 1978 and 1987 there
are many newspaper reports during 1981 and 1986 (respectively the Twentieth- and
Twentyfifth anniversary of the building of the Wall).53 In 1986 there are also several
articles regarding Keith Haring’s paintings at Checkpoint Charlie, though these spe-
cific articles will be discussed below. A virtual eruption regarding the Wall and graffiti
in the media comes with the opening of the German-German border, in November
1989, and continues into 1990.
An article from 1981 published in the Boston-based newspaper the Christian Scien-
ce Monitor commemorates the erection of the Wall 20 years prior:

“Freedom ends here,” the graffiti proclaim in large block letters on the Berlin wall. In other
patches, the message is wry: “Socialist paradise: 100 meters.” “Jump over and join the
party.” The scribblings are a touch of humanity on the impersonal stretch of concrete that
cuts through the heart of Berlin.54

This quote is in many ways an example of the structure and function of the graffiti in
many of the articles. It refers to examples of political graffiti, equates graffiti in general
with humanity and contrasts it to the grey concrete, a signifier of bureaucracy and
impersonality. Typical are also the Wall’s metaphoric qualities, such as when it appears
as a knife that stabs the city’s heart.55 The double exposure of graffiti and humanity
resembles the positive descriptions of New York subway graffiti we encountered ear-
lier, but it seems as if the Berlin Wall creates an amplified version of the consenting
discursive practice of graffiti discussed in section 2.3.
Even if the rejecting discursive practice is also activated, it is, interestingly enough, given
a positive value in the case of the Berlin Wall, as the writing of graffiti becomes something
of a symbolic act of violence directed at the Wall. In the following quote it is the graffiti
that cuts the Wall, and scars it, as it is connected to a “dismantling” of the Wall:

Graffiti-scarred but still forbidding, the wall endures. On his final official trip abroad last
week, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz called for the dismantling of the 27-year-old
barrier between the two Berlins.56

The description of the scarring, ugly Wall and the graffiti on it as something positive
seems to be so strong that even though the rejecting discursive practice is clearly ne-

94
gative, it is slanted positively, such as when an editorial in Washington Post discusses
the new political landscape the day after the German-German border has opened:

The Berlin Wall is one of the ugliest monuments in the world, the only structure in Europe
that is actually improved by the graffiti scrawled across it. The wall is the great symbol of
the division of Europe into two parts, one in which great personal freedom prevails and one
in which it does not.57

The described ugliness of the wall itself is a significant element in several articles. In
what might be considered as a reversal of the ordinary, everyday value system, the
more effective, beautiful, and clean the Wall is, the uglier and more threatening it
appears:

In a strange reversal of political reality, the 15-foot Wall is unimposing on the West Berlin
side, almost a work of art in its mantle of bright day-glo graffiti. It is from East Berlin that
the Wall comes alive. Blank, stark, pristine white, it appears to loom higher and is far more
menacing in its forced nakedness.58

The very act of painting or writing on the Wall is sometimes assigned heroic propor-
tions – the graffitists appear as energetic freedom fighters, in a pattern similar to the
international discourses on abstract expressionism:

Often with courage and by sheer energy the Berlin artists have fought – perhaps quixotically
– to assert humanity and demand freedom in global terms, an urge so movingly apparent in
the riotous painting and graffiti that cover long stretches of the Wall.59

There is a striking difference between the discourse on abstract expressionism and that
of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall – that there is no Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko.
The individuals, whether described as attacking or decorating the Wall, often remain
anonymous in the media coverage.
The graffiti that appeared on the Berlin Wall was not always spontaneous. Institu-
tionally instigated graffiti was also painted on it. As early as 1982, Museum Haus am
Checkpoint Charlie announced an international competition with the slogan “Over-
coming the Wall through Art”. Later the same year, in connection with the noted
exhibition “Zeitgeist” at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Jonathan Borofsky painted a run-
ning white figure on the Wall outside the museum.60
The probably most widely recognized painting was made in 1986 by Keith Haring,
who had been officially invited by Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie. Haring
held a position in the art world that could match the symbolical context and make
the artwork a prestigious achievement comparable with the abstract expressionists of
the 1940s and 50s. The meeting between the transmedial icon and the famous artist

95
 Figure 3.6: Pieces by Sabe and Khan at the West side of East Side Gallery in 1993.

thus received an enormous media reception. Articles were published in a long list of
magazines and newspapers, including major U.S. publications such as Time Magazine
and the New York Times. Haring has himself commented on the massive response:

For me, the Berlin Wall was probably one of the most successful media event things I ever
did. The whole reason almost for doing the wall was more for the idea of doing it, and al-
most as a gesture, more than it was to actually paint a Wall. I mean there’s the Wall that’s
represents the dividing of east and west, and this of lack of freedom - and the conflict that’s
all over the world.61

In the same interview Haring stressed that his painting was not derogatory of
GDR, and that he saw it as a political gesture, which he hoped would reach beyond
the political domain – for him the Wall represented a global lack of freedom.
Haring was also politically active within ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power), and was one of the most noted critics of the Reagan Administration’s unwil-
lingness to take the new plague of AIDS seriously.62 As an artist with the rights of
sexual and ethnic minorities on his agenda, Haring was also, just like many of the jazz
musicians that Von Eschen writes about, more politically radical than the political
administration of his homeland. At the same time, the location, the border crossing
Checkpoint Charlie, was one of the most symbolically charged passages between the
Cold War’s two geopolitical zones. And rather than unity, the newspaper coverage
tends to construct Haring as a heroic and rebellious artist that takes a stand against
the oppressive and bureaucratic GDR by transgressing the law. The New York Times
reported that Haring was working with a U.S. military helicopter hovering above on
one side, and the GDR border guards on the other:

Since the first six feet of land on the Western side belong to the East, the artist was not just
defacing property of the East German Government – he was entering that country without

96
Figure 3.7: The West side of East Side Gallery in 2010. The wall has been whitewashed and a fence in front
of the wall prevents anyone from writing of graffiti on it.

a visa. A West Berlin policeman used a megaphone to warn him of the fact. But Mr. Haring
continued, sporadically leaping back onto Western soil when East German border guards
looked as if they were about to arrest him.63

Regardless of Haring’s stated purpose – a message of unity and of the fight against
a lack of freedom in both the East and the West – his work was inscribed into a
narrative of Western freedom and Eastern oppression that takes little notice of the
particular nuances.
To conclude this section, the reception of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall in the USA and
Western Europe arises from the combination of the symbolically important architectural
structure of the Wall and the two discursive practices of graffiti described earlier, with
the graffiti connoting ideologically charged keywords such as freedom and individualism.
At the Berlin Wall, the discursive practices of consent and rejection are both present in
the Western press. Within the consenting discursive practice, the graffiti on the wall was
described as the result of the creativity of free individuals who rise up against an oppressive
society. Within the rejecting discursive practice, on the other hand, graffiti was framed as a
symbolic destruction and pollution of something that was both a frightening symbol and
a political reality. The result is that the graffiti on the Berlin Wall signifies not only crea-
tivity, but also freedom. The massive media coverage with images of the graffiti-covered
Berlin Wall spreads this construction across the Western world.

97
 Figure 3.8: The Berlin Wall Monument outside the CIA Museum, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia,
USA. Retreieved from CIA’s webpage.

3.4 Remembering the Berlin Wall 2009–2011

Art challenged concrete and art won. [Kunst gegen beton. Die kunst hat gewonnen].
Walter Momper, Mayor of Berlin 1988-199064

3.4.1 Berlin Wall Monuments in Berlin

Since 1989, the Berlin Wall has undergone great changes. Physically and legally, of
course, since it lost its function as a border fortification and is now almost completely
obliterated. But it has also been transformed symbolically. In the city of Berlin, the
Wall is preserved only in very few places, and in those cases as a monument. The most
well-preserved section, with both of the walls and a watchtower on the strip between,
is located at Berliner Mauer – Gedenkstätte und Dokumentationszentrum [Berlin
Wall Monument and Documentation Center] on Bernauer Strasse. But there, all the
graffiti has been removed.
The largest remaining section of the wall is the so-called East Side Gallery, along
Mühlenstrasse. It was originally created in the spring and summer of 1990, when
some hundred artists from different parts of the world were invited to create pain-
tings on an approximately one-kilometer long section of the Berlin Wall, this time
on the east side of the German-German border. Both an artwork and the largest
preserved part of the original Wall, the East Side Gallery has been declared a cultu-
ral landmark and is now protected by the German law of Denkmalschutz.

98
 The element of process that characterized the visual culture of the graffiti on the
West side – with constant comments, additions, over-paintings, and re-paintings – is
still present at East Side Gallery, but is now considered a problem. Signs declare that
the paintings are protected and that painting on the wall is prohibited by law. The
west side of the East Side Gallery, facing the Spree River, was for a long time one of
the few sections that remained free for use and where the process continued. By 2010,
most of this surface had been whitewashed, and fences put up to protect the wall from
being painted, as the former border zone has been transformed into a park located
between the river and a large sports arena.

3.4.2 The Berlin Wall All Around the World

As mentioned in the introduction of this case study, large parts of the Berlin Wall
have changed ownership. Fragments of the Wall were sold, fragments that had been
chiseled out by the so-called Wallpeckers [Mauerspechte] – individuals who used
chisels and hammers to demolish large parts of the Wall in the months following
the opening of the German-German border in November, 1989. This process was also
reported as taking place in a state of interregnum:

Rene was one of a dozen, including several newly-freed East Germans who chipped, clawed
and scraped away at the wall under torchlight early on Friday. “I have made more money in
six hours from selling bits of the wall which once kept us in than I would make in two weeks
working in the DDR (East Germany),” said a former East Berliner nearby. “Everybody wants
a bit with graffiti on it and for this they don’t mind paying a little more.” Officially, the West
German government does not condone what it describes as “vandalism” of East Germany’s
concrete border. But a senior government official said he and many of his colleagues had
been among the worst offenders.65

I would like to close this case by returning to the point of departure – the Berlin
Wall monument outside the CIA Headquarters. This monument still tells the story of
graffiti as a positive symbol representing optimism, individualism, and freedom. It is
thus not only a monument over an historical process, but also a monument of the spe-
cific, enhanced and amplified version of the discursive formation, one that emerged in
Western Europe in relation to the Berlin Wall. But one question remains – how free
is the graffiti of this monument? The graffiti painted on the wall displays a number of
different messages, such as “And the wind cries” and “Endlich Frei”. “Tear Down The
Wall” must be understood as a reference to Ronald Reagan’s famous speech in July,
1987, when he demanded that the wall be torn down. The message is almost identical,
with the subtle difference of using ‘the’ instead of ‘this’.
This chapter argues that the graffiti on the Berlin Wall often was interpreted
and described as a symbol of individualism, freedom, and democracy. The message

99
 “FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY” is literally painted with bold letters onto the
monument, something that, using Barthes’ terminology, could be seen as a transfor-
mation from a visual connotation into a textual denotative meaning – just as graffiti as
something dirty or negative was underscored by the word ‘pigshit’ in the film At First
Sight, discussed in the introduction of this thesis.
The CIA monument is just one of many similar Berlin Wall monuments throughout
the world, erected in specific places and often connected to central figures or organizations
of the late Cold War.66 In the park outside the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library
and Museum stands a section of the Berlin Wall, with one side covered with graffiti. And
in the Vatican Gardens, a piece of the Wall has become a monument dedicated to Pope
John Paul II. This piece contains a part of a painting by the Iranian artist Yadiga Azizy
that depicts the St. Michael Church, which was located exactly on the other side of the
Wall when Azizy created the painting. This painting has previously been analyzed by
Sonya Neef, who concludes that it “turned the Wall into an area of transit rather than of
separation, at least symbolically”.67 Situated in the context of the Vatican Gardens, this se-
ction of the Berlin Wall becomes a something of a religious relic, as much as a monument,
especially since it also is accompanied by a marble plate, with a quote by Pope John Paul
II, from October 22, 1978, calling for an opening up of borders.
Nor is the use of a bepainted Wall as a monument limited to the materiality of
actual pieces of the Wall. In the autumn of 2009, a symbolical wall was erected to
commemorate the opening of the German-German border twenty years prior. It was
not closed, but consisted of 1000 slabs placed like gigantic dominoes, each and every
one painted with a colorful motif, and lined up in a long row from Potsdamer Platz via
Brandenburger Tor to the German House of Parliament [Das Reichstagsgebäude].
On the evening of November 9, 2009, the wall was toppled by Lech Walesa, former
leader of the workers union Solidarity and, during the 1990s, the first non-socialist
president of post-war Poland.
This symbolical fall of the similarly symbolical wall was broadcast live by TV sta-
tions all over the world, and also witnessed by present political leaders from all of the
victorious powers of World War II – Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, and Secre-
tary of State Hillary Clinton from the United States – along with Germany’s Chan-
cellor Angela Merkel and tens of thousands of spectators on the streets of Berlin.68
The Berlin Wall thus seems to have been just as much of a “monument to the postwar
world” in 2009 as it was when Sidney Blumenthal wrote about it in 1987 (quoted in
the introduction of this chapter), even though both the world and the war – as well as
the significance of the Wall – may have altered irrevocably. Equally interesting for the
scope of this survey is the proximity of the Wall and the graffiti on it – highlighted
by Blumenthal in 1987 and present in many of the monuments. It is as if the Berlin
Wall and the graffiti on it have become inseparable.

100
(Endnotes)
1
Sidney Blumenthal: “Two Sides of a Haunted
Society”, The Washington Post, 1987-01-06.
2
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featu-
red-story-archive/a-walk-outside-headquarters.
html [Retrieved 2011-01-08].
3
Ibid. [Retrieved 2011-01-08].
4
Benjamin Drechsel, “The Berlin Wall from a visual
perspective: comments on the construction of
a political media icon”, Visual Communication,
February 2010 vol. 9 no. 1, p. 15.
5
Drechsel (2010), p. 11.
6
Sonja Neef (2007), “Killing Kool: The Graffiti Mu-
seum”, in Art History 30:3 (June, 2007), p. 429.
7
Johannes Stahl (1990), Graffiti: zwischen Alltag
und Ästhetik. München: Scaneg, p. 126.
8
Chalfant & Prigoff (1987), p. 79. One exception is
Lutz Henkes article “Mauerkunst”, in Klaus-Diet-
mar Henke (ed.) (2011), Die Mauer – Errichtung,
Überwindung, Erinnerung. München, Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH.
9
See, for example, Michelangelo Rucci: “Fading
hopes in the shadow of The Wall”, The Adverti-
ser, 1989-06-21: “Gorbachev says the Wall, which
leaves an island of capitalism in the heart of a
communist world, was built for a specific purpose
and not out of evil intention”.
10
Sigrid Mayer (1996), “The Graffiti of the Berlin
Wall: A Semiotic Approach” in Schürer, Ernst (ed.)
(1996). The Berlin Wall: representations and per-
spectives. New York: Lang.
11
Stein (1989), p. 85. One of my sources, the graffiti
writer Crime, expressed an experience confirming
Stein’s observation. Crime grew up in the suburb
of Märkisches Viertel, so the Berlin-Berlin border
passed just a hundred meters from his home, but
he didn’t reflect on the Wall until he became a te-
enager, and started painting on it. “I thought every
big city had a Wall around it, because I thought
they had to have it, I didn’t understand that other
cities didn’t until I was 12, or 14 or something.”
Interview with Crime TDC, conducted in Berlin,
Germany, 2010-08-03.
12
Stein (1989), p. 86.
13
Stein (1989), p. 87.
14
Johannes Stahl, “Graffiti und andere Kunst
an der / mit der / über die / neben der / Berliner
Mauer” http://www.j-stahl.de/texte/mauer09.html
[retrieved 2010-01-09].
15
This aspect has previously been pointed out by
Johannes Stahl: “A sophisticated photographic
point of view makes the wall almost invisible”. Au-
thor’s translation of “Ein trickreicher fotografischer
Standpunkt macht die Mauer fast unsichtbar.”
16
W. J. T. Mitchell (1986), Iconology: image, text,
ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press pp.
9-10.
17
Ludger Alscher, & Günter Feist et al. (1981)
[1968], Lexikon der Kunst in Fünf Bänden. West-
Berlin: Das europäische Buch. Author’s translation
of: “Die Kunstwissenschaft in der Deutsche De-
mokratische Republik betrachtet als ihre Aufgabe,
an der Entfaltung einer sozialistischen deutschen
Nationalkultur mitzuwirken, dabei besonders zur
Entwicklung der realistischen Kunst und der dia-
lektisch-materialistischen Kunsttheorie beizutragen
und den Reichtum der Weltkunst den Volksmassen
zugänglich zu machen”.
18
Elkins actually uses the German translation
Allgemeine Geschichte der Kunst, published in
GDR, 1961-1965.
19
James Elkins (2002), Stories of art. New York:
Routledge, p. 94.
20
Elkins (2002), p. 97.
21
Frances Stonor Saunders (1999), Who Paid the
Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London:
Granta, p. 17.
22
Saunders (1999), p. 259-260.
23
Saunders (1999), p. 269.
24
Robert McG. Thomas Jr., “Willis Conover is Dead
at 75; Aimed Jazz at the Soviet Bloc”, New York
Times, 1996-05-19.
 25
Penny M. Von Eschen (2004), Satchmo Blows Up 41
Gründer, Ralf (2007), Berliner Mauerkunst : eine
the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Dokumentation. Köln: Böhlau, pp. 280–282.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press p. 16. 42
Johannes Stahl, “Graffiti und andere Kunst
26
Von Eschen (2004), p. 17. an der / mit der / über die / neben der / Berliner
27
Von Eschen (2004), p. 29. Mauer” http://www.j-stahl.de/texte/mauer09.html
28
Von Eschen (2004), p. 17. [retrieved 2010-01-09].
29
Peggy Landers & Steve Sonksy: “750th Anniver- 43
Stein (1989), p. 100.
sary Finds City Divided by a 30-mile Barrier”, The 44
Transcript from DVD by Elisabeth Aubert (1989),
Miami Herald, 1987-08-28. Drawing the Line – A Portrait of Keith Haring,
30
For a concise historical discussion on and defini- Kultur.
tion of hip-hop see Schloss (2009), pp. 4–7. 45
Interview with Crime TDC, conducted in Berlin,
31
Interview with Crime TDC, conducted in Berlin, Germany, 2010-08-03.
Germany, 2010-08-03. 46
Gründer (2007), pp. 68–71.
32
Joe Austin: “Moral Panics and the ‘Wars on 47
Ian Murray: “A museum to history’s shifting
Graffiti’”, Elementary Magazine, spring 1997. Re- sands; Opening of East German borders”, The
printed in UP No. 21, December 2002. See also Joe Times, November 10, 1989.
Austin (2001), Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art 48
Stein (1989), p. 100.
Became an Urban Crisis in New York City. New 49
Stein (1989), p. 85.
York: Columbia University Press. 50
Smith (1978).
33
For an interesting discussion on links between 51
Owen Ullmann: “Remove Berlin Wall, Reagan ur-
graffiti writing, hip-hop, and jazz music, see Miller ges Gorbachev challenged to respond”, The Miami
(2002), pp. 62–64. Herald, 1987-06-13.
34
The concept of graffiti is here used to denote a 52
Author’s transcript of excerpt from Ronald
wide number of artistic as well as more mundane Reagan’s speech at the Berlin Wall. http://www.
practices of painting the wall. youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM [Retrieved
35
Heinz J. Kuzdas & Michael Nungesser, (1990), 2010-09-20].
Berliner Mauerkunst: Berlin wall art = Arte en el 53
Benjamin Drechsel has also observed this inte-
Muro de Berlin. Berlin: Elefanten Press, p. 16. rest in Western media in the anniversaries of the
36
The postcard is published in Tom Phillips (2000), Berlin Wall. See Drechsel (2010), p. 12.
The Postcard Century – 2000 cards and their 54
Victoria Pope: “Berlin wall, 20 years later: people
messages, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 346. still try to flee”, Christian Science Monitor, August
37
See for example Terence Smith: front-page note, 13, 1981-08-13.
New York Times, 1978-07-16: “East Germans whi- 55
The semantic structure active here is actually
tewash over anti-Communist graffiti on Berlin Wall. quite complex – it’s a combination of two different
Carter notes that action is indicative of deprivation meanings of the word cut (cut is homonymous
of human rights”. for both “divide” and “stab”) with a stale metap-
38
Stein (1989), pp. 100-101. hor (‘heart’ as synonymous with city center) that
39
Interviews with the graffiti writers Bus 126, (con- together on one level might seem as a factual state-
ducted in Berlin, Germany, 2009-06-26), and Crime ment, but on another level creates a vivid metaphor.
TDC, (conducted in Berlin, Germany, 2009-06-26). 56
Harry Anderson (et al), “When Will the Wall
40
Jacobson, (1996), p. 14. Fall?”, Newsweek, 1989-01-30.

102
57
Unsigned editorial: “East Germany Opens the
Gate” Washington Post, 1989-11-10.
58
Timothy Kenny: “Once-silent Ppposition a Chor-
us for Change”, USA Today, 1989-10-09.
59
Salem Alaton, “Taking home an Artistic Nightma-
re”, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 1987-07-11.
60
Gründer (2007), p. 34.
61
Transcript from DVD by Aubert (1989).
62
See for example http://www.haring.com/!/se-
lected_writing/sex-is-life-is-sex#.VCgq6-d8Qfk
[Retrieved 2013-10-31]
63
Unsigned article, “Keith Haring Paints Mural on
Berlin Wall”, The New York Times, 1986-10-24.
64
Kuzdas & Nungesser (1990), p. 4.
65
Thomas Hedley: “Freedom the Chant as History
is Sold at $4 A Piece”, Courier-Mail, 1989-11-18.
66
For a circumstantial description of the Berlin Wall
in different parts of the world see Anna Kaminsky
(2009), Die Berliner Mauer in der Welt. Berlin:
Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung.
67
Neef (2007), p. 427.
68
Nicholas Kulish and Judy Dempsey “Retracing
Walk West As 2 Berlins Became One”, The New
York Times, November 10, 2009.

103
104
4. NOLLTOLERANS – SWEDISH
ZERO TOLERANCE OF GRAFFITI

4.1 Zero Tolerance and Nolltolerans

From the mid-1990s and onward, the concepts of zero-tolerance policing and the
‘broken-window theory’ became frequent in public debates and political policies
regarding graffiti.1 While first introduced in New York City, these concepts were soon
also inserted in discussions on graffiti in other parts of the world. This chapter studies
how zero tolerance of graffiti was interpreted and adopted in Stockholm, Sweden,
during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Zero tolerance could be described as a set of policing methods, closely related to the
so-called ‘broken-windows theory’, a criminological hypothesis developed during the
1980s and 1990s that gives these methods their theoretical and ideological underpin-
ning. The hypothesis was first outlined in 1982, in the article “Broken Windows – The
Police and Neighborhood Safety”, written by two American researchers, criminolo-
gist George L. Kelling and political scientist James Q. Wilson. Put briefly, the article
argues that society, in order to reduce crime in urban communities, should spend more
resources on foot-patrolling police officers and on repairing broken windows and van-
dalism. The underlying assumption is that unrepaired broken windows, and vandali-
zed property in general, sends a signal that no one cares, and that this in turn leads
to a downward spiral creating social disorder and incivility, as the dwellers also stop
caring about their surroundings, and start to avoid one another. This, together with
the absence of foot-patrolling police officers interacting with dwellers, creates a fertile
ground for criminality. The suggestion is thus that it is also possible to create the op-
posite, an upward spiral, and restore safety by rapidly repairing broken windows and
vandalized property, as well as increasing the number of foot-patrolling police officers;
and that a reduction of visible, minor disorder could also help reduce serious crime.2
Based on the broken-windows hypothesis, and working closely with George Kel-
ling, different New York City police forces developed what during Mayor Rudol-
ph Giuliani’s administration (1994–2001) became known as zero tolerance, directing
law-enforcement resources toward preventing visible petty crimes and public distur-
bances.3 Kelling has also been tied to the resourceful and influential neo-conservative
think tank the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a platform from where the
hypothesis of broken windows and methods of zero tolerance were circulated natio-
nally and internationally.4

105
 While hugely influential and popular among many policymakers and opinion-ma-
kers, both the underlying assumptions and the methods of zero tolerance have remai-
ned heavily contested. The methods have been criticized for targeting already under-
privileged groups of citizens, and the hypothesis for being empirically unsubstantiated
regarding the reduction of crime.5 The most highly contested aspect is probably the
so-called method of ‘stop and frisk’, expanding the police forces possibilities to stop,
question, and body search citizens; methods that have been criticized for being dis-
proportionally directed toward people of color.6 George L. Kelling has claimed that
the critique of broken windows is dependent on ideology, claiming that criminology
has been dominated by left-wing perspectives on the causes of criminality, and on
crime prevention, while he and Wilson suggest a clearly right-wing solution.7
Considering the focus on the symbolic and visual social order in the broken-win-
dows hypothesis, it is perhaps not surprising that the struggle against illegally execu-
ted graffiti soon becomes a central component in the debate. Graffiti is in fact brought
up already in the first article on “Broken Windows” – however, mainly in passing and
almost casually, as Wilson and Kelling refer to an article by the sociologist Nathan
Glazer:

In Boston public housing projects, the greatest fear was expressed by persons living in the
buildings where disorderliness and incivility, not crime, were the greatest, Knowing this helps
one understand the significance of such otherwise harmless displays, as subway graffiti. As
Nathan Glazer has written, the proliferation of graffiti, even when not obscene, confronts the
subway rider with the “inescapable knowledge that the environment he must endure for an
hour or more a day is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and that anyone can invade it to do
whatever damage and mischief the mind suggests.”8

The authors clearly do not perceive graffiti as a serious crime, not even when it is
offensive in its content or execution, but it is used as an example of one of several
“otherwise harmless displays”. Nor is Wilson’s and Kelling’s argument built on con-
notations of graffiti as pollution or ugly, at least not explicitly. The suggested problem
is clear and logically comprehensible: the existence of illegal graffiti signifies a failure
of the police to maintain control of the city’s environment. Their claim, in short, is
rational: if it is possible to write or paint graffiti without permission, it is also possible
to commit other, more serious crimes, and any commuter realizing this may, on ratio-
nal grounds, feel unsafe.
Reviewing the previous research on graffiti it is, however, also obvious that the
institutional anti-graffiti strategies in New York precede the broken-windows hy-
pothesis and zero-tolerance methods by at least a decade. For example, both Craig
Castleman’s (1982) and Joe Austin’s (2001) studies chart intense institutional efforts to
combat graffiti, starting in the early 1970s. Castleman describes how New York City
Mayor John Lindsay implements a series of different anti-graffiti initiatives during

106
the early 1970s, such as surveillance through special police forces and increased re-
sources to remove graffiti, and Castleman claims that the policies “established during
the Lindsay administration are still being pursued”.9 Austin’s research similarly links
the instigation of anti-graffiti policies in New York City to the Lindsay adminis-
tration, and points out that they were institutionalized through the initiative of an
“Anti-Graffiti Task Force” consisting of various city agencies.10 Austin also claims that
graffiti writing has been recognized and constructed as a “dangerous problem” descri-
bed as an “epidemic” in mass media since 1972, and that these descriptions emanate
from the same institutions that are involved in establishing the anti-graffiti policies.11
The relationships between the broken-windows hypothesis, zero-tolerance poli-
cing, and anti-graffiti policies are thus complex. On the one hand, it is clear that graf-
fiti had been described and combatted as a problem long before the broken-windows
hypothesis and zero-tolerance policing. On the other hand, it is also clear that the
broken-windows hypothesis has had a major impact both on the debate on graffiti,
and on the anti-graffiti strategies. In an article on graffiti politics in New York City
between 1990 and 2005, the criminologist Ronald Kramer states: “The broken win-
dows thesis provides much of the epistemic foundation for the anti-graffiti efforts
orchestrated by officials in New York City”.12
Given the situation outlined above, it is viable to suggest that the broken-windows
hypothesis, in relation to graffiti in New York, provided a theoretical and ideological
foundation for an anti-graffiti project that had already been going on for almost two
decades. With the epistemological perspective and terminology of the present thesis,
it could be suggested that the ‘broken-windows theory’ gave a scholarly and seeming-
ly more rational framing of statements already enounced and circulated within the
rejecting discursive practice. It is the impact of the broken-windows hypothesis and
the zero-tolerance rhetoric on the descriptions of graffiti that is of primary interest
in this chapter.
The chapter will examine the discourses on graffiti in Sweden during the mid to
late 1980s, and then compare them to the discourses of zero tolerance approximately
ten years later. The focus is set on but not entirely limited to Sweden’s capital city,
Stockholm.
One particularity of the graffiti debate that has to be addressed at some length is
the frequent use of the two Swedish words ‘klotter’ and ‘klottrare’.13 Even if these two
words could be said to roughly correspond conceptually to the notions of graffiti van-
dalism and graffiti vandal, they also have other connotations and different discursive
implications. This terminological issue was first addressed by the art historian Staffan
Jacobson, who concludes that ‘klotter’ is a normative word, and its use in relation to
graffiti constructs semantic difficulties. Jacobson’s own solution is to avoid the word
‘klotter’, and use ‘graffiti’ as the correct descriptive term. He also notes a difference
in the use of the words in Swedish mass media. “The older Swedish word klotter has
in the media been used to denote older (or ‘worse’) graffiti, while the newer Swedish

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 word graffiti has been used in the media to indicate newer (or ‘better’) graffiti.”14
In the newspaper material I have analyzed, the two words ‘graffiti’ and ‘klotter’
are most often used similarly – to make a distinction between what is perceived as
artistically ambitious graffiti and graffiti vandalism. They are, however, also frequently
used as replaceable synonyms, especially in zero-tolerance material.15 Occasionally the
words are also used to create ironic effects, as in the headline “The graffiti vandalism
that qualifies for the galleries” [Klottret som platsar på gallerierna].16
To make matters even more complicated, the two terms are also used institutio-
nally, within law enforcement, to distinguish between legal and illegal. When The
Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention [Brottsförebyggande rådet, BRÅ]
defines ‘klotter’ and ‘graffiti’, the words are polarized in the following manner: “Klot-
ter is thus the illegal expression (criminal damage) and graffiti is the legal expression
[…] Similar motifs may be both klotter and graffiti. The only difference is whether
the image is legally or illegally painted”.17 This definition is institutionalized through
the statistic crime codes graffiti vandalism in the public transportation system (crime
code 1208) [klotter mot kollektivtrafik] and other graffiti vandalism (crime code 1209)
[övrigt klotter].18
The ambiguous use of ‘klotter’ and ‘graffiti’ has also been addressed by sociologist
Björn Jonsson, who suggests that both ‘klotter’ and ‘graffiti’ are normative concepts,
belonging to different discourses rather than denoting different phenomena; that
‘klotter’ and ‘graffiti’ “…constitute concepts in competing discourses and understan-
ding contexts [...] on the basis if the phenomenon should be perceived as a crime or
as a cultural expression.”19 Jonsson refers to three different discourses – combating
[bekämpande], controlling [bemästrande], and affirming [bejakande] – where the first
and the last suggest opposing understandings of graffiti, as a crime and as a cultural
expression, and thus could be said to correspond roughly to the two interdependent
discursive practices constructed in this thesis (the rejecting discursive practice and the
consenting discursive practice).20 Jonsson’s discourse analysis is partly based on mate-
rial from debates in the national and one local political parliament and the discourses
are connected to active political approaches to graffiti, where the combating discourse
promotes measures to get rid of graffiti, and the affirming discourse suggests actions
in order to make it easier to legally produce graffiti, while the controlling discourse
could be understood as a hybrid that tries to mediate between the two others.21
The use of the two words ‘graffiti’ and ‘klotter’ is thus both a fundamental aspect
of the surveyed material and a methodological problem when writing about this
Swedish discursive structure in English. Methodologically, I have adopted a pragma-
tic perspective and tried to make an interpretation of the specific use of the words.
This means that I in the following chapter alternate between scribble, doodle, graffiti,
and graffiti vandalism in order to translate the word “klotter”, and between graffiti
writer and graffiti vandal when translating “klottrare”.

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4.2 Graffiti in Sweden – Before Nolltolerans
Graffiti is often framed as a fairly new phenomenon in Swedish news-media reports,
often linking it the types developed in Philadelphia and New York during the 1970s
and 1980s (TTP-graffiti).22 But graffiti – as unauthorized writing or drawing on the
walls of cities – is not a new phenomenon. One anecdotal record of graffiti is found
in a letter to the editor published in 1891 in the regional newspaper Vestmanland
County Gazette [VLT ,­Vestmanlands Läns Tidning]. The letter signed House-owner
[Husegare] urges the police to take action against “adolescents” who are drawing on
the walls of the city’s buildings. The letter is written in a slightly ironic tone, referring
to the phenomenon as “artistic drawings” conducted with “crayons and spikes”. The
conclusion is, however, straightforward: “Common sense of order is rammed to head
off these disorders and the house-owners’ funds receive tedious interventions”.23 This
letter to the editor, written more than a century ago, appears to reflect an individual
property owner’s problems with illegal graffiti, and his or her difficulties to get the
police to take the problem seriously. It also makes two specific claims – that graffiti is
repulsive and that it is costly to restore the facades of the buildings.
In his dissertation, Jack Stewart writes that by the late 1960s, graffiti in Sweden’s ca-
pital, Stockholm, had reached “alarming proportions”, but that the city administration
dealt with this problem in a manner that “was perhaps unique among all the cities
that became faced with a growing graffiti problem“.24 This solution was called Klot-
terplanket [The Scribble Board] – a large billboard located in the city center on which
anyone could write their opinion. The billboard was whitewashed once a day to make
room for new messages.25 It was not only Stewart who found this initiative unique; it
seems to have gained worldwide attention. It is for example referred to in Jean Baud-
rillard’s essay “Kool Killer, or The Insurrection of Signs”.26 It could thus be concluded
that illegal graffiti has existed in Sweden for decades, perhaps centuries, and that it
has been described as a problem for property owners already in the late Nineteenth
century, and an increasing problem during the late 1960s, which led to a reaction that
was perceived as unique – the attempt to channel graffiti onto a single surface.
There is, however, little doubt that the early to mid-1980s entailed a shift, both in
mass-mediated representation and in the amount of graffiti produced, following the
emergence of local, subcultural graffiti scenes in many Swedish cities. These local sce-
nes were sparked by a growing number of media reports on graffiti in New York, at the
time often framed as a part of hip-hop culture. Swedish art historian Staffan Jacobson
identifies 1984 as the year when TTP graffiti is established in Sweden, inspired by, for
example, movies such as Beat Street (premiered in cinemas in August) and Style Wars
(aired on television in September), and the release of the book Subway Art.27
Jacobson has also analyzed the Swedish debate on graffiti during the 1980s and
early 1990s in two separate discussions – while outlining the history of graffiti as art
in Sweden 1984–1994, and in a survey on various anti-graffiti strategies in Sweden
(both discussions were conducted partly in comparison to other countries).28 These

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 two different aspects roughly correspond with the two discursive practices defined
earlier in this thesis – a consenting discursive formation built around the statement
of graffiti as art, and a rejecting discursive formation built around the statement of
graffiti as vandalism. Jacobson has also compiled a thorough list (in chronological
order from 1973 to 1996) of almost 550 newspaper articles on TTP graffiti, explicit-
ly intended for use in further research.29 The following section utilizes the material
gathered by Jacobson and revisits his findings with the purpose of describing both the
discussions on graffiti as art and the debate on anti-graffiti strategies as a part of the
same discursive formation.30
Although Jacobson’s bibliography of Swedish newspapers begins in 1973, it only con-
tains five articles published prior to 1984. All of these refer to graffiti in New York City,
even though one of them makes a brief comparison between it and graffiti found in
Stockholm.31 From 1984 onward, there are, however, an increasing numbers of articles
on TTP graffiti. Jacobson also identifies an intense debate on graffiti, starting in Fe-
bruary, 1987, and continuing into 1989, a debate that lead to the instigation of various
anti-graffiti initiatives.32 Jacobson distinguishes between two main types of anti-graffiti
strategies: combating and domestication of graffiti, where the first refers to demands of
increased resources to the police, the development of chemical-technical measures, and
suggested changes in legislation; and the latter designates an array of initiatives to in-
corporate graffiti into the larger structures of society.33 The aforementioned Klotterplan-
ket could be understood as a precursor of the domestication strategies.
Revisiting the newspaper material gathered by Jacobson, as well as his own con-
clusions, it is from the perspective of the present thesis obvious that the beginning of
TTP graffiti not only reflects the institution of a youth subculture (graffiti) through
mass media, as well as certain counter reactions to this subculture (anti-graffiti po-
licies); it is also the institution of a discursive formation in mass media, a formation
with a structure that on the fundamental level mirrors the one developed in New York
City during the 1970s and 1980s – built on a polarization between statements on graf-
fiti as art and graffiti as crime. But by combining Jacobson’s findings of anti-graffiti
strategies (produced within what has previously been defined as the rejecting discur-
sive practice) with the viewpoints enounced in the consenting discursive practice, it
has also been possible to identify four basic approaches to graffiti in the public debate
in Sweden during the late 1980s, approaches developed from more generic statements
of graffiti as art and as crime.
Within the rejecting discursive practice, there are clear differences between agents
who demand interventions by police forces and the development of technical solu-
tions to combat graffiti (hereafter in line with what Jacobson refers to as combating
approaches), and those who instead suggest that the problem of illegal graffiti should
be solved by assimilating it into larger social structures, for example by reforming
graffiti writers into artists (hereafter in line with what Jacobson refers to as domesti-
cation approaches).

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 Reviewing the Swedish newspaper material gathered by Jacobson, it is also possible
to distinguish two groups of approaches clearly belonging to what I have previous-
ly described as the consenting discursive practice. In this structure, the differences
are between agents with an intellectually tentative approach (hereafter referred to as
the considering approach) and agents who describe graffiti as a vital and/or subversive
youth culture, but who often take a skeptical stance toward institutional interaction
(hereafter referred to as the subcultural approach).34

4.2.1 The Combating Approach

The agents promoting various combating strategies usually describe graffiti as part of
a larger problem – one of criminal damage and vandalism. Their suggestions are very
similar to those put forth by the Lindsay administration in New York City: special
police operations and legislation, anti-graffiti information campaigns and increased
resources on graffiti-removal.35 This is most likely the dominant approach in the public
debate during the period, especially in the intense debate 1987–1989 (identified by
Jacobson). Suggestions of combative strategies appear in argumentative articles and
are integrated in news stories. For example, an unsigned editorial with the headline
“Graffiti vandalism is a crime” [Klotter är brott] published in January, 1989, suggests
that the authorities should take measures in order to limit access to spray paint, and
that arrested vandals should be enrolled in the removal of graffiti.36
One of the most spectacular events in promoting combating strategies took place in
February 1989, as four of the leading regional politicians in Stockholm demonstrated
outside of the Swedish national parliament.37 Their demonstration expressed support
for a proposal by the Minister of Justice to change the legislation in order to make it
possible for the police to body search adolescents suspected of carrying graffiti tools,
and to confiscate such tools.38 The first part of the government’s proposal was dismis-
sed by the parliament, with the argument that the proposal would result in an infring-
ement of privacy that was not on par with seriousness of the suspected crime, while
the expanded possibility to confiscate spray cans and felt-pen markers was accepted.39
The suggested and implemented combating strategies of the 1980s are without any
doubt close to what would later become known as zero tolerance and, some ten years
later, a similar proposal, which enabled the police to body search adolescents, passed a
parliamentary vote, under the direct influence of zero-tolerance rhetoric (see Chapter
4.4.1).

4.2.2 The Domestication Approach

The agents of the domestication approach also address problems with graffiti, but they
make a relatively clear distinction between legal and illegal graffiti, as well as between
artistically ambitious graffiti and graffiti vandalism (usually constructed through a

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 clear distinction between “graffiti” and “klotter”).40 The agents of these kinds of stra-
tegies explicitly support legal graffiti in form of for example graffiti schools, and en-
rollment of graffiti writers in the decoration of public spaces. Their main concern is
primarily the well being of graffiti-interested youths.
The most radical example of a suggested domestication strategy is likely the propo-
sal called Legalize graffiti [Legalisera klottret], suggested by a regional politician from
the Liberal People’s Party [Folkpartiet], which gained nationwide attention during
the spring of 1987. The suggestion was that adolescents interested in graffiti would
be allowed to paint in the subway system, supervised by the transit authority but
with artistic freedom.41 The proposal was motivated by a twofold argument: that it
would be less “intriguing to provoke adult society, while the creative capacities of the
young people may be channeled into something positive”.42 The proponent claimed
that graffiti often had artistic qualities. He was also explicitly polemical and criticized
the combating strategies, arguing that anti-graffiti campaigning had grown out of
proportion.43
The suggested strategies of domestication seem to have gained little political sup-
port at the time, at least in the Stockholm region. The proposal to decorate the subway
with graffiti was rejected even by several politicians of the proponent’s own party.44
The only documented example in Jacobson’s material where a domestication strategy
has been implemented is Kungsholmen’s graffiti school, a publicly-funded venue with
the intent to reform taggers and make them legal artists. The project started in the
spring of 1989 and was in operation for approximately one year.45

4.2.3 The Subcultural Approach

The subcultural approach constitutes an antithesis to both the combating and domes-
tication approaches. Proponents of this approach often express an understanding of or
even support for illegal graffiti, describing it as healthy manifestation of protest and/
or a vibrant youth culture. And they usually regard legal graffiti projects and exhibi-
tions with suspicion, seeing them as a potential form of exploitation of young people
and youth cultures, and believe the subversive qualities of subcultures are corrupted
by institutional interaction. One review of an art exhibition of American art of the
1980s, including works by graffiti artists such as Lee Quinones, Daze, and Lady Pink,
combines these two closely related arguments:

…hundreds of thousands of commuters between the Bronx and Brooklyn can see graffiti
writers’ colorful fanfares, their ‘blasters’ and ‘tags’ on the dust gray sides of rumbling carri-
ages [...] Far away from subway’s thundering inferno, as neat pictures in the gallery’s rooms,
the proud fanfares turns into a sad memento of what Swedish Arts Council sometimes
refers to as ‘the negative side effects of commercialism’.46

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The two underlying claims are here that graffiti manifests artistic and cultural values
on subway trains but that these values are corrupted in art galleries, and that commer-
cial speculation is the foundation for the movement from train to gallery. Another ar-
ticle is less skeptical of the development, but has a similar point of view, and declares
that graffiti in New York City almost entirely has disappeared – due to the interest
from the art world: “Graffiti died when it came into galleries and the graffiti writers
started to sell their works”.47

4.2.4 The Considering Approach

The considering approach should probably be regarded as the most diverse of the
perspectives identified in the surveyed articles. A mutual and central assumption for
the considering approach is that graffiti can be an interesting and important art mo-
vement, and/or that it, if nothing else, is possible to interpret as a phenomenon that
says something interesting about our time, society, and culture. Here, the participants
are often artists, authors, and cultural journalists who use particularities as building
blocks in their argumentation. Three examples from the same year may illustrate the
breadth of this part of the debate. Written by three in Sweden well-renowned intel-
lectuals, none of the articles refer to graffiti paintings or pieces; they rather focus on
tagging inside subway cars.
In the early spring of 1987, the art critic Leif Nylén made a contribution to an in-
tense debate about graffiti as vandalism, where he in an attentive manner set graffiti
in relation to the wider subcultural context of hip-hop. The article refers to the debate
on graffiti as “a number of senior citizens’ unashamedly aggressive indignation toward
the rampage of those junior citizens […] who, on the walls and seats of subway cars,
imprint their fictional, mysterious identities and thereby audaciously break the boun-
dary between private and public”.48
In early summer the same year, the artist Carl Johan de Geer criticized an anti-graf-
fiti campaign by the Stockholm Public Transport called: “Why do graffiti elsewhere
when you can make it this cozy at home?” [Varför klottra borta när du kan göra det så
här mysigt hemma?]. The artist argues that advertising represents mental littering of
the subway, and that the campaign strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. He descri-
bes tags on subway walls as decorative patterns resembling “the sways of waves on the
surface of still water”, and argues that the campaign’s two claims therefore “…are not
in any way necessarily mutually exclusive [...] the fully doodled room is quite simply
cozy! Just keep on doing graffiti, both home and elsewhere, is thus the message!”49
The journalist and author Kerstin Vinterhed ended the graffiti debate the same
year by arguing that the graffiti in the subways of Stockholm is one of many examples
of a “generational war” raging throughout the world, and that it had managed “to
trigger a joint, powerful adult reaction of the old-fashioned kind, a reaction that can
not be mistaken in its authoritarian magisterialness”. Of the three authors referenced

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 above, Vinterhed seems the most skeptical of graffiti, and suggests that the parental
generation respond clearly to the phenomenon – but says the reactions must avoid the
tendency of becoming “authoritarian outbreaks”.50
The reexamination of the material gathered by Jacobson suggests that the debate
on graffiti during the second half of the 1980s was dynamic and relatively diverse, and
that it reflected a wide range of approaches and interests in society. Art institutions
and cultural journalism raise questions of cultural and aesthetic values; political and
general public authorities defend interests of both civil rights and control of ow-
nership; and psychosocial institutions evoke issues of social concerns. Even if agents
proposing various combating strategies (agents who usually represent the police and
transit authorities) predominate the public debate, it still provides a relatively large
space for complex and conflicting descriptions of graffiti as both a cultural and a cri-
minal phenomenon. The proliferation of domestication strategies among those agents
that primarily consider graffiti a crime demonstrates a relatively large disagreement
on how to address, frame, and solve this problem.
Beside these structural and discursive aspects, the material also suggests that
anti-graffiti approaches, just like the graffiti subculture, belong to a transnational
context. In February, 1989, there are reports in Swedish newspapers that New York
City has “won over the graffiti vandals [klottrarna]”.51 A division chief of the Stock-
holm subway is interviewed, and says that he is impressed by the methods used by the
transit authorities in New York City, and that even if no one within SL actively has
studied the anti-graffiti strategies in New York City during “the last year”, they have
received “numerous reports”.52

4.3 The Launch of Nolltolerans

Although the public debate on graffiti was diverse in the 1980s, it is obvious that
graffiti primarily was framed as a problem (of either pollution or vandalism), not least
by public property owners and regional transport companies. It was also described as
a growing problem since the adaption and development of TTP graffiti in Sweden
during the early part of the decade. In Stockholm, as in New York, various anti-graf-
fiti strategies were used long before the establishment of zero-tolerance rhetoric and
policies. However, the surveyed press material displays relatively limited, or at least
very ambiguous, engagement against graffiti among what broadly could be described
as a general public.
There is no doubt that graffiti is controversial and has sparked heated reactions
among groups of people who do not represent official institutions such as transit au-
thorities. One article, published in February, 1987, refers to an outrage against graffiti
vandals experienced by the journalist as a reaction to two previous articles describing
problems with graffiti: “All day, people are calling in. Mostly senior citizens, often
anonymous. [...] A hatred, a white-hot children’s hatred, streams out of the phone”.53

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There are several similar accounts, which report on outrage against graffiti among the
public, in the studied material.54 These are, however, primarily articles that follow up
on previously published articles that have framed graffiti as senseless vandalism. In
one case, they form a reaction to a defense of graffiti with the provocative headline
“Graffiti vandalism makes me happy!” [Klotter gör mig lycklig!].55 It is obvious that
graffiti is something that does engage groups of newspaper readers, but it is difficult
to say whether these kinds of reactions, often in response to specific articles, are re-
presentative of a broader public opinion of graffiti.
There are also several letters to the editor in the surveyed Swedish material, letters
by citizens who in comparison to most of the other material do not officially represent
institutions.56 Some of these letters suggest different combating approaches, and ex-
press anger and/or frustration with graffiti (although none of the same intense hatred
described by the journalist above).57 There are also several letters that express consent
and admiration of graffiti in general, as well as those suggesting that one must dis-
tinguish between artistically ambitious graffiti and vandalism – most often through a
distinction between “graffiti” and “klotter”.58 This distinction is also common in other
parts of the analyzed material, especially among proponents of domestication strate-
gies.59
One of these letters to the editor (published in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter in
January, 1989) explicitly disputes the representation of public opinion on graffiti in
the mass media, a representation the letter writer finds too negative: “Several media
seem certain that the writing on public property is an issue where everyone’s common
perception flows like a river without dams. Why am I otherwise so often informed by
TV and the press of what all Stockholmers, the Swedish people, and therefore also
I, think?”60
In Jacobson’s material there is one public opinion poll addressing graffiti, albeit
conducted in 1994 and thus several years later than the main body of analyzed news-
paper articles, but on the other hand just before the launch of zero tolerance. In this
poll 2586 citizens of Stockholm have been asked to rank how the municipal depart-
ment for streets and buildings [Gatu- och fastighetskontoret] should use their resour-
ces. Removal of illegal graffiti [klotterborttagning] gets the lowest priority, together
with maintenance of stairs, park benches, and playground equipment.61
In 1995 the board of Stockholm Public Transport, [Storstockholms Lokaltrafik]
(hereafter referred to as SL) adopted a strategic plan against vandalism and violence
in the public transport systems named Operation Safety [Operation Trygghet]. The
aim was to “offer to the passenger an undamaged, clean, neat, and safe trip”.62 The zero
tolerance of New York is not explicitly mentioned in the document, but considering
the transnational links between the transit authorities in New York and Stockholm,
and the similarity with the broken-windows hypothesis’ focus on safety, there are like-
ly links between these projects, although they may not be systematized. The label zero
tolerance [nolltolerans] and explicit references to the broken-windows hypothesis and

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 zero-tolerance policing, are first introduced around 1997–1998, but then on the other
hand quickly brought up and adopted in the institutional context activated through
Operation Safety. And even if there are no explicit references to zero tolerance, or to
the broken-windows hypothesis in this document, I suggest that Operation Safety
should be regarded as the instigation of zero tolerance in Stockholm. This label is thus
hereafter used to refer to the initiatives stemming from Operation Safety.
Although the Stockholm Public Transport, SL, was the primary institution active
in the construction of zero tolerance in Stockholm, there were several other insti-
tutions involved. As early as 1994, the governor [Landshövding] of Stockholm had
gathered a number of local and regional authorities in a campaign against street vi-
olence and graffiti.63 These different institutions and their anti-graffiti strategies are
intertwined through Operation Safety. The main document is only nine pages, but
followed by no less than eight appendices, relating to various similar projects, by other
institutions and organizations such as the municipality of Stockholm [Stockholms
stad] and Stockholm County Council [Stockholms läns landsting]. The different pro-
jects, however, refer to one another, have the same approach, repeat the same phrases,
and all emphasize the importance of cooperation between organizations. In this chap-
ter, they are all referred to as Operation Safety. SL appointed a former police officer as
a civil servant with responsibility for safety in the public commuter system, who was
also supposed to coordinate anti-graffiti strategies between different organizations.64
In Operation Safety, the public’s ambiguous opinion on graffiti and the diverse
public debate, outlined above, are addressed as a part of the problem. The responsible
officials describe how SL once had cancelled all trains with graffiti on them, hoping
that “the public would form effective opinion against graffiti”.65 The passengers,
however, seemed to have preferred trains with graffiti, at least over no trains at all,
and the attempt is described as a failure. This cancellation of trains took place in No-
vember 1987, and is documented in the previously surveyed press material.66 There is
thus a direct institutional link between the combating approaches of the 1980s and the
launch of zero tolerance in the 1990s. The public debate and the diverse approaches
it brings forth are explicitly addressed in Operation Saftey, in a passage that is worth
quoting at some length:

There are still many – individuals, representatives of authorities and opinion makers – who
have ignorantly ingenuous, sometimes respectfully admiring, attitudes towards graffiti van-
dals [klottrare] and graffiti [klotter]. [...] that it is a youth culture which one admittedly might
not understand, but must show appreciation for – in order to be accepted by young people.
That these naive and ignorant attitudes will disappear, with the help of information from
those who know better, belongs to the vision for the future. And it also includes prosecutors
and the judicial system as targets for the enlightenment work.67

This quote point out the diversity of standpoints and perspectives on graffiti, as a part

116
of the problem. Both the media debate of the 1980s and a perceived lack of commit-
ment among both a general public and official representatives, are thus important in
order to contextualize the introduction of zero tolerance on graffiti and some of its
positions and delimitations.
The most important platform for the launch of zero tolerance was SL Direct
[SL-direkt], a daily section in the then newly established newspaper Metro, distribu-
ted in the transit system by SL employees. The texts in SL Direct had a journalistic
structure: several different types of articles, often with headlines, introductions, sub-
headings, and series of articles featured in various vignettes. One corner of the page
was titled “Today’s ad with news and information from Stockholm Public Transport”
[Dagens annons med nyheter och information från AB Storstockholms Lokaltrafik],
but it had the same graphic profile as the rest of the newspaper, and an inattentive
reader might easily mistake SL Direct for a part of Metro’s journalism. It is, however,
important to point out that this should not be considered journalism, but information
controlled by a specific interest, without the requirement of objectivity and journalis-
tic relevance, and free from critical follow-up questions, which is evident regarding
the issue of graffiti. The establishment of the newspaper Metro, in 1995, thus grants
SL access to a daily page to spread their message at the very moment that they are
launching Operation Safety.
In November, 1995, the SL safety officer is interviewed in what was to become a
series of articles in SL Direct: “Graffiti is an organized form of crime […] It is a ga-
teway to other types criminality”.68 These two claims – that graffiti is organized crime
and a gateway to criminality – would often be repeated in the following years. The
claims are not substantiated in the article, and at this time there is no criminological
or sociological research on graffiti in Sweden, and the civil servant stating the claims
has relatively recently started to work with graffiti. It can thus be ruled out that these
claims are empirically founded. Rather, it should be understood primarily as a way to
influence the public perception of graffiti, just as it had been suggested in Operation
Safety.
And from a rhetorical perspective, this dual description of the problem is an ef-
fective construction. Once the construct of graffiti as both organized crime and as a
gateway to criminality is established, it can be used against those who try to oppose
zero-tolerance strategies in two ways. First, the objection that illegal graffiti may not
be that serious may be dismissed as naïve; the opponent has simply failed to under-
stand that graffiti is in fact organized crime. Second, those who argue that graffiti is
art may be accused of cynicism, since the person for his/her own aesthetic pleasure is
willing to jeopardize innocent youths on the verge of becoming career criminals. This
means that the opponent of the hard line anti-graffiti strategies could be accused of
ignorance, cynicism, or naivety, respectively.
A week later, SL’s safety officer is again interviewed in SL Direct, now arguing that
policing and rapid removal are the only methods that have proven effective in com-

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 bating illegal graffiti: “We have previously allowed legal graffiti walls in some places,
but the results have gone from bad to worse. Areas around have been drenched in
graffiti.”69 This quote is illustrious in three ways. First, the statement is clearly against
those agents who argue for some form of domestication, who believe that illegal graf-
fiti should be battled with legal alternatives. This way, it could be said to marginalize
another set of anti-graffiti strategies. Secondly, it is an example of how zero tolerance
is launched through a language of metaphors and parables to get the point across –
the reader may for his/her inner vision see an entire neighborhood drowned in ugly
graffiti. Thirdly, this claim is also unsubstantiated and most likely factually incorrect.
SL had since the 1980s taken a very skeptical, if not entirely dismissive attitude toward
the legal projects. SL contributed financially, if also reluctantly, to the aforementioned
graffiti school in 1989 (see Chapter 4.2.2), but withdrew its support after the first trial
period.70 This despite the fact that the illegal graffiti indeed had declined during the
period, which was one of the primary objectives.71 Apart from this brief support, and
the permission for a graffiti painting at a bus stop in 1985, there are no traces that
suggest that SL would have supported legal graffiti – nor any evidence that SL had
been involved in any legal graffiti walls.72
During the following four years, SL Direct is used to launch a series of claims on
graffiti, thus developing the rejecting discursive practice. One often-repeated claim
is that graffiti reduces the feeling of safety. The strategic plan is named as Operation
safety; the responsible civil servant is referred to as chief of safety [Trygghetschef ],
and the series of articles where zero tolerance is first launched is called “Safer journey”
[Tryggare resa]. SL declares that graffiti “contributes to the deterioration into slums,
and creates an unsafe environment. Our goal is to remove it within 24 hours”.73 SL’s
safety officer also introduces the idea that graffiti in itself is an addiction, and suggests
that it might be necessary to create rehabilitation centers for graffiti writers.74 He also
claims that SL might have to use “unconventional methods” in order to effectively
combat illegal graffiti.75
Mere weeks after Operation Safety is presented on the transit authority’s own page,
the same type of arguments starts to appear in the news section of Metro.76 And less
than a year later, the newspaper Metro publishes an article on the graffiti problem as
their main feature story, pushed on the front page with the headline, “Organized graf-
fiti vandals costs millions every year” [Välorganiserade klottrare kostar miljoner varje
år].77 The headline paraphrases SL’s chief of safety, who is interviewed in the article,
but is presented as pure factual information, without attribution. The article informs
the reader that SL now have given up on “soft” approaches, and that a new method
of combating graffiti has been imported from the USA, where increased policing and
removal of graffiti had proven successful ways to reduce graffiti in the subways of
New York and Washington, D.C. The politician responsible for public transport in
Stockholm states, “In combatting graffiti vandals, only heavy-handed action will get
the job done”.78

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 Overall, it seems as if SL, at this early stage of zero tolerance, is mainly trying to
sway public opinion toward an intensified clampdown on graffiti, and at the same
time hamper the possibilities to move public opinion to other perspectives, app-
roaches, and strategies.
One could of course argue that the use of SL Direct to address the company’s pro-
blem with graffiti might come as no surprise. There is hardly anyone who can object to
SL having a problem with young people who paint graffiti on their property, and that
this is something the company has a both understandable and perfectly legitimate
reason to inform people about. Their interest in providing information about graffiti
as an art form and/or youth culture is considerably more limited. It is perhaps no less
surprising that a newspaper distributed in the subway and on commuter trains reports
on graffiti in the subway or that it is often considered a topic for the newspaper’s own
journalistic material. However, it should be possible to see clear differences between
information from SL published in the newspaper and Metro’s journalistic material
as far as descriptions of the problem of graffiti are concerned, and how it should be
understood and addressed. In short, in Metro’s own articles, there should be a greater
diversity of perspectives and agents than on SL’s information page. But there is not.
At least on the topic of graffiti, it seems as if SL is able to set the agenda for Metro’s
journalism: agents, descriptions, explanations, interpretations, and solutions regarding
graffiti are launched on the transit authority’s page only to appear weeks later in the
paper’s own news pages. Metro soon became one of Sweden’s most widely circulated
newspapers and zero tolerance thus had an effective and powerful media platform.
The graffiti problem is also given an increasing amount of coverage in the news
section of Metro. During 1995, SL Direct publishes 15 articles on graffiti, while Metro
only publishes three news articles on the subject. In 1996, SL Direkt publishes 27
articles on graffiti, with Metro devoting ten articles. In 1998, as the coverage of graffiti
culminates, the news section overtakes the transport authority’s page in this respect:
SL Direct publishes 18 articles, but the news section contains no fewer than 32 artic-
les referring to graffiti. The following year, interest drops sharply, with eight texts in
SL Direct and eleven news articles. Of the total of 216 texts that have been surveyed
(articles, texts on SL’s ad page, and letters to the editor, published 1995–1999), fewer
than ten articles could be said to accommodate perspectives other than that of graffiti
as a serious problem.
A comparison of the debate of the 1980s and the material in Metro of the late 1990s
yields another slightly peculiar discovery, namely that several of the pictures of graffiti
from the earlier decade are used to depict contemporary problems with graffiti. And
these are used in Metro’s newspaper articles with no information on their status as
archival photos, which is a clear breach of journalistic conventions.79
The clearest example is the article mentioned above, where Metro runs SL’s incre-
asing problem with graffiti as their main feature story. The photo, used on the front
page, shows a single woman reading a newspaper in a subway car almost empty of

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 Figure 4.1 and 4.2: The same photo published in news articles on the problems with graffiti in the subway
Dagens Nyheter, January 24, 1989, and in Metro, October 4, 1996.

people but full of tags. The caption reads: “Who wants to ride in a graffiti-vandalized
subway car? Eight out of ten SL travelers try to avoid it.”80 This claim is repeated in
an infobox in the article, without being substantiated by a source. The image could
thus be said to illustrate an unsubstantiated claim (if not necessarily false); that most
passengers choose not to travel in a subway car full of graffiti.
The photo used for this story, published in October, 1996, had already been used
for a similar story about the increasing problem with graffiti, but in the newspaper
Dagens Nyheter. That article was, however, published almost eight years earlier, in
January, 1989. The caption then read: “The subway travelers are more frequently en-
countering graffiti in all colors and shapes. Each year the graffiti bill is doubled, and
SL is now introducing surveillance in the trains.”81 So while the photo in 1996 was
used to illustrate the claim that eight of ten passengers avoid graffiti in the subway, its
publication in 1989 illustrated a growing problem with graffiti.
Almost twenty years after the publication, one can only speculate about why Metro
republished an old photo in a news article warning the public about the growing pro-
blem with graffiti, and without mentioning that it was an archival photo. One reason
could of course be that Metro, as a recently established newspaper with a very small
staff, primarily built upon material from news agencies, did not have the resources
to let a photographer to do the job. But if the problem with graffiti was so alarming,
it should not require massive resources to find suitable contemporary pictures. The
simplest explanation is perhaps that this picture, with lots of tags and almost no pas-
sengers, best illustrates the unsubstantiated claim of the caption – that almost nobody
wants to ride in a subway car full of graffiti. But in this sense, it is used to underline a
vague and, at least for the reader, unsubstantiated claim. Regardless of the cause, this
use of images strengthens the impression that SL is able to set the agenda for Metro’s
journalism.
In February, 1997, Metro front-page headline read, “The King wishes to Stop Graf-

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Figure 4.3: “The King wants to stop graffiti vandals”. Facsimile of the front page of newspaper Metro,
February 2, 1997.

fiti Vandals” [Kungen vill stoppa klottrare] and a picture of the Swedish King Carl
XVI Gustaf overlooking Stockholm from the Royal Palace.82 The King describes graf-
fiti as pollution, and he suggests a prohibition of spray cans and intensified removal
– as well as some sort of legal graffiti projects: “perhaps they can get a kick out of
painting a beautiful work of art somewhere. Maybe it could be possible to lease a
facade where they could paint”.83
The proposals raised in the interview with the King could discursively be linked to
the idea of ​​graffiti as disturbing pollution, rather than zero-tolerance suggestions that
it is a crime that creates an unsafe environment – and, on the whole, it seems more
in line with the graffiti debate of the 1980s, combining suggestions from combating
and domestication approaches. Therefore, he seems to be on a collision course with
zero-tolerance proponents, who are clearly opposed to all forms of legal projects. But
instead of creating a debate on the methods of framing and dealing with graffiti, it was
used by the Stockholm County Governor Ulf Adelsohn and the County Police Com-
missioner Gunno Gunnmo to further launch zero tolerance of graffiti – including a
proposal to ban legal graffiti projects.84

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 Sweden is a constitutional monarchy where royalties have no political power, and
the constitution states that the role of the ruling Monarch is to be a strictly ceremo-
nial head of state. The Monarch is also supposed to stand beyond and above politics,
and to be a figure of unity who should not speak on political issues.85 As we have
seen in the survey of the debate during the 1980s, illegal graffiti was in part descri-
bed as a result of adolescents’ unequal access to public space, or as an expression of
generational antagonism. If such descriptions would be active in the mass-mediated
debate, the King’s statement would have created great controversy. This lack of debate
is most likely a result of the campaign launched by Operation Safety and the inten-
sified dissemination of anti-graffiti information that had begun to marginalize other
approaches and strategies. In the discursive terminology discussed in the introduction
of this thesis, the launch of zero tolerance in Stockholm could be described as a
project firmly rooted in, as well as a development of, the rejecting discursive practice,
and a development at the expense of the consenting discursive practice. This is in line
with, if not a fulfillment of, the expressed vision of Operation Safety, the vision that
excusing or appreciative approaches towards graffiti should cease. And as we shall see
in the following sections of this chapter, zero-tolerance proponents acted in order to
hamper the possibilities for other institutions to engage in the consenting discursive
practice.
With a slightly different terminology, the launch of zero tolerance of graffiti could
also be explained as a movement of simultaneous politicization and de-politicization
of institutional approaches to graffiti. On the one hand, zero tolerance on graffiti is
a clearly political endeavor, suggesting a range of official projects to be launched in
order to combat graffiti. On the other, there is an ambition to remove graffiti from the
realm of open and diverse debate, and an insistence that there is only one way to des-
cribe and frame graffiti. This de-politicization through increased attention to graffiti
could be explained using Roland Barthes’ concept of Myth, presented in Mythologies
(1956): “Semiology has taught us that myth has the task of giving a historical inten-
tion a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal […] Myth does
not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies
them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives
them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.”86
The active myth would thus be the idea of graffiti as a disruption of the feeling of
safety for the ordinary citizen and thus the inevitable and natural need for removal of
all graffiti; the underlying statement is that graffiti is a crime.

4.4 The Institutional Effects of Nolltolerans

The establishment of zero tolerance is not only about influencing public opinion, it
also includes the initiation of a number of different strategies and institutional deve-
lopments regarding the areas of law enforcement, and cultural policies.

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4.4.1 The Expansion of Law Enforcement
One of these developments is that SL begins to argue that the law should be chang-
ed in order to make it possible to frisk adolescents and search for spray cans.87 The
suggested changes are very similar to the partly rejected proposal by the Minister of
Justice in 1989 (section 4.2.1). In a magazine published in 1999, and distributed among
Swedish lay judges [nämdemän], the SL safety officer describes the increasing pro-
blem of graffiti vandalism under the headline, “The graffiti vandalism that destroys
Stockholm” [Klottret som förstör Stockholm]. It is at this time, toward the end of the
1990s, that the graffiti policies promoted through Operation Safety are labeled ‘zero
tolerance’, and explicitly reference zero tolerance in New York City.88 And in this ar-
ticle it seems as if the argumentation has been directly influenced by New York’s zero
tolerance. Whereas the previously discussed accounts claimed that the general public
felt unsafe because of graffiti, the correlation between graffiti and criminality is now
described in a more concrete way: “Graffiti contributes to rundown neighborhoods.
In such environments there are many burglaries, and car thefts and destruction in
general”.89
Articles such as this one, with information that targets officials within the police,
courts, and other parts of the legal system, must both be regarded as efforts to in-
fluence the application of the existing laws and arguments for a modification of the
legislation.90 In the article, the SL official propose a series of legislative changes, such
as expanded opportunities for the police to body search, and the criminalization of
‘preparation for vandalism’. And in 2003, new legislation is passed by the Swedish
parliament, raising the penalty for criminal damage, with opportunities for the police
to body search youths without any suspicion of a crime having been committed.91 This
despite the fact that the bill had received criticism from the Council on Legislation
[Lagrådet], which argued that parts of the proposal were problematic in relation to
both the Constitution, as well as article 8 in the European Convention on Human
Rights (regarding the right to privacy).92
Another institutional development connected to zero tolerance is the instigation of
special units of guards specifically operating to arrest graffiti writers. The first unit of
guards belonged to the company Falck Security, but the operation was later taken over
by another company, called CSG (Commuter Security Group). It has been difficult
to frame their role in zero tolerance by consulting official sources, but their aims and
work methods have been described in two books written by journalists, first rather
briefly in Per Andersson’s Medan Svensson åt plankstek (2005), and then thoroughly in
Kolbjörn Guwallius’ Grip till varje pris (2014).93 The guards’ operation has also been
charted in a radio documentary called Klotterkriget och muthärvan på SL [The war on
graffiti and the bribery scandal at SL], by Rosa Fernandez.94
The first unit was also internally referred to as Civilian reconnaissance group [Ci-
vila spaningsgruppen, CSG], as they primarily worked with civil reconnaissance.95
The Swedish rules for guard companies require that the guards should operate in

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 uniforms, and all types of civil activity requires dispensation from the regional autho-
rity, County Administrative Board Stockholm [Länsstyrelsen], but Falck applied for
and received dispensation only after several years of unauthorized civilian work.96 The
aims of CSG included gathering information on graffiti by identifying individuals
doing graffiti, charting their networks, thereby facilitating their conviction.97
During 2002 and 2003, Falck Security’s operation came under close scrutiny as
the company was accused of using bribes in their dealings with the SL’s safety offi-
cer, who as Falck Security’s main contact at SL had provided the security company
with confidential information in conjunction with the procurement of guards.98 Six
months later, Falck Security was also reported to the police by the Data Inspection
Board [Datainspektionen], as the company was accused of operating an illegal register
of suspected graffiti vandals [klottrare].99 Falck Security admitted that they had had
such a register, but claimed that it had been constructed by an individual employee
without the knowledge of any supervisors.100 The controversies led to SL terminating
the contract with Falck Security.101 I will return to these controversies in the next
section (4.4.2).
Many of the guards from Falck Security however continued to work with graffiti
as they were re-employed by other companies, primarily the newly established CIP
Security, which soon changed its name to CSG. Although the acronym now stood
for Commuter Security Group and not Civila Spaningsgruppen, it is hard not to see
a connection between the two groups, which were partially made up
​​ of the same staff.
Per Andersson was the first who recognized this connection: “The man who was the
head of CSG is now working in senior management position in a security company
[...] Commuter Security Group – CSG, the same initials as the old graffiti group”.102
The new CSG applied twice for an exemption to work in plain clothes, and then
described its planned operation in a way that suggested that it was supposed to have
the same structure as Falck’s CSG. The County Administrative Board refused the
application, claiming that the operation might be confused with a type of law enfor-
cement that should be restricted to the police.103 Guwallius investigative work suggests
that the new CSG anyway essentially continued with the old CSG’s work methods
– including covert surveillance and a computerized register of suspected graffitists.104

4.4.2 The Hampering of Legal Graffiti

In Stockholm, as well as in several cities in Scandinavia, zero tolerance has instigated
various strategies to hamper the possibilities to produce graffiti legally, and in this
aspect the Scandinavian interpretation of zero tolerance goes beyond the original
politics in New York City.105 It is also this aspect that has caused the most controversy
between proponents and opponents of zero tolerance.
These controversies include exhibitions and public events with graffiti or graffiti-re-
lated works, as in the cases of Writers at Kulturhuset (1997), The Arrow, arranged by

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the non-profit organization Roots as a part of the program for Stockholm European
Capital of Culture (1998), STHLM Underground, arranged by the non-profit orga-
nization Legalize Art (2002), and 2 New Days of Hip-Hop and Art of the Streets,
arranged by Riksteatern at Södra teatern (2008–2012). They have also concerned spe-
cific artworks such as the graffiti mural Fascinate by Tarik and Circle (1989), Hornsplan
(2009) by Atom, and Territorial Pissing by Nug displayed by Gallery Brandstrom
Stockholm at Market Art Fair (2009).
Another series of controversies have surrounded what are called open, or legal,
graffiti walls (open to the public to paint graffiti on) as they have been opened, and at
times closed due to protests by zero-tolerance proponents, as for example in the cases
of the legal walls in the Municipality of Nacka (1996–1997), at the autonomous culture
center Cyklopen (2008), and in the Municipality of Sigtuna (2009).
These are also examples where zero tolerance in a sense has failed, since most of
these events probably never would have taken place if the zero tolerance strategies had
had the chance to stop them before they became public affairs. For example, in the
case of STHLM Underground, one of the responsible politicians suggested that the
municipality had been deceived by the organizer, and implied that the organizer never
would have been allowed to open the exhibition if the city’s responsible civil servant
had understood that it was an exhibition of graffiti.106 Hence, there would probably be
many more cases to study if it was possible to also survey exhibitions and events that
did not happen due to zero tolerance policies. One such case that never took place,
but actually still became public, was a planned but never realized exhibition of textile
graffiti works at Kulturhuset, in 2007.107
The subsequent section studies a selection of these controversies, focusing of those
that have generated a lot of publicity, and studies how this hampering of legal graffiti
has activated both institutions actively involved in zero tolerance and cultural institu-
tions with a less clear relationship to this political strategy.
The single case that has caused the greatest controversy, at least the most prolonged
in time, is probably that of the preservation of the graffiti mural Fascinate by Circle
and Tarik. This work was made in the summer of 1989 in Bromsten, at the outskirts
of Stockholm, and the painting covers an eight-meter high and 15-meter wide ware-
house facade, in an area where suburban houses and apartment buildings intermingle
with light industrial and warehouse buildings of small-scale activity. When it was
conceived, Fascinate was one of the largest and most ambitious pieces in Scandinavia.
It is constructed as a city scene, flanked by two figures: a crying blue-collar worker on
the left side and a teenage b-boy wearing sneakers, denim jacket, and hoodie to the
right. Between them is the center of town and a drug addict tormented by demons.
The wildstyle lettering that explodes over the whole scene gives the painting its name
– “Fascinate”. In addition, the piece includes a multitude of different details, referring
to the then contemporary youth culture’s ideals and beliefs. It was made with the
permission of the owner of the building, and is thus not illegal.

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 Figure 4.4: Fascinate by Circle and Tarik, in Bromsten (1989). Photo by author (1999).

Fascinate still exists and is now one of Northern Europe’s oldest graffiti murals. It
has become something of an unofficial landmark. For example, the Wikipedia page
on the area has since many years used it as an example of local culture.108 However,
as its surroundings began to be converted from an industrial to a residential area, the
painting’s existence became contested. The Stockholm City Museum suggested that
the work is worthy of protection, and the architect responsible for the development
suggested that the painting should be preserved as a cultural landmark in the develo-
ped area.109 The City Planning Council [Stadsbyggnadsnämnden] was of a different
opinion. In its decision on the development plans, the Council referred to the city’s
zero-tolerance policy and wrote that the building with the painting should preferably
be torn down:

The City Planning Council opposes the preservation […] The property will be located on the
main site in the central park. The reason put forward to allow the building to remain would
be a graffiti painting. As the city’s policy on graffiti vandalism stipulates a total rejection of
both vandalism [klotter] and graffiti [graffiti], the City Planning Council decisively rejects the
possibility of preserving this building.110

This decision to go against the advice of the Stockholm City Museum as well as the

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architect (thus reducing their institutional authority) makes a clear link between the
local anti-graffiti policy, based upon the idea of zero tolerance, and a legally produced
graffiti-mural. It thus clearly shows that the policy not only covers illegal graffiti, but
also affects fully legal artworks. This interpretation of the anti-graffiti policy, however,
seems to have been perceived as extreme by the left-wing parties of the opposition –
and by the Social Democratic Party who in many other cases had participated in the
development of zero tolerance. The political opposition made a joint special procla-
mation [särskilt uttalande], claiming that the right-wing parties were incapeble of
differentiate between graffiti art [graffiti] and graffiti vandalism [klotter].111 The vice
mayor responsible for the City Planning and Sports Division, and thus the chairman
of the City Planning Council, also had to explain the decision in more detail:

Graffiti creates an insecure housing environment and the painting [Fascinate] will bring ad-
ditional graffiti. I think it’s very unfortunate to preserve the wall, so we would rather see the
house and the property are removed. If the painting remains on the site, it will create an
unsafe environment.112

The arguments used here are those developed by zero tolerance – that graffiti creates
a feeling of unsafeness, and that legal graffiti by default leads to illegal graffiti. Such
arguments, however, seem to have been less effective when used in relation to a spe-
cific, almost twenty years old, and fairly popular work such as Fascinate, rather than
to a more vaguely defined phenomenon, such as ‘klotter’. The controversies over the
preservation of Fascinate have been ongoing since 2008, and when this is being writ-
ten, not yet fully settled. The right wing parties now also support preservation, and
no political party still suggests that it should be removed.113 But there is no decision
on how this preservation should be implemented, nor do there seem to be any funds
reserved for this matter.
Another case that caused a huge controversy was when the artwork Territorial
Pissing was displayed at the Market Art Fair in February, 2009, a work that the minis-
ter of culture described as “Incredibly provocative. Graffiti is illegal by its very nature.
This is not art”.114 The video-installation, called Territorial Pissing, by the Swedish ar-
tist Nug, could indeed be interpreted as provocative. It shows a masked person wildly
painting the inside of a subway with black paint, breaking a window and throwing
him/herself precipitately out of the train. Furthermore, the video installation was dis-
played alongside with precious antiques.115
The minister of culture’s critique of the artwork, however, sparked an intense and
heated debate that led the gallery to feel impelled to remove the work from display at
the art fair. SL also filed a report to the police demanding an investigation into how
the artwork had been produced, and issued a claim for financial compensation from
the exhibiting art gallery for alleged damages to public property.116 But even though
SL is supposed to document all vandalism, they failed to produce any evidence that

127
 Figure 4.5: Facsimile of the eviction of the exhibition STHLM Underground dated January 9, 2002.

they had repaired a carriage with damages of the kind visible in the video, and the
police could never prove that any crime had been committed during the film’s pro-
duction.117
The controversies over graffiti in a contemporary art context is not limited to ea-
sily understandable, provocative works such as Territorial Pissing. In January, 2002,
the exhibition STHLM Underground opened on premises owned by the city, and
managed by the Fire Department – which at the time was leasing it, free of cost, for
arrangements by different non-profit cultural organizations. In that sense, there was
nothing strange with STHLM Underground, since the exhibition was organized by
the non-profit youth association Legalize Art. But a few days after the exhibition
opened, a representative of the landlord arrived and levied a termination of the lease
in reference to the City’s anti-graffiti policy.118
The termination mentions that the organizer had referred to the event as an art
exhibition, and claimed that this was, to the contrary, a graffiti exhibition.119 After
having been closed for a few days, the exhibition re-opened, as the organizers had
examined the contract with the help of lawyers, who claimed that for the termination
to be valid, the municipality of Stockholm would have to prove that graffiti is not
art.120 The developments led to an intense debate on graffiti, and on zero tolerance in
relation to the freedom of speech. In an interview, the minister of culture, a Social
Democrat, was asked if one really was allowed to censor art exhibitions in Sweden,
and she answered that she did not have all “…details regarding this, but it does sound
very strange” to not display an art exhibition in a society with “freedom of speech and
free artistic expression”.121 Stockholm’s vice mayor of cultural affairs, of the Liberal Pe-
ople’s Party [Folkpartiet], took the opposite position, and defended the termination.

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She claimed that STHLM Underground was a provocation to Stockholm’s residents,
and implied that the organizers had acted deceitfully in order to be able to use the
premises.122
A little over a year after STHLM Underground, in the summer of 2003, another
exhibition, Extreme Passion, opened in Stockholm with partly the same artists, but
this time organized by the municipality’s own cultural institution, Kulturhuset. In the
time between the two exhibitions, several events occurred, ones crucial to survey in
order to understand why it was now possible to arrange an exhibition not only on the
municipality’s premises, but also with the municipality itself as the organizer. One was
that an election had changed the political majority in the municipality, from a coali-
tion of centre- and right-wing parties to a coalition of the Social Democratic Party,
the Left Party, and the Green Party, a majority with a slightly different interpretation
of zero tolerance of graffiti. But the more dramatic events are those briefly described
in section 4.4.1 regarding the investigations into allegations of corruption between
CSG and the SL safety officer, who had been the most prominent representative of
zero tolerance. One art critic writing about Extreme Passion referred to these events,
claiming that the exhibition would have been unacceptable during the zero tolerance
of previous years. She is, however, skeptical of the exhibition, assuming a position
reminiscent of the subcultural approach of the 1980s:

…since zero tolerance results in the opposite effect and often leads to more painting in the
streets, one should rather support Rydell’s [the former vice mayor of culture] old strategy of
banishment if one really wanted to encourage graffiti to develop on its own terms.123

This comparison of two similar exhibitions, STHLM Underground and Extreme Pas-
sion, suggests that zero-tolerance politics in Stockholm create an intricate relation
between anti-graffiti strategies within law enforcement and cultural institutions, and
the possibilities for the latter to work with graffiti as an artistic expression. The claim
of the art critic quoted above, even if it is anecdotal, further suggests that zero tole-
rance also has a certain effect on the possibilities to assume more diverse positions in
the mass-mediated debate.
The corruption investigation and scandal surrounding Falck Security’s illegal regis-
ter of suspected graffiti writers also led commentators to believe that zero tolerance
was over. For example, in his reportage book about graffiti subculture in Sweden,
Medan Svensson åt plankstek (2005), the culture journalist Per Andersson summarizes
zero tolerance of graffiti as a phenomenon of the past:

Zero tolerance consisted of roughly equal parts of extreme work by security companies and
intense lobbying. The battle took place both on the tracks in the night, and in the news-
paper columns and the political assemblies. Politically, and in terms of public opinion, zero
tolerance began to crumble even before the cooperation between SL and Falck [Security]

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 was broken, and CSG dissolved. Like all truly radical principles, the idea of zero tolerance
proved able to put its followers in inconvenient situations.124

It was, however, too early to dismiss zero tolerance as a possible, or even dominating,
political approach to graffiti, and the controversies have continued, as is obvious in the
cases of Fascinate and Territorial Pissing.
As seen above, the interpretation of zero tolerance’s relevance to institutional art
exhibitions seems to have differed between the political coalitions. Regarding legal
graffiti walls there seems to be less disagreement, as those have been described as pro-
blematic during periods of both left and right-wing rule in Stockholm. A legal wall
in the neighborhood of Bromma was closed in 2005, when Stockholm had a left-wing
majority. A newspaper article describes the event, and interviews the responsible civil
servant:

… the graffitists’ [klottrarnas] Mecca in Stockholm – has now been painted over following
a decision by Stockholm municipality in consultation with the police. “Graffiti is in itself is a
huge problem. In addition, they steal and do drugs…”125

Similar framings, with references to problems of drug abuse and widespread crimina-
lity among graffiti writers, can be found in other debates on legal graffiti walls. These
claims can also be linked to the launch of zero tolerance described in section 4.3.
Another claim made during the launch of zero tolerance, one that is common in the
debates on legal graffiti walls but not used in the case above, is that legal graffiti leads
to increased illegal graffiti.
In 2009, a youth center in the municipality of Sigtuna, in the northern part of the
Stockholm region, opened a legal graffiti wall. Even if Sigtuna is located more than 30
kilometers from Stockholm, the opening of this wall lead to protests instigated by po-
liticians in the municipality of Stockholm, who argued that such a wall was not a local
concern since it jeopardized the anti-graffiti efforts conducted in other municipalities
in the region.126 The proposed problems with the wall included a new claim, namely
that the wall could restrict the possibilities for law enforcement agencies to use their
enhanced powers to confiscate spray cans from suspected graffiti vandals, introduced
in 2003 (see Chapter 4.4.1):

The proximity of the legal wall in the municipality of Sigtuna renders impossible the police
force’s preventive work. The graffiti vandal [klottraren] only needs declare to be on their way
to the legal wall in Märsta. The police forces are then powerless and cannot perform their
previously so successful prevention work. According to police data, more than 200 such
seizures are conducted each month.127

This claim, that the legal wall hampered the preventive work, was repeated when

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Metro reported about the open letter.128 In this case, too, there is an intricate relations-
hip between anti-graffiti strategies within law enforcement, and cultural institutions’
possibilities to pursue its ideas of how to work with graffiti as an artistic expression.
In this case the municipality of Sigtuna, however, rejected the protests, and allowed
the wall to remain functional.129
Since 2007 the municipality of Stockholm has an anti-graffiti policy that explicitly
limits the ability to legally practice graffiti. It states that organizations and com-
panies governed or supported by the municipality always have to be clear in their
stance on graffiti. No institution may thus contribute to an activity “that in any way
may spark interest in and lead to graffiti vandalism [klotter], illegal graffiti or similar
vandalism”.130 It was this policy that was referred to when the City Planning Coun-
cil [Stadsbyggnadsnämnden] rejected the preservation of Fascinate. The policy thus
opens for an interpretation of zero tolerance that may lead to a paradoxical approach,
where graffiti is said to be illegal since graffiti writers do not ask for permission, but
where it is also is impossible to get permission to do graffiti legally, since that may
spark an interest in illegal graffiti. This paradox is occasionally explicitly addressed, as
when the vice mayor of Stockholm, and head of urban planning and traffic, in 2007
explained the city’s zero tolerance:

– If one wants to produce a work of art [in the public space], one must seek permission.
Anything else is illegal.
Interviewer: Can one seek permission to produce a graffiti painting?
− No, we do not accept graffiti in Stockholm. And we do not think, like some others do, that
graffiti is an art form. We do not want graffiti here.131

It is also important to point out that this logic of simultaneous demands and denials
of permission is not restricted to property owned or funded by the municipality of
Stockholm, but may apply to any institution that wants to operate in the public realm.
The latest zero-tolerance policy is written so that it seems to cover all the public re-
alms of the city, including the property of private landlords: “The environment of the
city is everyone’s property and it is everyone’s responsibility to care for it”.132
In the case of the mural Hornsplan (2009) by Atom, the company JM was denied a
permit to paint their own temporary fence since it could be seen from the street, and
was placed on grounds owned by the municipality.133 When the autonomous culture
center Cyklopen built a legal wall, the municipality used rules that apply to building
permits in order to stop the wall.134 Cyklopen, however, answered by mounting wheels
on the wooden fence that they used as legal wall so it could be regarded as a vehicle,
for which the organization did not need a permit.135
The events at Cyklopen also show that there have been possibilities for at least
some organizations circumvent the strategies to obstruct legal graffiti within zero to-
lerance. This was also evident in the case of STHLM Underground, where the organi-

131
 zers could dispute the eviction after they found out that the municipality would have
to prove that graffiti was not art in order to make it legally valid. These possibilities
are, however, probably only an option for a minority of organizations, namely those
that have a clear independence from the municipality, and are willing to risk possible
future co-operations with it.
It could, however, also be worth pointing out, again, that the hampering of legal graffiti
has varied over time. Nor has there been an explicit prohibition of all graffiti, not even on
the municipality of Stockholm’s own premises. A search for ‘graffiti’ in the database of
Stockholm’s public libraries [Stockholms stadsbibliotek] results in more than 100 hits, and
the vast majority of these refers to titles of different books discussing subcultural graffiti
as a cultural and artistic phenomenon. This is strange, considering the graffiti policy’s
clear statement that the municipality should not participate in any circumstance that may
arouse interest in graffiti vandalism [klotter] or illegal graffiti [olaglig graffiti], and clearly
suggests that libraries in the municipality of Stockholm have not been affected by zero
tolerance in the same way that art institutions and youth centers have.
One explanation could be that libraries collect books, and that these are not graffiti
per se, but books discussing graffiti and the images and representations of graffiti; or,
to make use of Gregory Snyder’s claim on graffiti magazines and websites, that books
decriminalize graffiti by bringing it out of its physical context (see Chapter 2.1). But
Territorial Pissing was not graffiti per se, but a video installation. And it should not
be necessary to decriminalize Fascinate in order to preserve it, since this work was
already fully legal. There are, as we have seen, several cases where legal graffiti has
been interpreted as inspiring illegal graffiti, and the separation of graffiti from the
representation of graffiti can clearly not be the primary reason for the difference in
municipal policy toward libraries, on the one hand, and art institutions on the other.
Another explanation could be the difference between exhibitions by art institu-
tions and the act of collecting book by libraries. Art exhibitions usually take place
during a specific time and are often promoted as cultural events, whereas the col-
lection of books by libraries is often a long-term commitment, and the acquisition
of specific books rarely promoted, but quietly inserted into the collections. This
explanation would be in line with the zero-tolerance policy’s ambition to withdraw
opposing perspectives on graffiti from the public debate. But even if this difference
might contribute to the libraries’ possibilities to work with graffiti, it seems insuffi-
cient as a full explanation.
A third explanation, and perhaps the most important, is that it probably would be
far more controversial for the municipality to go in and dictate the specific content of
libraries than to restrict the activities of art institutions and youth centers. This would
also mean that the practices of zero tolerance, by assuming different approaches to
books than to pictures, also follow a deep cultural structure: the divide between word
and image. In his seminal study The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory
of Response (1989), David Freedberg writes about this divide in relation to iconoclas-

132
tic battles in different historical contexts. Freedberg suggests that iconoclasm (the
destruction of images) can be linked to a profound anxiety regarding images in the
intellectual history of Western culture, with roots in, for example, Neo-Platonism’s
skepticism of depiction, and the fear of idolatry in the Judaeo-Christian tradition,
where God is the Word, an anxiety based on connecting sight with the dangers of
emotional involvement and sensuous arousal.136 In the perspective of this tradition,
images have often been perceived as books of the illiterate, where images thus legi-
timately could be used for didactic purposes, but should not be adored.137
The rejection of the display of graffiti imagery in the public realm and in art gal-
leries and the acceptance of graffiti in books in libraries clearly seem to follow this
old cultural pattern, especially considering the wording in the anti-graffiti policy that
the municipality should not participate in any activity that may spark interest in and
lead to graffiti.
Freedberg also point at a related, but seemingly more utilitarian, argument against
images, one that also echoes throughout the centuries: that the production of images
constitutes an unjustified use of resources, and that the money used on visual adorn-
ment instead could be used for more pressing purposes. Writing on the subject of the
Golden Calf in general, and the specific context of Lucas van Leyden’s painting Dance
Round the Golden Calf, Freedberg states:

…in the 1520s there can hardly have been one soul in Christendom who remained unaware
of the view – if he or she did not feel it anyway – that wealth was better spent on the living
images of God, the poor, and that substantial expense spent on material imagery got one
nowhere, except further into fleshy corruption.138

Similar types of arguments can also be found in the debate on graffiti, in the claim
that the money spent on removing graffiti would better be used for other purposes.
Graffiti is often reported to cost a lot of money; money that is both described as an
unnecessary expense that could better be used for other tasks, and at the same time an
unfortunate but necessary expense to create a clean and safe city.139 The use of econo-
mic resources in relation to zero tolerance and graffiti will form an important aspect
of the forthcoming section.

4.5 The Anti-Graffiti Industry

I have not been able to find any systematic evaluation of the effects of zero tolerance
in Stockholm, neither of it as a method to reduce crime, nor of its potential other
effects.140 This leads to the assumption that it, despite all the controversies, has remai-
ned as a fairly uncontested approach within regional politics on graffiti. The following
section is thus intended to explain why zero tolerance has become a dominating app-
roach within the municipality of Stockholm by utilizing the results from above and

133
 setting them in relation to previous critical discussions on anti-graffiti strategies, es-
pecially those that consider the economic aspects.
It might, of course, be possible to explain the popularity of zero tolerance of graffiti
with a simple answer: It is popular because adolescents and young adults pose problems by
painting graffiti on the property of others without the consent of the owner. Ownership is
one key principle of the liberal and capitalist model of society, and from this perspective,
there are fully legitimate reasons to combat illegal graffiti. But this is not sufficient as an
explanation, since illegal graffiti also appears in places where there is no zero tolerance.
Furthermore, ownership is only one of several key principles in this model of society,
where the right to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech are other such
key principles. And the institutional changes created by zero tolerance described abo-
ve – with, for example, expanded possibilities for the police to body search adolescents
and the hampering of legal possibilities to paint graffiti – could be said to obstruct such
principles. From this perspective, the zero tolerance of graffiti, or even perhaps graffiti
per se, could be said to create a dilemma by activating several key principles of liberal
society simultaneously. This might be one of the reasons for the complex and diverse
debates that surround the issue of graffiti. This dilemma cannot, however, explain the
dominance of zero tolerance. On the contrary, it makes it even more puzzling.
Nor could a brief survey of crime statistics explain the use of zero tolerance by
substantiating its goals of reducing illegal graffiti. The Swedish National Council for
Crime Prevention [BRÅ] is the authority responsible for maintaining statistics on
reported crimes. An examination of the statistics conducted by the web magazine Ga-
tukonst.se shows that cities with zero tolerance often have significantly higher num-
bers of crimes reported to the police than cities without zero tolerance, so it does not
seem as a successful method of reducing crime.141 This difference could at least partly
be due to a higher propensity to report illegal graffiti in cities that have zero tolerance
than in cities that do not. But the huge difference in the number of reported crimes
between Stockholm on the one hand, and Malmö and Norrköping on the other, is
difficult to explain solely on the basis of differences in data collection.142 A systematic
scientific study combining BRÅ statistics with a survey of local graffiti policies might
yield interesting results. For the purposes of this thesis, however, it suffices however to
conclude that there are many questions regarding both the principal legitimacy and
the efficiency of zero tolerance – circumstances that suggest that one has to search for
explanations in the wider political, cultural, and economic contexts rather than in the
more narrow sphere of law enforcement.
Firstly, the overall historical conditions could be taken into brief consideration.
The Swedish version of zero tolerance was launched during the long 1990s, which
stretched from one important world event to another: from the fall of the Berlin Wall,
in November, 1989, to the attack on the World Trade Center, in September, 2001. It
was the mid-1990s, East European socialism had collapsed, and a free-market capi-
talism had emerged as the sole winner of the fight between the two main ideological

134
systems of the Cold War. It is possible that this decade, where the lack of alternatives
to a liberal and pluralistic society based on the capitalist market formed a breeding
ground for such a radical solution as zero tolerance, as well as the reconfiguration of
what previously had been described as vandalism into a serious crime.
Secondly, the specific regional variables should be taken into brief consideration.
Here, the joint launch of SL’s Operation Safety and the newspaper Metro, with both
SL Direct and Metro’s general dependence on the transit authority. The establishment
of Stockholm’s zero tolerance of graffiti probably relied on SL being able to commu-
nicate a specific and narrow perspective on graffiti week after week, for several years
and to several hundred thousand readers.
The explanation must however also be sought in a broader socio-economic and cul-
tural context, mediating between the macro level (international geopolitical circum-
stances) and the micro level (specific local contexts). The sociologist Catharina Thörn
has, in an essay on zero tolerance, pointed out that one important factor to consider
are the various cultural strategies to aestheticize public space in order “…to attract
foreign investors and tourists”.143 This process, often referred to as city branding, is one
of the recent two decades’ most visible changes in urban planning policy, in Sweden
as well as internationally, and Thörn suggests that when politics and business become
increasingly interested in the aesthetic representativeness of public space, deviations
such as illegal graffiti and visibly homeless people begging on the streets become a
bigger problem.144 This seems to have been central in Stockholm as well. When zero
tolerance of graffiti was established, several accounts refer to the importance of ma-
king the city attractive to tourists. In an ad in Metro from the city of Stockholm, in
1995, illegal graffiti comes across as a recently discovered phenomenon:

The city’s politicians market Stockholm as an attractive city to live and work in. Then we look
extra carefully around us and try to see Stockholm with new eyes. And suddenly we see
that the city is littered and full of graffiti. Whether we are hosting important guests or not, we
must take vigorous action against the littering – this is not acceptable.145

Ronald Kramer has argued similarly, but in respect to New York City, that anti-graf-
fiti efforts could be linked to the concept of growth machines (“loose coalitions that
form between a variety of interests, such as local political elites, landowners, corporate
developers and speculators” united by “an interest in extracting the maximum profit
possible from how land is put to use”).146
At the same time, it is obviously no law of nature that graffiti stands in opposition
to an attractive city, not even in the instrumental sense suggested by the ad above.
Gregory Snyder has made a comparative study on the amount of illegal graffiti on
postboxes in one area in Brooklyn, and one in downtown Manhattan. In comparison
with Manhattan, the area in Brooklyn had considerably less graffiti, but over thirty
percent more reports of violent crime. His results furthermore suggest that “…resi-

135
 dents, tourists, and high end boutiques co-exist with graffiti vandalism in a relatively
symbiotic fashion.”147 And in recent years, both tourists and groups within the re-
sourceful urban middle class have been gravitating toward graffiti and street art filled
neighborhoods like Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, and Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, and
Williamsburg in Brooklyn. One result of this process is that the street artist Banksy
has been accused of contributing to gentrification, as his stencils may participate in
pushing up house prices.148
And as pointed out above, there is little evidence to substantiate the claim that zero
tolerance of graffiti necessarily leads to a reduction of illegal graffiti. Thörn argues that
crackdown on graffiti rather has had the opposite effect:

The “war on graffiti” therefore gives birth to a paradox. Stout warfare by the authorities
primarily provides nourishment to an equally stout resistance – a struggle that no one can
win.149

Michael Johnson is onto something similar in his criminological thesis. However, his
results also suggest that although a “war on graffiti” may be a battle that no one can
win, it is still a struggle with beneficiaries.
One Johnson’s points of departure is the question of why graffiti still, decades after
its emergence, functions as a youth culture. In the eighties, many researchers and po-
liticians thought that it was a phenomenon that would soon disappear, either through
an incorporation into society or by losing its function for youths. Johnson’s answer is
that graffiti continues to be a youth culture in large part precisely because of the com-
bat – that the police and security guards, not least through the media gambit, validate
graffiti and make it more important for young people who engage in it.150 In this way,
graffiti writers depend on the public opposition, although that opposition must not
necessarily come in the form of zero tolerance.
Johnson, however, also points to an opposite dependence, namely that security and
graffiti-removal companies are financially dependent on the activity of graffiti writers.
Building on Howard S. Becker’s concept of moral entrepreneurs, he also suggests that
individual officers and officials within the municipality and county benefit from graffiti,
as it lends them a social position. Johnson refers to these as different interest groups:

These groups and the graffiti writers are interdependent. Graffiti writers are dependent on
the interest groups in that it is these that keep the graffiti on the social agenda, and thus
are helping to confirm the youths. [...] Interest groups are for their part depending of graffiti
writers in order to keep their jobs. They are also dependent on that the rest of society looks
at graffiti as something dangerous, and as threatening, so that their work will be taken
seriously.151

Johnson provides a possible explanation for how graffiti as a youth culture still, almost

136
thirty years after the first tags were written in the Stockholm subway, still attracts new
generations of young people. The explanation also provides an explanation to why
zero tolerance, despite highly doubtful results, has become the dominant approach.
From Johnson’s perspective, zero tolerance exists not because it is the most effective
response to graffiti, but because it is the response most suitable to the special interests
that operate within this realm.
Admittedly it is neither in SL’s, the municipality of Stockholm’s, or the police for-
ce’s interest to exaggerate problems, or to use ineffective methods, but Johnson sug-
gests that there may be a significant difference between an organization’s interests,
and the interests of single participants within the same organization, between what
one may call the macro and micro interests. By describing graffiti as a gateway to cri-
me, or as contributing to insecurity, a unit within the police or the municipality may
receive more attention, and thus more resources.
There is also another, broader socio-economic transformation, one that coincides
with the launch of zero tolerance. A transformation built on what is commonly referred
to as new public management: that government, local authorities, and public corpora-
tions outsource large parts of their operations to private subcontractors. To Johnson’s
synchronic criminological and sociological explanation of graffiti writing and comba-
ting as interdependent phenomena, it is possible to add a historical dimension. In the
1980s, when graffiti began to be debated as a subculture, graffiti removal was primarily
handled by clean staff employed by SL and the municipality of Stockholm, which is
why it may have been reasonable to quite simply describe the removal as an expense. In
the 1990s, when zero tolerance is established, public operations are increasingly being
outsourced, and graffiti removal thereby becomes one of several services in a market.
The descriptions in media rarely acknowledge that graffiti removal is a product
that generates profit for private entrepreneurs. Instead it is primarily described as an
expensive and costly problem, and the removal companies are described as a part of
the solution to this problem. Sometimes, as in the case below, graffiti removal is even
framed as a kind of voluntary, or nearly philanthropic endeavor:

His work never ends. Sometimes he starts on the same spot where he, at least fairly satis-
fied, finished off his hard work the day before. To an outsider, it seems almost like a repetiti-
ve, never-ending nightmare. [...] The work is heavy but they will not give up.152

This logical structure, the combination of profit making and removal described as a
non-profit endeavor, could be understood as a Swedish version of the growth-machi-
ne logic described by Ronald Kramer:

anti-graffiti rhetoric is very effective in generating widespread public support for growth
machines by linking efforts at crime reduction to the economic and social order of things.
This rhetorical trope operates on the assumption, arguably correct, that people are more

137
 likely to support anti-crime initiatives than what may appear to be the public subsidization
of private (or “big”) business.153

The potential to profit from graffiti removal, however, interests stakeholders from
closely related industries. One unusual example of an explicit argument for a com-
bination of zero tolerance and profiteering was published during the late 1990s, in a
trade magazine produced by Swedish painting companies. The first article is about
zero tolerance as a solution to a major social problem. In the article that follows it, a
consultant who himself sells and rents out equipment for removing graffiti explains:
“The market is endless. This is a great chance for every painting business!”154
A search for graffiti removal among companies on www.eniro.se shows that there
are now nearly 1,500 companies in Sweden offering commercial services in the field.155
At a graffiti seminar organized by the police in Oslo, in the spring of 2011, the mu-
nicipality of Stockholm’s representative presented a “collaboration for zero toleran-
ce” with the following operators: the municipality of Stockholm, SL, the Stockholm
county police, and the security company CSG. In this context, zero tolerance thus
comprises the interplay of a municipality, a publicly owned company, a police au-
thority, and a private security company – stakeholders whose interests in the issue of
graffiti differ greatly. The delegation from Stockholm also included representatives
of the graffiti-removal business, but no representatives from social authorities or the
culture sector.156
Prior to and since the seminar, one of the participating companies in Oslo has ar-
ranged several “customer seminars” [beställarseminarium] across Sweden with “inte-
resting lectures illustrating the problems [with graffiti], which provide an opportunity
for an exchange of experiences and the opportunity to network”.157 The lecturers re-
present, among others, a company who claims to be able to deliver “the most effective
systems to enhance the removal of graffiti,” and a producer of “eco-efficient products
for graffiti removal and graffiti protection.” Included in the list of speakers is also the
representative of Stockholm municipality, and one of the police officers who partici-
pated in Oslo.158
These are thus commercial events, designed to launch various products, as well as
the need for them. In this context, institutions involved in zero tolerance participate
in order to market various commercial anti-graffiti products. But zero-tolerance argu-
mentation is also used for the same purpose. The invitation states that “People often
feel unsafe in graffiti-filled [nedklottrade] environments. Furthermore, more graffiti
is written [klottras] where there already is graffiti [klotter]”.159
On the one hand, the seminar in Oslo is an official event with participants from
government agencies and public companies, as well as private, profit-making busines-
ses. On the other hand, the “customer seminars” are put on by commercial companies
that market products, with the active support of the authorities that combat graffiti.
In both cases, largely the same stakeholders, and in many cases even the same indivi-

138
duals, come together in a collaboration that would hardly be conceivable without the
ideology of zero tolerance.
To summarize, these “customer seminars” use both zero-tolerance rhetoric and
official representatives for distinctly commercial purposes. The commercial use of
zero-tolerance arguments about insecurity and the importance of rapid removal are
not unique, but have in recent years become increasingly common in the marketing of
graffiti-removal products. One of the strengths of zero tolerance is that it is clear in its
intent – it seeks a safe and tidy public place without graffiti. It is, however, as we have
seen, vague both in its methods and in its long-term results. In this way, zero tolerance
resembles advertising, and its message also suits the economic interests of those who
sell products at the above-mentioned seminars. The goal – a society free of graffiti –
must loom on the horizon; otherwise one risks becoming disillusioned as a customer.
But if the demand for their services shall remain, so must a supply of new graffiti to
remove and combat. The transparent short-term goal of zero tolerance of fast graffiti
removal also creates a distinct relationship between client and subcontractors. It is
easy for the municipality to specify what needs to be done, and the entrepreneur has
to deliver concrete results. From this perspective, zero tolerance has had a great impact
because it is the anti-graffiti strategy that best suits the new public economy that has
emerged in recent years, and best suits the agents in a market that we may call the
anti-graffiti industry. This anti-graffiti industry could thus be seen as an institutional
structure in itself, one specific for graffiti.
If one considers zero tolerance from this economic-institutional perspective, its
viability over time also becomes more comprehensible. It explains how zero tolerance
could survive the corruption scandal within SL and Falck Security, which in this light
cannot be reduced to a single failure within an otherwise working system. The bribes
could then be seen as the result of neglected political control and a lack of debate, pre-
cisely because the unilateral perspective of zero tolerance had rendered most critical
viewpoints irrelevant. The bribery scandal then becomes unique in its form, but not
in its underlying cause: a failure to acknowledge of the commercial interests at work
within zero tolerance.
This is not to claim that zero tolerance emerged precisely for the reason of econo-
mic profit, nor that this fully explains zero tolerance’s popularity. Firstly, this market
did not exist when SL launched the policy. Secondly, it is not very likely that zero
tolerance would have gained any support if these economic aspects had been obvious.
Initially, one probably has to understand the driving forces behind zero tolerance as a
sincere indignation with a problem that is perceived as not being taken seriously, and
an equally sincere belief in zero tolerance methods as the most effective way to fight
it. But during its implementation, commercial interests exploited this combination of
indignation and belief. Without commercial support, zero tolerance would most likely
have become one strategy among several others.
To use Johnson’s terminology: based on the initial macro interest – SL’s and other

139
 property owners who wish that their problems with illegal graffiti would be conside-
red a serious problem – it seems that zero tolerance is at once a success and a failure; a
success in framing graffiti as primarily a problem and marginalizing claims that graf-
fiti is art, but a failure when it came to solving the problem – graffiti did not disappear.
It may be interesting to briefly reflect on how strategies of domestication during the
1980s would function within the new municipal economy. If, say, a youth center had
an open graffiti wall, combined with some form of outreach program. It would likely
generate no commercial revenue, not even if it functioned as the proponents of the
strategy claimed, and reduced the illegal act of painting. On the contrary, by reducing
the amount of illegal graffiti, it would represent an immediate threat to the economic
interests of the graffiti-removal businesses and security companies who, through zero
tolerance, work closely with the municipality.
Even if it did not serve any crime-prevention purpose, a legal wall might repre-
sent an indirect problem for these interests, since it may function as a platform for
enunciating statements circulating within the consenting discursive formation, and
upholding aspects than vandalism and a disruption of safety. The absence of legal
walls, as well as the hampering limitation of possibilities to exhibit graffiti, are thus
likely crucial in maintaining zero-tolerance claims of graffiti as something that creates
unsafe environments, and descriptions of graffiti artists as either hardened criminals
or innocent adolescents on their way into crime and drug abuse.

140
Endnotes
1
Ronald Kramer, “Moral Panics and Urban Growth
Machines: Official Reactions to Graffiti in New York
City, 1990–2005”, Qualitative Sociology, Septem-
ber 2010, Volume 33, Issue 3, p. 303.
2
George L. Kelling & James Q. Wilson, “Broken
Windows”, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1982.
The article can be downloaded from the think tank
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s website.
3
George L. Kelling & William J. Bratton, “Declining
Crime Rates: Insiders’ Views of the New York City
Story”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology,
Volume 88, Issue 4, Summer 1998.
4
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/kelling.
htm [retrieved 2012-02-18].
5
See for example Bernard E. Harcourt, (2001).
Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken
Windows Policing. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press. For a detailed summary of the academic
debate and concise critical examination of the
broken-window hypothesis, see Ronald Kramer,
“Political Elites, ‘Broken Windows’, and the Com-
modification of Urban Space”, Critical Crimino-
logy, September 2012, Volume 20, Issue 3, pp.
230–234.
6
Eliot Spitzer (1999), The New York City Poli-
ce Department’s ‘Stop and Frisk’ Practices: A
Report to the People of the State of New York, a
report released by Attorney General, Civil Rights
Bureau.
7
George L. Kelling: How New York Became Safe:
The Full Story. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/
nytom_ny-crime-decline.html [retrieved 2014-08-
01]. Kelling writes: “Not only did the effectiveness
of Broken Windows undermine the decades-long
assumption that only large-scale social and eco-
nomic change could prevent crime; it also meant
that breakthroughs in crime prevention could come
from the Right—anathema to criminologists, most
of whom occupied the far Left”.
8
Kelling & Wilson, (1982).
9
Castleman (1982), pp. 140–143.
10
Austin (2001), p. 86.
11
Austin (2001), pp. 80–84.
12
Ronald Kramer, “Moral Panics and Urban Growth
Machines: Official Reactions to Graffiti in New York
City, 1990–2005”, Qualitative Sociology, Septem-
ber 2010, Volume 33, Issue 3, p. 303.
13
I have in German articles on graffiti noticed the
words ‘Schmiererei’ [smearing, denoting graffiti
vandalism] and ‘Sprüher’ [sprayer, denoting graffiti
writer], words that seem to create similar transla-
tional complexities.
14
Jacobson (1996), p. 14: “Det i svenskan äldre
ordet klotter har i media fått beteckna äldre (eller
’sämre’) graffiti, och det i svenskan nyare ordet
graffiti har likaledes i media fått beteckna nyare
(eller ’bättre’) graffiti.” (Translation by author).
15
One example where the two words explicitly are
suggested to denote the same thing can be found
in Cecilia Olsson, “SLs ansikte i skolan”, Metro,
1998-09-30.
16
Kerstin Nilsson, “Klottret som platsar på galleri-
erna”, Aftonbladet, 1989-04-06.
17
Solveig Hollari (2005), Klotterförebyggande
åtgärder, Idéskrift nr 13. Stockholm: Brottsfö-
rebyggande rådet: “Klotter är alltså det olagliga
uttrycket (skadegörelsebrottslighet) och graffiti är
det lagliga uttrycket. [...] Likartade motiv kan alltså
vara både klotter och graffiti. Den enda skillnaden
är alltså om bilden är lagligt eller olagligt målad”
(translation by author).
18
Coding of crime, rules and policies [Kodning
av brott, anvisningar och regler], Version 11.0,
Reviderad december 2012. Downloadable from:
http://www.bra.se/bra/publikationer/arkiv/publika-
tioner/2012-12-20-kodning-av-brott.html [retrieved
2014-08-31].
19
Björn Jonsson, Graffiti eller klotter? En diskur-
sanalys av politisk debatt och lokala praktiker,
(Göteborg, 2004), p. 49: “…utgör begrepp i kon-
kurrerande diskurser och förståelsesammanhang
 […] utifrån om företeelsen ska uppfattas som ett
brott eller som ett kulturellt uttryck” (translation by
author).
20
Jonsson, p. 49.
21
Jonsson (2004), pp. 33–34.
22
See for example: Niklas Maupoix, “Göteborgs
mest ommålade hus”, Göteborgs-Posten, 2004-
07-16: Graffiti culture emerged in New York in
the 60s as the gangs started to mark out their
territories. In Sweden, it has been around since
the early 80s [Graffitikulturen uppstod i New York
på 60-talet för att gängen skulle märka sina revir. I
Sverige har den funnits sedan i början på 80-talet]
(translation by author). Similar descriptions could
be found in Leif Berg, “Ny bok om graffitikultur av
Per-Olof Sännås”, Dagens Nyheter, 1993-07-16,
and Gunilla Kinn, “Gängen tävlade med varandra”,
Göteborgs-Posten, 1999-06-14.
23
Unsigned article (Letter to the editor, signed Hu-
segare): Vestmanlands Läns Tiding, 1891-10-20:
“Vanligt ordningssinne stötes för hufvudet af dessa
oordningar och husegarnes kassor få ledsamma
ingrepp” (translation by author). I would like to
thank Tobias Barenthin Lindblad, who found this
article in VLT’s archives and generously shared it
with me.
24
Stewart (1989) p. 19.
25
Stewart (1989) p. 19. See also Jacobson (1996),
p. 178.
26
Jean Baudrillard (1993) [1976], p. 80. Baudril-
lard refers to it as “…the Stockholm ‘protest wall’
where one is at liberty to protest on a certain
surface, but where it is forbidden to put graffiti on
neighbouring surfaces”.
27
Jacobson (1996) p. 169. There are similar pro-
cesses in many countries in Europe at around this
time. For a discussion of hip-hop as transnational
phenomenon in Europe, see Sina A. Nitzsche
och Walter Grünzweig (ed.) (2013) Hip-Hop in
Europe: Cultural Identities and Transnational
Flows. Münster LIT Verlag, pp. 4–16. For hip-hop
142
in Sweden see Ove Sernhede & Johan Söderman
(2010), Planet Hiphop: om hiphop som folkbild-
ning och social moblisering. Malmö: Liber.
28
Jacobson (1996), pp. 167–182 and 190–195.
29
Jacobson (1996) p. 20, and 219–231. Jacobson’s
bibliography also includes occasional (selected)
articles from newspapers from Scandinavian
countries other than Sweden. These have been
excluded in this compilation.
30
I have made a qualitative selection of 122 articles
published between September, 1984, and October,
1989. The selection is based on Jacobson’s com-
ments or use of the material, and to some extent
on what content is hinted at in the headlines. The
primary focus has thus been on articles published
1987–1989 in newspapers from the Stockholm
metropolitan area. This geographical focus is de-
pendent on the aim of studying how zero tolerance
has been interpreted and adopted in Stockholm,
and time span on Jacobson’s identification of an
ongoing debate on graffiti these years. Jacob-
son’s list has been supplemented with occasional
articles from the same period found elsewhere, for
example through targeted searches in the media
database Retriever.
31
Lars Peder Hedberg, “Vandalism eller folk-
konst?” Dagens Nyheter, 1977-04-23.
32
Jacobson (1996), p. 171 and 190.
33
Jacobson (1996), p. 186.
34
Three of these four approaches resemble the
three discourses (combating, controlling and affir-
ming) described by Jonsson (2004) and referred to
above. Combating would then correspond to com-
bating, controlling to the domestication approach,
and affirmative to a combination of subcultural and
considering approach. It is however important to
keep in mind that Jonsson’s analysis is conducted
on a different type of material and approximately
fifteen years later, and there are significant diffe-
rences between the concepts.
35
Jacobson (1996) pp. 190–191.
36
Unsigned article, “Klotter är brott”, Dagens
Nyheter, 1989-01-23.
37
Pelle Jacobsson, “De kräver hårdare tag mot
klottrare”, Aftonbladet 1989-02-07.
38
Government bill: [Proposition] 1987/88:143.
39
Parliamentary report: [Betänkande]
1988/89:JuU13 Förverkande vid skadegörelse.
40
See for example Börje Karlsson, “Graffiti är inte
klotter”, Dagens Nyheter, 1987-03-13.
41
Stefan Bokström, “Så här vill han ha det på
tunnelbanan”, Expressen, 1987-03-11.
42
Bokström (1987).“På det här sättet blir det] inte
lika spännande att retas med vuxensamhället
samtidigt som de kreativa egenskaperna hos de
unga kan kanaliseras till något positivt” (translation
by author).
43
Bokström (1987).
44
Börje Karlsson, “Graffiti är inte klotter”, Dagens
Nyheter, 1987-03-13.
45
Jacobson (1996), p. 192.
46
Lars Nittve, “Daze! Crash!! Lee!!! Noc!!!!”, Svens-
ka Dagbladet, 1985-12-07: “…hundratusentals
pendlare mellan Bronx och Brooklyn kan se graf-
fitiskrivarnas färgstarka fanfarer, deras ’blasters’
och ’tags’ på de bullrande vagnarnas smutsgrå
sidor […] Fjärran tunnelbanans bullrande inferno,
på prydliga tavlor i konsthallens salar, förvandlas
de stolta fanfarerna till ett sorgligt memento om
vad kulturrådet brukar kalla ’kommersialismens
negativa biverkningar’” (translation by author).
47
Marika Ehrenkrona, “Här dör klottret”, Expres-
sen, 1989-02-15: “Graffitin dog när den kom in på
gallerier och klottrarna började sälja sina verk”
(translation by author).
48
Leif Nylén, “Zip in town”, Dagens Nyheter, 1987-
02-21: “…ett antal seniormedborgares oförblom-
merat aggressiva förtrytelse över juniormedbor-
garnas framfart […] som präglar väggar och säten
i tunnelbanevagnarna med sina fiktiva, mystiska
identiteter och fräckt bryter gränsen mellan privat
och offentligt” (translation by author).
49
Carl Johan De Geer, “Underjordens väktare”,
Aftonbladet, 1987-05-30: “små vågors spel på en
stilla vattenyta” and “det ena utesluter på inget
sätt det andra […] det fullklottrade rummet är helt
enkelt mysigt! Klottra på då bara, både hemma och
borta, blir då budskapet!” (translation by author).
50
Kerstin Vinterhed, “Bli klottrarnas vänner!”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1987-12-19: “…lyckats utlösa en
gemensam, kraftfull vuxen reaktion av det gamla
hederliga slaget, en reaktion som inte går att ta
miste på i sin auktoritära myndighet” (translation
by author).
51
Sigge Anderberg, “Stan som vann över klottrar-
na”, Dagens Nyheter, 1989-02-15.
52
Anders Sundström, “SL imponerat av New Yorks
anti-klotterkampanj: ’Vi ska också vinna’”, Dagens
Nyheter, 1989-02-15. Björn Jonsson has noticed
similar exchanges between local, regional and
transnational contexts by institutions working with
graffiti in the early 2000s. See Jonsson (2004), pp.
45–46.
53
Barbro Jöberger, “Raseri mot klottrarna”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1987-02-15: “Hela dagen ringer
människor. Pensionärer mest, ofta anonyma. […]
Hatet, ett vitglödgat barnhat strömmar ur luren”
(translation by author).
54
See for example Nils-Åke Karlsson, Klottra inte
bort våra ungdomar, Aftonbladet, 1989-02-05, and
Lars Ohlson, Storm mot klottrarna, Aftonbladet,
1989-02-15.
55
Carina Gerken, “Klotter gör mig lycklig!”, Afton-
bladet, 1989-01-29.
56
As Joe Austin remarks in his similar analysis of
the public debate in New York City, letters to the
editor should not in any naïve way be conside-
red a more correct reflection of a general public
opinion than professional journalism. But Austin
finds a clear difference between New York Times’
editorials on one hand and letters to the editor
on the other, and suggests that this difference is
dependent on different professional practices, thus
143
 opening up for a broader variety of opinions. See
Austin (2001), p. 89.
57
See for example Bengt Andersson, “Klottrarna
slår knockout på SL”, Dagens Nyheter, 1987-11-
21, and Georg Winberg, “Väktare mot vandaler”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1989-01-12.
58
See for example “Jag älskar graffiti”, Expressen,
1986-04-19, and Ingemar Lyshag, “Bara graffiti kan
stoppa klottrarna”, Aftonbladet, 1987-03-22.
59
See for example Börje Karlsson, “Graffiti är inte
klotter”, Dagens Nyheter, 1987-03-13.
60
Maria Lundgren, “Hets mot klottrarna”, Dagens
Nyheter, 1989-01-31: “Flera massmedier verkar
säkra på att skrivandet på allmän egendom är en
fråga där allas gemensamma uppfattning flyter
fram som en inte utbyggd Norrlandsälv. Varför in-
formeras jag annars så ofta i TV och press om vad
alla stockholmare, hela svenska folket, alltså även
jag tycker?” (translation by author).
61
“Stockholmarna Tycker”, folder published by
Gatu- och fastighetskontoret, Stockholms stad,
September, 1994.
62
Operation trygghet, p. 1. “kunna erbjuda resenä-
rerna en hel, ren, snygg och trygg resa” (translation
by author).
63
Petter Beckman, “Adelsohn till attack mot gatu-
våldet”, Dagens Nyheter, 1994-10-19.
64
Operation trygghet, p. 10.
65
Operation trygghet, appendix 8, p. 2: “Att all-
mänheten skulle bilda effektiv opinion mot klottret”
(translation by author).
66
Eva Bäckstedt, “Klotter stoppade T-banan”,
Svenska Dagbladet, 1987-11-16.
67
Operation trygghet, appendix 8, pp. 3–4:
“Fortfarande finns det många – privatpersoner,
myndighetsrepresentanter och opinionsbildare –
som har en okunnigt troskyldig, ibland respektfullt
beundrande, hållning gentemot klottrare och klot-
ter. […] att det är en ungdomskultur som man vis-
serligen kanske inte förstår, men som man måste
visa uppskattning inför – för att själv bli accepterad
144
av ungdomar. / Att sådana naiva och okunniga
förhållningssätt skall försvinna, med hjälp av in-
formation från dem som vet bättre, tillhör visionen
inför framtiden. Och den inbegriper även åklagare
och rättsväsende som mål för upplysningsarbetet”
(translation by author).
68
Mats Hollander, “– Vakna vuxna! Unga klottrar
även på nätterna”, Metro, 1995-11-22: “Klotter är
en organiserad form av brottslighet […] Det är en
inkörsport till annan kriminalitet” (translation by
author).
69
Mats Hollander, “Människors slit för ren trafik”,
Metro, 1995-11-29.
70
Bengt Lindström: “Guldmedalj för graffiti”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1989-10-20 and Eva Nilsson,
“Graffitiskola får stöd av SL”, Svenska Dagbladet,
1989-03-07.
71
Marie Österman: “Klottret minskar i T-banan”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1989-11-08.
72
Unsigned article, “De satte färg på tristessen”,
Dagens Nyheter, 1985-10-24.
73
Anna Gustafsson, “Rinkeby går före”, Metro,
1996-01-29: “…bidrar till förslumningen och skapar
en otrygg miljö. Vårt mål är att det ska vara borta
efter 24 timmar” (translation by author).
74
Unsigned article, “En minut med Kjell Hultman”,
Metro, 1998-01-28.
75
Mikael Svenske, “Vandalism kräver nya meto-
der”, Metro, 1996-05-07.
76
Henrik Nordh, “Klottra på strömskenorna ny
livsfarlig trend”, Metro, 1995-12-14.
77
Henrik Karlsson, “Välorganiserade klottrare kos-
tar miljoner varje år”, Metro, 1996-10-04.
78
Karlsson (1996): “Mot klottrare hjälper bara hårda
tag” (translation by author).
79
See, for example, AP’s news values and princip-
les: “File, library or archive photos, audio or videos
must be identified as such.” http://www.ap.org/
company/news-values [retrieved 2014-10-08]. Re-
uters’ Handbook of journalism writes on accuracy
in Captions: “Just as our news photographs must
reflect reality, so too should our captions. They
must adhere to the basic Reuters rules of accuracy
and freedom from bias and must answer the
basic questions of good journalism. Who is in the
picture? Where was it taken? When was it taken?
What does it show?” [emphasis by author] http://
handbook.reuters.com/extensions/docs/pdf/hand-
bookofjournalism.pdf [retrieved 2014-10-08]. This
convention of clearly stating the use of archive ma-
terial is thus a part of making sure that journalistic
information are accurate and relevant.
80
Karlsson (1996): “Vem vill åka i en nedklottrad
tunnelbanevagn? Åtta av tio SL-resenärer försöker
att undvika det” (translation by author).
81
Anders Sundström, “SL ökar bevakningen på
tågen”, Dagens Nyheter, 1989-01-24: “Klotter i alla
färger och former möter allt oftare tunnelbanans
resenärer. Varje år fördubblas klotternotan och SL
inför nu bevakning ombord på tågen” (translation
by author).
82
Anders Johansson, “Kungen vill stoppa klottra-
re”, Metro, 1997-02-10.
83
Johansson (1997): “…kanske de kan få en kick
av att måla ett vackert konstverk någonstans. Det
kanske skulle gå att upplåta någon fasad där de
kunde måla” (translation by author).
84
Unsigned article, “Adelsohn och Gunnmo till
attack mot klottret”, Expressen, 1997-02-20.
85
For a description of the complex relationship of
power and the monarchy, see Cecilia Åse (2009),
Monarkins makt: nationell gemenskap i svensk
demokrati. Stockholm: Ordfront.
86
Barthes, Roland (2012), Mythologies. Complete
ed. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 255–256.
87
Ylva Johnson, “Strängare lagar i T-banan stop-
pas”, Metro, 1998-02-21.
88
For explicit links between zero tolerance in New
York and Stockholm, see for example Maria Nils-
son, “Noll tolerans mot klotter i New York”, Metro,
1998-02-25.
89
Unsigned article, “Klottret första steget i kri-
minalitet”, Nämndemannen, Nr. 4/1999: “Graffiti
bidrar till förslummade stadsdelar. I sådana miljöer
är inbrotten många, liksom bilstölderna och den
allmänna förstörelsen” (translation by author).
90
For another example of this type of article see
Per-Magnus Ahlbom, “Klotterskador för miljoner”,
Svensk Polis, Nr. 11, November 1994.
91
See Government bill [Proposition] 2002/03:138.
92
Protocol from meeting at the Council on Legis-
lation [Utdrag ur protokoll vid Lagrådets samman-
träde] 2003-02-26. Retrievable from: http://www.
lagradet.se/yttranden/Atgarder%20mot%20klotter.
pdf See also Nils Funcke, “Klottraren, polisen och
friheten”, Dagens Nyheter, 2003-06-07.
93
Andersson’s account is a part of a larger story on
the history of Swedish graffiti, and uses interviews
with former guards and active graffiti writers, while
Guwallius’ project is investigative journalism that
solely focuses on the guards and their methods.
The latter is built from a combination of police
records and other documents, and interviews
with former employees of Falck Security and the
company that later took over the operation: CSG
(Commuter Security Group). Both Andersson’s and
Guwallius’ books suggest that these guard units
are best understood as a sort of police units that
were publicly funded but organized and opera-
ted by private corporations. See Per Andersson,
(2005), Medan Svensson åt plankstek: [en resebe-
rättelse från graffitins hemliga värld]. Stockholm:
Norstedt, and Kolbjörn Guwallius (2014), Grip till
varje pris: Falkarna, CSG och de rättsvidriga väk-
tarmetoderna 1996–2014. Stockholm: Verbal.
94
Rosa Fernandez, “Klotterkriget och muthärvan
på SL”, aired in Sveriges Radio P3, 2011-11-13.
Andersson, (2005), p. 186.
95
96
See decision [beslut] by Länsstyrelsen 1999-
11-12, label [beteckning] 2472-99-37133, and
Unsigned article, “SL har använt sig av maskerade
väktare”, Metro, 1999-08-23.
97
Andersson (2005), p. 187.
145
 98
Bertil Brohman, “Hög SL-chef polisanmäls”,
Expressen, 2002-11-07.
99
Unsigned article, “Datainspektionen polisanmä-
ler Falck”, Svenska Dagbladet, 2003-01-28.
100
Guwallius (2014), pp. 66–67.
101
Guwallius (2014), p. 68.
102
Andersson (2005), p. 198: “Den man som var
chef för CSG arbetar nu i ledande befattning på ett
säkerhetsföretag […] Commuter Security Group
– CSG, samma initialer som den gamla klottergrup-
pen” (translation by author).
103
See applications to the County Administrative
Board Stockholm [ansökningar till Länsstyrelsen i
Stockholms län]: Beteckning 2121-2004-049721,
and Beteckning 2121-2006-14523.
104
Guwallius (2014), p. 227.
105
Cecilie Høigard has previously discussed the
similarities and differences between the anti-graf-
fiti strategies in Scandinavia, and the adaptation
of zero tolerance in Norway. See Cecilie Høigard
(2002), Gategallerier. Oslo: Pax, pp.161-178.
106
Harald Bergius, “‘Ett hån mot staden’”, Dagens
Nyheter, 2002-01-11.
107
Kristian Borg, “Virkad Graffiti också nedskräp-
ning?”, Stockholms Fria, 2007-06-22
108
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromsten [retrieved
2014-10-01].
109
“Bromstens industriområde Program för
stadsutveckling”, and “Program för Bromstens
industriområde i stadsdelen Bromsten”, Stads-
byggnadskontoret, Dnr 2006-07203-53.
110
Protocol from the City Planning Council in the
municipality of Stockholm, [Stadsbyggnadsnämn-
den, Stockholms stad], 2008-11-20: “Stadsbygg-
nadsnämnden motsätter sig bevarandet […]
Fastigheten kommer att ligga på paradplats i den
centrala parken. Skälet som anförs till att låta
byggnaden stå kvar skulle vara en graffitimålning.
Då stadens klotterpolicy innebär ett totalt av-
ståndstagande från både klotter och graffiti avvi-
sar stadsbyggnadsnämnden bestämt möjligheten
146
att bevara fastigheten” (translation by author).
111
Protocol from the City Planning Council, Stock-
holms stad, 2008-11-20.
112
Natalie Roos Holmborg, “Politiker går emot
skydd av graffiti”, Dagens Nyheter, 2008-11-05.
“Graffiti skapar en osäker boendemiljö och mål-
ningen kommer att föra med sig ytterligare klotter.
Jag tycker att det är väldigt olyckligt att bevara
väggen, så vi ser hellre att huset och fastigheten
tas bort. Om målningen står kvar på den platsen
skapar den en otrygg miljö.”
113
Christoffer Röstlund Jonsson, “Omdiskuterad
graffiti blir kvar”, Metro, 2011-08-22.
114
Erika Svantesson: “Kulturministern upprörd av
videokonst”, DN.se, 2009-02-14: “Otroligt provoce-
rande. Graffiti är till sin natur illegalt. Det här är inte
konst.” (translation by author).
115
For a picture of the installation, see for example:
http://www.svd.se/kultur/ny-storm-av-kritik-mot-
konstfack_2478171.svd [Retrieved 2014-09-29].
116
Lova Olsson, “SL kräver ersättning”, Svenska
Dagbladet, 2009-02-16.
117
Malin Axelsson, “Polisen saknar bevis mot
Nug”, Svenska Dagbladet, 2009-05-05.
118
Termination of contract, dated 2002-01-09. Dnr
333-012/02 RIS/ELF.
119
Termination of contract, dated 2002-01-09. Dnr
333-012/02 RIS/ELF.
120
Kalle Asplund, “Konsten som ingen skulle få
se”, Expressen, 2002-01-11.
121
Maria Sundvall, “Ulvskog: ‘Liberalismen får nya
förteckenen när man hör sånt här’”, Expressen,
2002-01-11.
122
Harald Bergius, “‘Ett hån mot staden’”, Dagens
Nyheter, 2002-01-11.
123
Natalia Kazmierska, “Pubbeflirt”, Expressen,
2003-08-13: “…eftersom nolltolerans ger motsatt
effekt och oftast leder till att fler målar på gatorna,
så borde man ju snarare gå på Rydells gamla bann-
lysarlinje om man verkligen vill uppmuntra graffitin
att utvecklas på egna villkor” (translation by author).
124
Andersson (2005), p. 199: “Nolltoleransen be-
stod till ungefär lika delar av extremt väktararbete
och intensiv opinionsbildning. Slaget stod både ute
på spårområdena i natten och i tidningsspalterna
och de politiska församlingarna. / Politiskt och
opinionsmässigt började luften gå ur nolltoleran-
sen redan innan samarbetet mellan SL och Falck
bröts och CSG upplöstes. / Som alla verkligt
radikala principer visade sig idén om noll tolerans
kunna föra sina anhängare till konstiga situationer.”
(translation by author).
125
Katarina Arnstad, “Klottrarnas Mecka målas
över”, Metro, 2005-11-25: “…klottrarnas Mecka i
Stockholm – har nu målats över efter beslut från
Stockholms stad i samråd med polisen. – Klottret
i sig är ett jätteproblem. Dessutom stjäl de och tar
droger…” (translation by author).
126
Open letter to the chairperson of the munici-
pality of Sigtuna: “Stå på vår sida i kampen mot
klotter!”, signed by among other the vice mayor of
the municipality of Stockholm.
127
Ibid: “Närheten till Sigtuna kommuns lagli-
ga vägg omöjliggör polisens preventiva arbete.
Klottraren behöver endast uppge sig vara på
väg till den lagliga väggen i Märsta. Polisen står
då handfallen och kan inte utföra sitt tidigare så
framgångsrika preventionsarbete. Enligt polisens
uppgifter görs det mer än 200 sådana beslag varje
månad” (translation by author).
128
Anders Göransson, “Väggen som får (M) att se
rött”, Metro, 2009-05-29.
129
Göransson (2009).
130
Report [Utlåtande] 2007: RII (Dnr 323-
3490/2006): “medverka till verksamheter som
på något sätt kan väcka intresse för och leda till
klotter, olaglig graffiti eller liknande skadegörelse”
(translation by author). See also press release
signed by Vice Mayor Ulla Hamilton, “Scandina-
vian graffiti conference in Stockholm” [Nordisk
klotterkonferens i Stockholm], published 2008-
10-24 at http://moderaterna.net/blog/2008/10/24/
nordisk-klotterkonferens-i-stockholm/ [retrieved
2011-10-31]: “In 2007 the politicians in municipality
of Stockholm adopted a policy against graffiti and
a clear zero tolerance. Both SL, the municipality
and the police are investing major resources and
have distinct organizations in the efforts to reduce
graffiti” [2007 fattade Stockholm stads politiker
beslut om en policy mot Graffiti och en tydlig noll-
tolerans. Såväl SL, staden och polisen satsar stora
resurser och har tydliga organisationer i arbetet för
att minska graffiti] (translation by author).
Moderata borgarrådet Ulla Hamilton i pressmedde-
lande hösten 2008
131
Josefin Hökerberg, “Mikael Söderlund: Stoppa
vandringarna!”, Södermalmsnytt, 2007-05-27. “–
Vill man uppföra ett konstverk måste man ansöka
om tillstånd. Allt annat är olagligt. – Kan man
ansöka om tillstånd för att uppföra en graffitimål-
ning? – Nej, vi accepterar inte graffiti i Stockholm.
Och vi tycker inte, som vissa andra, att graffiti är
en konstform. Vi vill inte ha graffiti här” (translation
by author).
132
Report [Utlåtande] 2007: RII (Dnr 323-
3490/2006): “Stadsmiljön är allas egendom och
det är allas ansvar att vårda den” (translation by
author, italics in original).
133
Kolbjörn Guwallius (2010), Sätta färg på staden:
obeställd kreativitet i det offentliga rummet.
Årsta: Dokument press, pp. 194-198.
134
Ivar Andersen “Staden har en restriktiv policy
mot klotter”, Fria Tidningen, 2008-09-02, and
Ülkü Holago, Graffiti kan kosta kulturhus marken,
Svenska Dagbladet, 2008-09-09.
135
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?progra-
mid=478&artikel=5959768 [Retrieved 2014-09-30]
136
David Freedberg (1989), The Power of Images,
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 387.
137
Freedberg (1989), p. 398-399.
138
Freedberg(1989), p. 385. For similar arguments
in other historical contexts see also p. 387 and p.
418-419.
147
 139
See for example Henrik Karlsson, “Välorgani-
serade klottrare kostar miljoner varje år”, Metro,
1996-10-04.
140
The most extensive document regarding the ef-
fects of zero tolerance in the gathered material is
an unsigned and undated PM from the municipali-
ty of Stockholm, called “Experience with different
strategies regarding the combating graffiti in the
Nordic region” [Erfarenheter från olika strategier
gällande bekämpning av klotter och graffiti i
Norden]. It is based on the lectures, by speakers
from different Scandinavian countries, on an
anti-graffiti conference in Oslo, April 2011. The
explicit intent is to function as “…backing in the
discussions which now is brought to the fore re-
garding the questioning of City’s policy on graffiti
and other vandalism.” […underlag i de diskussio-
ner som nu aktualiseras kring ett ifrågasättande
av Stockholms stads policy mot klotter och annan
skadegörelse.] It is thus in much formulated as a
defence of zero tolerace, and it is not a systema-
tic evaluation.
141
Se Brottsförebyggande rådets öppna sta-
tistikdatabas http://www.bra.se/, samt sam-
manställningen på Gatukonst.se: http://www.
gatukonst.se/2012/02/02/stockholms-klotter-
brott-langt-over-riksgenomsnittet/ [hämtad 2012-
02-18].
142
According to the statistics from BRÅ, Stockholm
had during the period 2006-2011 a yearly average
of approximately 2,100 reported cases of graffiti
vandalism per 100,000 inhabitants, while Malmö
and Norrköping (both of which have long been
using legal graffiti walls) had 480 and 122 cases
respectively.
143
Catharina Thörn: “Tecken på vad? Graffiti och
nolltolerans och ytans politik”, Fronesis, nr 18,
2005 p. 172.
144
Thörn (2005), p. 172–173.
145
“Hallå stockholmare”, advertisement published
in Metro, 1995-10-31: “Stadens politiker mark-
148
nadsför Stockholm som en attraktiv stad att leva
och arbeta i. Då tittar vi extra noga runt omkring
oss och försöker se Stockholm med nya ögon. Och
ser plötsligt att staden är skräpig och nedklottrad.
Vare sig vi får fint besök eller inte, så måste vi ta
krafttag mot nedskräpningen – så här kan vi inte ha
det” (translation by author).
146
Kramer (2010), p. 304.
147
Snyder (2009).
148
See, for example, “Group Vandalizes Banksy
Mural in Protest of Gentrification”, publicerad
2009-04-07 på artinfo.com: http://sea.blouinartinfo.
com/contemporary-arts/article/31037-group-van-
dalizes-banksy-mural-in-protest-of-gentrification
[Retrieved 2014-03-16].
149
Thörn (2005), p. 175: “‘Kriget mot graffitin’ föder
således en paradox. En hårdför krigsföring från
myndigheternas sida ger bara näring till ett lika
hårdfört motstånd – en kamp som ingen kan vinna”
(translation by author).
150
Michael Johnson (2006), Inblick i en ung-
doms-kultur: samtal med graffitimålare. 1. uppl.
Stockholm: Kriminologiska institutionen, Stock-
holms universitet, pp. 84-85.
151
Johnson (2006), p. 90: “Dessa grupper och
graffitimålarna är beroende av varandra. Graf-
fitimålarna är beroende av intressegrupperna
genom att det är dessa som håller graffitin på
samhällsagendan och därmed är med om att
bekräfta ungdomarna. […] Intressegrupperna är å
sin sida beroende av graffitimålarna för att behålla
sina arbeten. De är även beroende av att vi övriga
i samhället ser på graffiti som något farligt och
hotfullt för att deras arbete ska tas på allvar” (tran-
slation by author).
152
Ulrika By, “Ny databas vapen mot klottrare”,
Dagens Nyheter, 2006-01-26: “Hans jobb tar aldrig
slut. Ibland börjar han om på samma fläck där han
åtminstone hyfsat nöjd avslutade sitt slit dagen
innan. För en utomstående ter det sig närmast som
en repetetiv [sic], aldrig upphörande mardröm.
[…] Jobbet är tungt men de tänker inte ge upp” effektivisering av klottersanering”, and “miljöeffek-
(translation by author). tiva produkter för klottersanering och klotterskydd”
153
Kramer (2010), p. 308. (translation by author).
154
Agneta Tjäder: “Klottersanering – den stora 159
Commercial press release by MPE International
chansen för måleriföretagen”, Aktuellt Måleri #2, AB (2011): “Människor känner sig ofta otrygga i ned-
1998, p. 23: “Marknaden är oändlig. Det här är en klottrade miljöer. Dessutom klottras det ännu mer
jättechans för vartenda måleriföretag” (translation där det redan finns klotter” (translation by author).
by author).
155
The exact amount was 1,496 hits and the search
was made 2011-11-04. It has not been possible
to more closely examine all these 1,500 hits, but
even at a cursory examination it becomes clear
that most do not specialize in graffiti removal. The
majority seems to be relatively small companies
that offer a variety of services in various types
of cleaning. The number of hits is thus perhaps
more an indicator of profit potential than economic
volume. There is however also a number of larger
companies specialized in graffiti removal.
156
List of participants from “Nordic Graffiti Seminar
Oslo” [Nordisk Graffiti Seminar Oslo], 6–8 April
2011, public record released by the police in
Oslo. These Scandinavian graffiti seminars (also
referred to as conferences) have taken place every
few years since 1998, and alternate between the
different capitols of each country. Norwegian
criminologist Cecilie Høigård makes an interesting
description of her experience of the first one, that
took place in Stockholm 1998. See Høigård (2002),
pp. 167-171.
157
Commercial press release by MPE Internatio-
nal AB: “Invitation to a day devoted to the graffiti
problem” [Inbjudan till temadag om klotterproble-
matiken!], Stockholm 2011-02-18, and Gothenburg
2011-02-24. PDF retrieved from mpei.se 2011-09-
13: “intressanta föredrag som belyser problema-
tiken [med klotter] och som ger tillfälle till utbyte
av erfarenheter och möjlighet att skapa nätverk”
(translation by author).
158
Commercial press release by MPE International
AB (2011): “marknadens mest effektiva system för

149
150
5. CONCLUSIONS

This thesis has studied graffiti as a discursive formation jointly produced by a graf-
fiti subculture and various institutions of society and built on a duality of claims:
that graffiti should either be seen as vandalism or as art. The suggestion presented
in the introduction was that graffiti as a phenomenon is produced and transformed in
the area of interactions between the graffiti subculture and these institutions, as well
as trough an interdependent polarity between the statements declaring graffiti to be
either vandalism or art.
The study has been conducted on material from three different cultural contexts and
geographical locations: different descriptions on the development subcultural graffiti
(also referred to as TTP graffiti) in New York City during a period of approximately
fifteen years (circa 1972–1987); graffiti on the Berlin Wall, with a focus on the framings
of this graffiti in English-language newspapers during the 1980s; and the adaptation in
Stockholm, during the 1990s and early 2000s, of New York’s zero tolerance of graffiti.
One of the overarching interests has been to see which institutional and subcultu-
ral structures have been involved in this production and what interests, agendas, and
approaches could be identified in it. The institutions in the studied material represent
a wide array of sectors in society. These are broader general institutions such as the po-
lice, art institutions, political parties, social authorities, and public-transit companies,
and they often interact with graffiti from their own interests and perspectives. It can
be concluded that graffiti has been used by political and governmental institutions in
building a geopolitical discourse, as in the case of the Berlin Wall and of artworks in
both non-profit and commercial art-institutional contexts in New York City. It has
been possible to identify an occasional, active interplay between the perspectives of
different institutions, such as when graffiti became the central aspect of a monument,
in the case of Crack Is Wack.
But as the different institutions’ perspectives often differ, so do their approaches
to, and descriptions of, graffiti. This is most likely one reason behind the complexities
of descriptions of graffiti, and the construction of the discursive formation with two
different discursive practices. The dual relationships within this discursive formation
obviously differ from the linguistic polarity of the concepts of art and of crime, where
the most obvious antonym to art is non-art, and the antonym of crime is legality. The-
se linguistic polarities do exist in the analyzed material, such as in the domestication

151
 approach (Chapter 4.2.2), but are often subordinate to the duality of graffiti as art and
as vandalism. One interesting case of this complex interplay of both discursive and
linguistic statements was found in the events that surrounded the exhibition STHLM
Underground, which opened as a graffiti-art exhibition, but whose contract to lease
the premises was terminated due to claims that it was a graffiti exhibition instead of
an art exhibition, and then reopened when the organizer’s lawyer claimed that for
the termination to be valid, the municipality of Stockholm would have to prove that
graffiti is not art.
The claims of art and cultural institutions often fall within what in this thesis has
been referred to as a consenting discursive practice, which is primarily built upon
the statement ‘graffiti is art’. It is also in relation to this discursive practice that most
subcultural descriptions of graffiti are produced. The claims by institutions such as
the police and public-transportation companies are almost exclusively found in the
interdependent, but to the consenting discursive practice incompatible, rejecting dis-
cursive practice, built upon the statement ‘graffiti is a crime’. One notable exception is
the Berlin Wall Monument outside the CIA Headquarters, where the descriptions of
graffiti are closer to those usually produced by cultural institutions within the consen-
ting discursive practice. This is however dependent on the specific framing of Berlin
Wall graffiti as symbol of individualism and freedom described in the study. But it
was also developed by CIA’s Fine Arts Commission, and could thus be described as a
result of cultural institution with the larger institutional structure of the CIA.
Often the institutional structures and discursive practices seem to function fairly
autonomously. In the case of the Swedish adoption of zero tolerance in Stockholm, it
was, however, possible to identify an at least partly successful attempt by an institu-
tion (SL) to utilize the rejecting discursive practice to actively thwart the consenting
discursive practice. This was accomplished by an intense information campaign that
simultaneously de-politicized and polarized the duality of graffiti, hampered the pos-
sibilities of using graffiti as art. In the case of zero tolerance, one more graffiti-specific
institutional structure has been identified, a structure referred to in the study as the
anti-graffiti industry – comprised of businesses specialized in graffiti removal, and
security companies executing anti-graffiti strategies. In this context, the arguments
developed within zero tolerance are used for a commercial purpose. This institutional
structure has complex relationships with graffiti and with the institutions and com-
panies it works closely with and delivers products to. The complexities lie in that the
structure needs both new graffiti to combat and satisfied customers. The suggestion
has been made that the polarization of graffiti through zero-tolerance campaigning
has overshadowed these complexities. It has also been possible to identify a com-
mercial interest in one of the themes of Chapter 2, graffiti displayed as art in the
institutional art world in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s. The latter could
be described as a process of evolution from a non-profit, artist-run context to a more
commercial gallery context.

152
 Another of the primary objectives of this dissertation has been to study how graffiti
as a discursive formation has been constructed in various specific historical and geo-
graphic contexts through the interaction of statements claiming that graffiti is either
art or vandalism.
In the first case it was possible to develop the model of graffiti as a discursive
formation, building on the work of Joe Austin and Susan Stewart, and to juxtapose
their results with different subcultural and art-institutional narratives of graffiti. The
chapter also discusses descriptions of graffiti writers’ social position. As a cultural phe-
nomenon in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, graffiti was gendered (male), racialized
(“colored”), and socially classed (working class) irrespective of the individual writers’
own social background and identity.
In the case of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall, we could see how it in the Eng-
lish-language press was constructed as symbol of freedom, democracy, and freedom
of expression. In this historical context it was possible to identify both discursive
practices – but here, both were assigned positive connotations. Within the consenting
discursive practice, the graffiti on the Berlin Wall became framed as an expression
of creativity and optimism, and within the rejecting discursive practice it was often
described as a symbolic destruction of the Wall. The primary institutions involved
were political organizations and newspapers (both through reporters and political
commentators).
In the chapter on Swedish zero tolerance, we could see how descriptions of graffiti
as a crime, and as a disruption of safety, were developed first by the transit authority,
SL, in conjunction with local politicians and civil servants, to later be picked up and
marketed by private commercial interests within the industries of graffiti removal
and security. The most interesting result from this chapter is that even if the cultural
institutions’ possibilities to produce statements on graffiti as art slightly diminished
due to the vast institutional resources spent on framing graffiti as vandalism and as a
crime, the underlying structure seem to remain fairly intact. The statement of graffiti
as art and creativity seems too well-established to be completely dismissed, and per-
haps the effort to challenge this statement instead ended up confirming the discursive
formation.
In the section on different subcultural and art-historical narratives of graffiti, va-
rious subcultural visualizations of ‘graffiti history’ were analyzed, as well as previous
scholarly accounts, and these were found to be dependent on a narrative of stylistic
development created by distinguishable individuals from the subculture, a narrative
that also contains undertones of evolutionism. The art-historical surveys that bring
up graffiti tend to focus on two specific artists, often contextualized as the most im-
portant or prominent artists within it. These two are, however, not present in the
subcultural narratives, which points to a segregation of graffiti from a more general
art history.
This thesis suggests an alternate perspective to both of the constructions above, as

153
 graffiti instead has been conceptualized as a discursive formation, comprised of two
broad and incompatible discursive practices constructed upon a duality of claims. And
conceptualized as a discursive formation, dependent on the concept of the archive,
graffiti is neither an ahistorical phenomenon nor a linear development of movements,
but a system under constant maintenance, negotiation, renegotiation, and transforma-
tion. In order to visualize this in relation to the results of this study, I have created a
model of this discursive formation, encompassing different statements on graffiti and
their relation to two main discursive practices within this formation. This model is
inspired by Michel Foucault’s metaphoric description of the archive as a star-spangled
sky:

…all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they
inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external
accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accor-
dance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities;
that which determines that they do not withdraw at the same pace in time, but shine, as it
were, like stars, some that seem close to us shining brightly from afar off, while others that
are in fact close to us are already growing pale.1

Compared to the previously discussed visualizations of graffiti, this model is created

to deliberately avoid situating graffiti in a chronological linearity of development.
Visualizing graffiti as a discursive formation with binaries within itself also offers a
way to circumvent some of the binaries that characterize the discussion on graffiti.
In this model the statements are are placed on a scale that should be understood as a
continuum. This scale has been divided into six zones – violation, problem, annoyance,
amusement, opportunity and virtuosity – based on the described productivity of each
claim.
It is divided into two halves representing the two discursive practices, each part in
turn divided into three fields representing different degrees of the claims produced.
As pointed out in this thesis, the discursive formation of graffiti is built upon the
coexistence of incompatible statements. In the model these points of incompatibility
are marked with hashed lines, while the solid lines mark out productive relations. In
the prehistory of Swedish zero tolerance it was possible to identify both incompati-
bility and productive relations between the statements of graffiti as art and graffiti as
culture; proponents of the subcultural approach could then support graffiti as culture
but reject its status as institutional art, whereas most of the proponents of other app-
roaches did not make such a distinction.
It is important to keep in mind that the discursive formation should not be thought
of as an autonomous unity, and the model below is not supposed mark out a clear
boundary to other discursive unities, practices, and formations. The most obvious ex-
ample here is street art, marked out in the lower right part of the model, and repre-

154
Figure 5.1. A model of graffiti as a discursive formation.

sented by the only partly visible vertical oval structure. This is to suggest that street
art is a different, but overlapping, discursive formation that relates to partly the same
objects, activities, images, etcetera, and partly uses the same statements, but that also
contains other statements, logics, and relations, and to a large extent produces other
objects. To develop this part of the model and the relationship between street art and
graffiti only hinted at here could be a task for a future research project..
This model should not be understood as a structure where it is possible to once and
for all place a specific identified object (such as a piece or a tag), an activity (such as
vandalism), an image (such as a piece or a painting), or a subject (such as an artist or
a vandal) in a certain position, but a model where it is possible to envision how spe-
cific objects, activities, and images may be activated in several positions at the same
time, and how a specific object, by institutional action, may move from one position
to another.
For example, the anecdote of the adolescent who admits having participated in
filling in but denies having painted graffiti, told by police officer Conrad Lesnewski
to Craig Castleman and referred to in Chapter 2.5, could be said to simultaneously
activate the statements ‘graffiti is art’ and ‘graffiti is a crime’. The arrested adolescent
considers himself/herself to have been “just filling in”, thus helping out on someone

155
 else’s artwork, for which he/she can neither be blamed, nor take pride. For the police
officer, the arrested adolescent was complicit in criminal damage; whether the arrestee
claims authorship or not is less relevant. However, the institutional power of the poli-
ce officer’s statement of ‘graffiti is a crime’ in this specific case outdoes the subcultural
statement ‘graffiti is art’.
Figure 5.2 is one example of a more complex and prolonged movement, visualizing
how Keith Haring’s Crack Is Wack through institutional actions has transformed from
an alleged crime into a convicted offense, then into the legal production of two official
murals and, finally, into a landmark monument. Haring likely paints the image with
the intent of it being perceived as an artwork. He is, however, arrested by the police
and the image becomes a crime. Through Haring’s institutional resources, in the form
of, for example, his social position as a famous artist and his contacts with mass media
as a celebrity, he is able to divert attention to his case, and when it reaches the court,
he pleads guilty of a minor misdemeanor instead of criminal damage. He is then con-
tacted by the owner of the wall, the New York City Parks Department (the institution
that was the initial victim of the crime), and is offered another of their walls to paint
the same message on. Haring refuses and the institution gives in and issues a permit
for Haring to paint the wall again. He is thus able to return to the scene of the crime
to produce an official artwork. Crack Is Wack is later transformed once again, this time
into a landmark monument, through New York City’s decision to rename the park
after Haring’s painting. In this case, Haring’s institutional resources enabled the sta-
tement ‘graffiti is art’ overpower the statement ‘graffiti is vandalism’.
The case of Fascinate, described in Chapter 4.4.2, could be described as partly an op-
posite movement. From a fairly uncontested position as an artwork, Fascinate, through
the clash of the suggestion to landmark the painting, and an enforced rejecting discur-
sive practice by zero tolerance, was actualized as an object that represented crime and
a disruption of safety. The political debate then brought it back into the consenting
discursive practice, which again opens for the possibility of it to become a landmark.
The model of discursive formation presented above is not constructed as a com-
plete explanation, nor does it suggest that this is the only way to picture graffiti as
a discursive formation. It is possible that one could find many more statements to
develop the model. It is built on the material in this thesis – which is mainly from
Stockholm, Berlin, and New York, and primarily from material in Swedish and in
English, published or in other ways made public between the years 1972 and 2010. It is
not unlikely that one from material from other contexts, times, places, and languages
could construct slightly different models. The thesis has not, for example, looked at
the use of graffiti as design in fashion or in advertising of products as street wear and
music, empiric material that very well may contain other statements and relations. It
is also likely that there are several sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which graffiti
does not exist as a discursive formation, but my suggestion would be that it would
then be an at least partly different phenomenon.

156
Figure 5.2: Model of graffiti as discursive formation. Visualizing the institutional transformations of Keith
Haring’s Crack is Wack, from a crime over a misdemeanor to an artwork, and then finally to a landmark.

The discursive formation also requires statements to be enounced, distributed, and

circulated, which in turn likely requires investments and engagement from institutio-
nal actors. Without active engagement from legislators and law-enforcement agenci-
es, it is hard to imagine graffiti considered a crime, although some of the actions and
objects might of course be sorted under other labels within criminal law. The same
goes for the notion of graffiti as art: without books, art museums, and galleries situa-
ting graffiti as art, it would probably not be apprehended as such, at least not outside
of the subculture.

Endnotes
1
Foucault (2002), pp. 145-146

157
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Tjäder, Agneta: “Klottersanering – den stora chansen för måleriföretagen”, Aktuellt
Måleri #2, 1998.
Ullmann, Owen: “Remove Berlin Wall, Reagan urges Gorbachev challenged to re-
spond”, The Miami Herald, 1987-06-13.
Vinterhed, Kerstin: “Bli klottrarnas vänner!”, Dagens Nyheter, 1987-12-19.
Wendt, Charlotte: “SL:s chef för trygghetsfrågor polisanmäld – Tidigare omstridd
polisman och fängelsedömd”, Svenska Dagbladet, 2002-11-08.
Öjemar, Fredrik: “Odell dömd till böter” Dagens Nyheter, 2009-09-01.
Österholm, Peo & Oneborg, Tomas: “Graffiti imponerade på ung publik”, Svenska
Dagbladet, 1998-07-28.
Österman, Marie: “Klottret minskar i T-banan”, Dagens Nyheter, 1989-11-08.
Österman, Hans: “‘TV-övervaka tunnelbanan’ - Så vill moderaterna i Stockholm
stoppa klottrarna”, Expressen, 1998-08-06.
Unsigned article: (Insändare från signaturen Husegare) publicerad i Vestmanlands
Läns Tiding, 1891-10-20.
Unsigned article: “Garelik Calls for War on Graffiti”, New York Times, May 21, 1972.
Unsigned article: “De satte färg på tristessen”, Dagens Nyheter, 1985-10-24.
Unsigned article: “Keith Haring paints mural on Berlin Wall”, The New York Times,
1986-10-24.
Unsigned article: “Muren”, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, 1987-06-12.

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Unsigned article: (byline Breen M) interview with Phase 2 published in Herald Sun,
1988-06-29.
Unsigned article: “Phase 2”, On the Run Special Double Issue 1/ New York, September 1991.
Unsigned article: “Karlbergs station klottrarnas Mekka”, Svenska Svenska Dagbladet,
1995-05-04.
Unsigned article: “Adelsohn och Gunnmo till attack mot klottret”, Expressen, 1997-02-20.
Unsigned article: “Klottret första steget i kriminalitet”, Nämndemannen, Nr. 4/1999.
Unsigned article: “SL har använt sig av maskerade väktare”, Metro, 1999-08-23.
Unsigned article: “Graffiti enbart kladd och klotter”, Dagens Nyheter, 2001-06-08.
Unsigned article: “Datainspektionen polisanmäler Falck”, Svenska Dagbladet, 2003-01-28.
Unsigned editorial: “The Blackout”, The Washington Post, 1977-07-16.
Unsigned editorial: “East Germany Opens the Gate” Washington Post, 1989-11-10.

Political Policies, Bills and Other Public Documents

(in chronological order)
Government bill: [Proposition] 1987/88:143.
Parliamentary report: [Betänkande] 1988/89:JuU13 Förverkande vid skadegörelse.
Poll: Stockholmarna Tycker, released by Gatu- och fastighetskontoret, September 1994.
Strategic plan: Operation Safety [Operation trygghet] (1995). Stencil. In private col-
lection of the author.
Public letter: “Joint strategy against graffiti in Stockholm County - Letter to elected
representatives officials, property owners, public transport operators, public prose-
cutors, police, parents’ associations, and others in Stockholm County”. [Gemensam
strategi mot klotter i Stockholms län – Brev till förtroendevalda, tjänstemän, fas-
tighetsägare, kollektivtrafikansvariga, åklagare, polis, föräldraföreningar, m fl. i Stock-
holms län], February 1997. Signed by Ulf Adelsohn (County Governor), Leif Axén
(CEO Storstockholms Lokaltrafik), Annika Billström (Vice Mayor of the munici-
pality of Stockholm), Gunno Gunnmo (Stockholm County Police Commissioner) &
Lena Nyberg (Vice Mayor of the municipality of Stockholm).
Advertisement: “Hallå stockholmare”, published in Metro, 1995-10-31.
Leaflet: Klotter eller graffiti – ett informationsblad från SL (1998). Stencil. In private
collection of the author.
Bo-Erik Gyberg, Memorandum from the meeting between the police, SL, SJ and the office of
Stockholm European Capitol of Culture 1998 [Minnesanteckning från möte mellan po-
lis, SL, SJ och Kulturhuvudstadsåret], 1998-07-20. In private collection of the author.
Laila Väisänen (ed.), documentation from the Nordic conference on graffiti, Octo-
ber 15-16, 1998 [Nordisk konferens om klotter den 15–16 oktober 1998], summary
in Swedish, published by the City Council of Stockholm and Stockholm Public
Transport, November 1998.
List of participants from hearing on graffiti vandalism [klotter] at Department of
Justice [ Justitiedepartementet] 1999-10-26. In private collection of the author.

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 Decision [beslut] by Länsstyrelsen 1999-11-12, label [beteckning] 2472-99-37133.
Report [Utlåtande] 2000:66 RIII (Dnr 1261/98) Målsättning för en klotterfri och ren
stad samt konkreta åtgärder för det.
Termination of contract [Uppsägning av avtal bergsutrymme Pionen vid Renstiernas
gata], dated 2002-01-09. Dnr 333-012/02 RIS/ELF.
Government Bill: Proposition 2002/03:138 Åtgärder mot klotter och annan skadegörelse.
Municipal report: Sundell, Knut (2002). Stockholmsungdomar som klottrar. Stockholm:
Forsknings- och utvecklingsenheten, Socialtjänstförvaltningen.
Report: [Tjänsteutlåtande] GFN 2003-08-19. Gatu- och Fastighetskontoret, 2003-06-
30. Dnr 03-650-936:2 (Bilaga Stockholms klotterkommissions rapport 2002-11-01).
Non-government bill: Adelsohn Liljeroth, Lena (M) & Engström, Hillevi (M), Mo-
tion 2005/06:Ju364 Klotter.
Report [Utlåtande] 2007: RII (Dnr 323-3490/2006).
Program for city development : [Program för stadsutveckling] Bromstens industriom-
råde Dnr 2006-07203-53.
Protocol from the City Planning Council in the municipality of Stockholm, [Stads-
byggnadsnämnden, Stockholms stad], 2008-11-20.
Open letter to the chairperson of the municipality of Sigtuna: “Stå på vår sida i kam-
pen mot klotter!”, signed by among other the vice mayor of the municipality of
Stockholm. May, 2009.
PM: Socialtjänst- och Arbetsmarknadsförvaltningen, Förslag till struktur för soci-
altjänstens arbete med barn och unga som ägnar sig åt klotter/graffiti, 2010-10-25.
Commercial press release by MPE International AB: “Invitation to a day devoted to
the graffiti problem” [Inbjudan till temadag om klotterproblematiken!], Stockholm
2011-02-18, and Gothenburg 2011-02-24.
List of participants from “Nordic Graffiti Seminar Oslo” [Nordisk Graffiti Seminar
Oslo], 6–8 April 2011, public record released by the police in Oslo.
Press release: “Nordic graffiti conference in Stockholm” [Nordisk klotterkonferens
i Stockholm], published online 24 oktober 2008-10-24: http://moderaterna.net/
blog/2008/10/24/nordisk-klotterkonferens-i-stockholm/ [Retrieved 2011-10-31].
PM from the municipality of Stockholm, called “Experience with different strategies
regarding the combating graffiti in the Nordic region” [Erfarenheter från olika stra-
tegier gällande bekämpning av klotter och graffiti i Norden]. (2011).
Commercial press release by Klotterakuten AB: “Welcome to Klotterakuten’s theme
day on graffiti” [Välkommen till klotterakutens temadag om klotter], Gothenburg
2011-11-17.
Commercial press release by Klotterakuten AB: “The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation
and Klotterakuten invites you to a seminar on the latest news in anti-graffiti en-
forcement” [Håll Sverige Rent och Klotterakuten bjuder in till ett seminarium om
den senaste nyheten inom klotterbekämpande åtgärder], Stockholm 2012-03-06.

170
Internet Sources
A number of targeted searches in the English-language press text database LexisNexis.
A number of targeted searches in the Swedish-language press text database Retriever
Mediearkivet.
President Reagan’s, Berlin Wall Speech – Address at the Brandenburg Gate 1987-06-12‬:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM [Retrieved 2014-03-17].
Article on Territorial Pissing: http://www.svd.se/kultur/ny-storm-av-kritik-mot-
konstfack_2478171.svd [Retrieved 2014-09-29].
Interview with the graffiti writer Keo: http://vimeo.com/8303019 [retrieved 2014-06-05].
Radio broadcast on Cultural center Cyklopen: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.as-
px?programid=478&artikel=5959768 [Retrieved 2014-09-30].
Webmagazine Gatukonst.se on crime statistics and graffiti: http://www.gatukonst.
se/2012/02/02/stockholms-klotterbrott-langt-over-riksgenomsnittet/ [Retrieved
2012-02-18].
Article on gentrification protest regarding Banksy: http://sea.blouinartinfo.com/con-
temporary-arts/article/31037-group-vandalizes-banksy-mural-in-protest-of-gen-
trification [Retrieved 2014-03-16].
Article on Territorial Pissing: http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/kulturminis-
tern-upprord-av-videokonst/ [Retrieved 2014-03-15].

Films and Broadcast Media

Aubert, Elisabeth (1989). Drawing the Line – A Portrait of Keith Haring. Transcript
from DVD, released unknown date by West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur.
Banksy (2010). Exit Through The Gift Shop. Transcript from DVD released 2010, by
Paranoid Pictures & Oscilloscope laboratories.
Chalfant, Henry & Silver, Tony (1983). Style Wars. Transcript from DVD released
2004, by Public Art Films.
Fernandez, Rosa, Klotterkriget och muthärvan på SL, Radiocasting aired in Sveriges
Radio P3, 2011-11-13.
Winkler, Irwin, Sacks, Oliver & Levitt, Steve (1998). At First Sight. Transcript from
DVD released 2004, by MGM Home Entertainment.
Stunned Film, (2006). Kroonjuwelen: Hard Times, Good Times, Better Times. Een film
over de opkomst van graffiti in Nederland.
Radiocasting: “Bevakningsföretag stäms efter olagligt klottrar-register”, Sveriges Ra-
dio Dagens Eko, kvart i fem, 2003-02-27.
Radiocasting: “Lagexperter sänker regerings förslag om hårdare tag mot klottrare”,
Sveriges Radio Dagens Eko, kvart i fem, 2003-02-27.

Interviews
Coco 144, interviewed in New York City, USA, 2009-01-07.
Snake 1, interviewed in New Jersey, USA, 2009-01-09.

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 Part One, interviewed in New York City, USA, 2009-01-11, and 2009-10-16.
Bus 126, Berlin, interviewed in Berlin, Germany, 2009-06-26.
Lutz Henke, interviewed in Berlin, Germany, 2009-06-27.
Thierry Noir, interviewed in Berlin, Germany, 2009-06-28, and 2010-08-01.
Crime TDC, interviewed in Berlin, Germany, 2010-08-03.

List of Pictures
Figure 1.1: Escape by Crime, Deza & Crazy Colour of The Denots Crew. This piece
was painted circa 1985, in the Berlin Graffiti Hall of Fame, located at the Berlin
Wall. Photo by Crime TDC Published with kind permission of the photographer.
Figure 2.1: The History of Graffiti by Freedom (1986). Picture from Spraycan Art by
Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London 1987. Publis-
hed with kind permission of the authors.
Figure 2.2: Graffiti Letterform Evolution Map by Anssi Räisänen (2013). Published
with kind permission of the artist.
Figure 2.3: Barr, Alfred Hamilton Jr. (1902-1981): Cover of the exhibition catalogue
.Cubism and Abstract Art., MoMA 1936. New York, Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA). Offset, printed in color, 7 3/4 x 10 1/4’(19.7 x 26 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art Library, New York. MA143. © 2014. Digital image, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
Figure 2.4: Graffiti and Street Art (2011), poster by Daniel Feral.
Figure 2.5: Installation view of anti-graffiti posters displayed at Art in the Streets,
Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angles, April 2011. Photo by author.
Figure 2.6: Various anti-graffiti posters displayed at Art in the Streets, Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angles, April 2011. Photo by author.
Figure 2.7: The first version of Crack is Wack, by Keith Haring (1986). Photographer
unknown.
Figure 2.8: The north side of Crack is Wack, by Keith Haring (1986). Photo by author, 2013.
Figure 2.9: The south side of Crack is Wack, by Keith Haring (1986). Photo by author, 2013.
Figure 2.10: The official sign outside the Crack Is Wack Playground (the picture was
taken in 2005, in 2013 the sign was gone, probably stolen). Photo by Angus McIn-
tyre in 2005. © Angus McIntyre 2005. Published with kind permission of the pho-
tographer.
Figure 2.11: Tragic Magic, black book-drawing by Part One (1995). Photo by author.
Figure 2.12: UGA at Razor Gallery, 1973. From the archive of Snake 1 (Eddie Rodri-
guez). Published with kind permission of the artist.
Figure 2.13: UGA together with the dance company The Joffrey Ballet, 1973. From the
archive of Snake 1 (Eddie Rodriguez). Published with kind permission of the artist.
Figure 2.14: Flyer for UGA’s exhibition New York Graffiti Writers 1972-1984, at Gal-
lozzi-LaPlaca Galley, May 1984. From the archives of Snake 1 (Eddie Rodriguez).
Published with kind permission of the artist.

172
Figure 2.15: Stop Crack – Bio, Mack, Tony by Bio, Mack, and Nicer (1986). Picture
from Spraycan Art by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, Thames and Hudson
Ltd., London 1987. Published with kind permission of the authors.
Figure 3.1: Sceen shot from CIA-webpage about Berlin Wall Monument outside CIA
Headquarters, North Carolina, USA. [Retrieved 2011-01-17].
Figure 3.2: Picture of the historical landmark Brandenburger Tor, from a tourist gui-
debook produced and sold in East Berlin during the early to mid 1980s. Previously
used by Johannes Stahl in the article “Graffiti and other art at, with, about, next to
the Berlin Wall”, published online: http://www.j-stahl.de/texte/mauer09_eng.html
[retrieved 2014-10-01]. Photographer unknown.
Figure 3.3: Postcard depicting the historical landmark Brandenburger Tor, produced
and sold in and West Berlin during the mid 1980s.
Figure 3.4: Sceane Crime (1987) by Crime TDC (The Denots Crew). In Berlin Graffiti
Hall of Fame, located close to Märkisches Viertel. Photo by Crime TDC. Publis-
hed with kind permission of the artist.
Figure 3.5: Paintings by Thierry Noir and Kiddy Citny, Kreuzberg (1986). Photo Thierry
Noir. © Thierry Noir / BUS 2014.
Figure 3.6: Pieces by Sabe and Khan at the West side of East Side Gallery in 1993.
Photographer unknown.
Figure 3.7: The West side of East Side Gallery in 2010. Photo by author.
Figure 3.8: Berlin Wall Monument at CIA Headquarters, USA. Photo CIA. Re-
treieved from CIA’s webpage.
Figure 4.1: Facsimile of page in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter 1989-01-24.
Figure 4.2: Facsimile of front page of newspaper Metro, 1997-02-10
Figure 4.3: “The King wants to stop graffiti vandals”. Facsimile of front page of news-
paper Metro, 1997-02-10.
Figure 4.4: Fascinate by Circle and Tarik (1989). Photo by author in 1999.
Figure 4.5: Facsimile of the eviction of STHLM Underground dated 2002-01-09.
Figure 5.1: Model of graffiti as discursive formation. Constructed by author.
Figure 5.2: Model of graffiti as discursive formation. Visualizing the institutional
transformations of Keith Haring’s Crack is Wack. Constructed by author.

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 APPENDIX
1. Graffiti as an Art-Institutional Subject 1972–1992
The following is a selection of art exhibitions and other art-institutional activities re-
lated to New York graffiti during the years 1972–1992, either in New York or outside of
the city, but with artists referred to as graffiti artists from New York. The list has been
collected from previous research, exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, and other
books chronicling graffiti. In some cases this material has also been supplemented
with interviews with various graffiti writers (all sources are specified below).
In the selection of events for the list, it has been considered mandatory that the
data provides answer to the following three questions: Who has participated? Where
has the event taken place (venue and geographic location)? When did the event take
place? All activities without data on these three questions have been regarded as in-
sufficient, and have thus been omitted. This does not mean that the list is necessarily
entirely faultless, since exhibition catalogues and artist monographs of course may
contain errors, and it has not been possible to cross check each activity.
In the case of group exhibitions, it has also often proven impossible to obtain a full
list of participants from the available sources. Such possible lacunas are marked by
the word ‘including’, implying that these exhibitions may have included other artists.
The list below is thus neither supposed to be perceived as a consummate catalogue of
all art-institutional activities regarding graffiti, since these are a selection of the ones
found in the sources namned below, and there are many more that have not been used.
An extensive survey of the art-institutional history of graffiti would be a research pro-
ject of its own, and the intention here has primarily been to provide a rough picture
of New York graffiti as an art-institutional subject.
All overarching data are organized chronologically, and each specific activity structu-
red in the following order: 1) name of activity (if provided), 2) type of activity (if provi-
ded), 3) participant/s, 4) place, 5) geographic location, 6) time, 7) any other relevant data.

1972-1976
Mural by UGA at City Collage of New York, November 1972.
“Deuce Coupe”, UGA together with Twyla Tharp and the Joffrey Ballet, March 1973.
“United Graffiti Artists”, group exhibition by UGA, at Razor Galley, West Broadway,
New York, September 1973. Artists participating: Amrl (Bama), Cat 87, Coco 144,
Flint 707, Lee 163, Mico, Nova 1, Phase 2 (Cad), Ray-B 954 (Me 163, Flip 1), Riff 170
(Worm, Cash), Sjk 171, Slim, Snake 1, Spanky 132, Stitch I, Super Stuff 1, Tabu, Tom
177, T-Rex 131 and WG (Wicked Gary).
Group exhibition by UGA, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, May-June 1974.
Group exhibition by NOGA, Central Savings Bank at 73d Street and Broadway, De-
cember 1974.
“United Graffiti Artists 1975”, group exhibition by UGA, at Artist Space, Wooster

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 Street, New York, September 1975. Artists participating: Amrl (Bama), Cat 87, Coco
144, Flint 707, Lee 163, Mico, Phase 2, Sjk 171, Snake 1, Stitch I, T-Rex 131 and WG
(Wicked Gary).
Group exhibition by NOGA, Bank Street Collage of Education, March 1976.
Mural by NOGA at Prospect Hospital, Bronx, September 1976.

1979
“Soul Artists of Zoo York”, workshop and organization including Ali, Bama, Dondi,
Futura 2000, Quik, Revolt, Stan 153, formed out of the graffiti crew Soul Artists.
“The Fabulous Five / The Purest Form of New York Art”, with Lee (Quinones) and
Fab 5 Freddy (Frederick Brathwaite), arranged by Claudio Bruni, at Galleria La
Medusa, December 1979. Rome, Italy.

1980
“Graffiti 1980 Studio” (also referred to as “Esses Studio”), group collection arranged
by Futura 2000 and Zephyr, produced for collector Sam Esses, Spring 1980. This is
a collection said to consist of more than 30 works by writers such as Aeron CIA,
Crash, Daze, Dondi, Duro, Eddie CIA, Fact, Futura 2000, Kid 56, Mousey 56, Nac
143, Noc 167, Pete CIA, Rasta CIA, Shy 147, Zephyr et. al.
“Times Square Show”, group exhibition including Lee (Quinones), June 1980
“Graffiti Art Success for America”, group exhibition including Crash, Disco, Fab 5
Freddy, Futura 2000, John Fekner, Kel 139th (Kel First), Lady Pink, Lee (Quino-
nes), Mitch 77, Nac 143, Noc 167, Stan 153, Tom McCutcheon, Zephyr el al, curated
by Crash and Noc 167, at Fashion Moda, 2803 Third Avenue, near 147th Street,
October 1980.
Group exhibition, including Dondi, at Club 57, New York.
“NY Events”, group exhibition including Crash, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Qu-
inones), and Zephyr at The New Museum, New York City.
“The Third Phase”, solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at White Columns, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Galleria Paolo Seno, Milan, Italy.

1981
“New York/New Wave”, group exhibition including Aeron, Ali, Blade, Crash, Dondi,
Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000, Haze, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones), Quik, Rammellzee,
Samo ( Jean-Michel Basquiat), Seen, Zephyr curated by Diego Cortez at PS1 (since
2010 known as MoMA PS1), February 1981.
“Beyond Words: graffiti based – rooted – inspired – works”, group exhibition with Alan
Vega, Ammo, B-Sirius, Boy 5, Charlie Ahearn, Crash, Daze, Dondi (White), Fab 5 Fred-
dy (Frederick Brathwaite), Futura 2000, Henry Chalfant, Iggy Pop, John Sex, Keily Jen-
kins, Keith Haring, Kenny Sharf, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones), Luis Stand, Martha Coo-
per, Pray, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Rasta, Samo ( Jean-Michel Basquiat), Se 3, Stan 153,

175
 Tseng Kwong Chi, Zephyr, at Mudd Club, 77 White Street, New York, April 1981.
“Crew of Clones”, group exhibition including Lady Pink at Contemporary Art Cen-
ter, New Orleans.
“The Drawing Show”, group exhibition including Lee (Quinones) at Mudd Club, 77
White Street, New York, April 1981.
Solo exhibition with Crash ( John Matos), at Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut.

1982
Group exhibition, with works from Esses Studio and photographer Henry Chalfant, at
University Gallery of UCSC (University of California, Santa Cruz), February 1982.
“The Ugly Man”, solo Exhibition by Dondi (White) at 51X Gallery, 51 St. Mark’s
Place, September 1982.
“South Bronx Art Show”, group exhibition including Crash, Daze, and Futura 2000
at Fashion Moda, Bronx N.Y.
“New York Graffiti Show” (also referred to as “NY Graffiti Movement”, group exhibi-
tion including Crash and Daze, at Stewart Neill Gallery, New York.
Exhibition with Jenny Holzer and Lee (Quinones), at Galerie Barbara Faber, Am-
sterdam, The Netherlands.
Group exhibition including Crash, Lee (Quiniones) at Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany.
Group exhibition including Crash, at Galerie Bonnier, Geneva, Switzerland.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Fashion Moda, Bronx N.Y.
Solo exhibition by Daze at Fashion Moda, Bronx N.Y.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Fun Gallery, 229 E, 11th Street, February 1982.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones) at Galerie Barbara Faber, Amsterdam.
“Rust-O-LEE-um”, solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones) at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at 51X Gallery, 51 St. Mark’s Place.

1983
“Champions”, group exhibition with John Ahearn, Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel
Basquiat, James Brown, Ronnie Cutrone, Brett De Palma, Futura 2000, Keith Ha-
ring, Tom Otterness, Kenny Scharf, Zadik Zadikian, at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New
York, January 1983.
“Graffiti”, group exhibition with Blade, Crash, Dondi, Futura 2000, Lee (Quinones),
Noc 167, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen and Zephyr, at Museum Boijmans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam, October 1983.
“Post Graffiti Art”, group exhibition with A-One, Blade, Crash, Daze, Futura 2000,
Koor, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones), Noc 167, Rammellzee, Seen at Sidney Janis Gal-
lery, December 1983.
“Graffiti Thanks a Lot”, Fun Gallery, New York.

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“The Fun Gallery Presents”, group exhibition including Crash, Daze, Futura 2000 at
Gallery 121, Antwerp.
“New York/New Year”, group exhibition including Lee (Quinones), at Galerie Barba-
ra Faber, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Bill Blast at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Bill Blast at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Crash at 51X Gallery, 51 St. Mark’s Place.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Nether-
lands, January 1983.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Fun Gallery, 229 E, 11th Street, March 1983.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Galerie Art in Progress, Düsseldorf, April 1983.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Yvon Lambert, Paris.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at 51X Gallery, 51 St. Mark’s Place.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Fashion Moda, Bronx N.Y.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Galerie Barbara Faber, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Solo exhibition by Quik at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Quik at Galerie Art in Progress, Düsseldorf.
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Seen at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at Galerie Art in Progress, Düsseldorf.

1984
“New Galleries of the Lower East Side”, group exhibition including Futura 2000,
Dondi (White), and Zephyr at Artist Space, January 1984.
Retrospective group exhibition by UGA, “New York Graffiti Writers 1972-1984”, Gal-
lozzi-LaPlaca Galley, Greenwich Street, New York, May 1984.
“Arte de Frontiera – NY Graffiti”, group exhibition including Crash, Lady Pink, Fu-
tura 2000 at Galerie communale d’arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy.
“Urban Landscapes”, group exhibition including Lady Pink, Semaphore East, New York.
“Sidney Janis Presents Graffiti”, group exhibition including Crash at Basel Art Fair,
Basel, Switzerland.
“Calligraffiti”, group exhibition including Crash at Leila Taghinia-Milani, NYC.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, May 1984.
“New York Graffiti”, group exhibition including Blade, Crash, Daze, Dondi, Futura

177
 2000, Seen, Zephyr at Louisiana, Humlebaek, Denmark, September 1984.
“Aspekte Amerikanischerer Kunst det Gegenwart”, group exhibition with Crash,
Daze, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones), Noc 167, Toxic at Neue Galerie –
Sammlung Ludwig. Aachen, Germany.
“Graffiti”, group exhibition with Blade, Crash, Dondi, Futura 2000, Phase 2, Seen,
Zephyr at Groninger Museum, Groningen, Holland.
“Classical American Graffiti Writers and High Graffiti Artists”, group exhibition
with A-One, Blade, Crash, Dondi, Futura 2000, Koor, Lee, Seen, Zephyr at Gale-
rie Thomas, München.
Crash and Daze, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, May 1984.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Yaki Kornblit Gallery.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Galerie Thomas, München, Germany.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Moore College of Art, Philadelphia.
“Rapid Enamelist”, solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Cologne, Germany.
Solo exhibition by Quik at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Quik at Stellweg-Seguy Gallery, Soho, New York.
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Stellweg-Seguy Gallery, Soho, New York
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Gallozzi-LaPlaca Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Seen at Stellweg-Seguy Gallery, Soho, New York.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at Fun Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at Fun Gallery West, San Francisco.

1985
Group exhibition with Crash, Daze, Ero, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones),
Noc 167, Toxic at Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum, Mainz, Germany.
Group exhibition with Crash, Daze, Ero, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones),
Noc 167, Toxic at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, Denmark.
Group exhibition with Crash, Daze, Ero, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones),
Noc 167, Toxic at Heine-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høviksodden, Norway.
“Amerikanskt 80-tal”, group exhibition (from Sammlung Ludwig) including A-One,
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Crash, Daze, Ero, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones),
Noc 167, Toxic at Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden, November 1985.
“Sidney Janis presents Graffiti”, group exhibition including A-One, Crash, Daze at
Arco 85, Madrid, Spain.

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“3 Graffiti Artists”, A-One, Noc 167 and Toxic, at Sidney Janis Gallery.
“South Bronx Art Show”, group exhibition including Crash and Daze at Fashion
Moda, Bronx N.Y.
“New York Graffiti”, group exhibition including Blade, Bill Blast, Crash, Dondi
(White), Futura 2000, Noc 167, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen at Gemeentemu-
seum Helmond, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Stellweg-Seguy Gallery, Soho, New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Daze at Eastman-Wahmendorf Gallery, New York
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.
“New Horizons”, solo exhibition by Lee (Quinones), at Riverside Studios, London,
England.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Semaphore East, New York.
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1986
“Evolutions”, group exhibition including Bill Blast at Gallozzi-LaPlaca Galley, New
York.
“New York Graffiti”, group exhibition with Blade, Bill Blast, Crash, Dondi (White),
Futura 2000, Noc 167, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen at Leopold-Hoesch Mu-
seum. Düren, Germany.
Group exhibition including Dondi (White), at Bossel [Basel] International Art Fair,
Switzerland.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
“Crowd Control”, solo exhibition by Daze at Nada Gallery, New York.
“Daze”, solo exhibition by Daze at Pene du Bois Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Lady Pink at Semaphore East, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Semaphore Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Zephyr at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1987
“Matter of Facts”, solo exhibition by Dondi (White) at 56 Bleeker Street Gallery,
April 1987.
“Beyond Words (Science & Symbiotics)”, group exhibition including A-One at Fa-
shion Moda. Bronx, New York.
“Remeberances”, group exhibition including Dondi (White), Stax Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins, New York.

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 “New Paintings”, solo exhibition by Daze at Alexander Wood Gallery, New York.

1988
“New York Graffiti”, group exhibition including Daze, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Lady
Pink, Noc 167 at Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Hans Metternich. Koblenz, Germany.
“Real Paint”, group exhibition including Dondi (White), Procter Art Center, New York.
“2042 Art at the Speed of Light”, group exhibition including Daze at Limelight, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Phillip Briet Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.

1989
“Selections from the Permanent Collection”, group exhibition including Daze, Futura
2000 at Museum of American Graffiti, New York.
“The Love of Print Making”, group exhibition including Daze at Goddard Riverside
Community Center, New York.
“The Center Show”, group exhibition including Daze at Gay and Lesbian Commu-
nity Center, New York.
Solo exhibition by Blade at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Solo exhibition by Bill Blast at Colombia University’s Intercultural Resource Center,
New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Tamara Bane Gallery, Los Angeles, California.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Hokin Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Gallery B5, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Solo exhibition by Daze at Museum of American Graffiti, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Galerie du jour, Paris, France.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Musee de Vire, Vire, France.

1990
“Artists Against Racial Prejudice”, group exhibition including Daze at Clock Tower
Gallery, New York.
“Expressive Drawings”, group exhibition including Daze at New York Academy of
Art, New York.
Crash and Daze, Gallery Structure, Montpellier, France.
Crash and Daze, at Black and White in Color, Bronx, New York.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Hokin Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida.
Solo exhibition by Daze at Galerie Michel Gillet, Paris, France.
Solo exhibition by Daze at Gallery B5, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Phillip Briet Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Martin Lawrence Gallery, New York.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Gallery B5, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Solo exhibition by Rammellzee at Yaki Kornblit Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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1991
“Graffiti Art”, group exhibition with Blade, Bill Blast, Crash, Daze, Dondi, Futu-
ra 2000, Keith Haring, Koor, Noc 167, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen, Toxic, Zephyr at
Musée National des Monuments Français, Paris, France.
“Hip Hop Nation”, group exhibition including Crash, Daze, Lee (Quinones) at Real
Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut.
“Post Graffiti, Fine Art”, group exhibition including Crash, Daze, Lady Pink, Lee
(Quinones) at Federal Reserve Building, Washington D.C.
Solo exhibition by Crash at Galerie Michel Gillet, Paris, France.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Gallery Structure, Montpellier, France.
Solo exhibition by Futura 2000 at Galerie du jour, Paris, France.
“Graffiti Movement”, group exhibition including Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones) at Col-
leen Greco Gallery, New York.

1992
“Education ‘92” group exhibition with Crash, Daze, Dondi, Futura 2000, Lee (Qui-
nones), Stash, Zephyr, at DIFFA Fund Raiser, (Design Industries Foundation for
AIDS), Pontiac, Michigan, March 1992.
“The Legacy” (also referred to as The Rempire Show), group exhibition with Crash,
Daze, Dondi, Futura 2000, Lee, Stash, Zephyr, at Rempire Gallery, Soho, May 1992.
“New York, New York”, group exhibition with UGA, Artful Facilities, Amsterdam,
Holland, September 1992.
“Coming from the Subway”, group exhibition with A-One, Blade, Bill Blast, Crash,
Daze, Dondi, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Koor, Lady Pink, Lee (Quinones), Noc
167, Phase 2, Quik, Rammellzee, Seen, Toxic at Groninger Museum, Groningen,
Holland.
“New Paintings by Crash”, solo exhibition by Crash at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
“John Crash Matos: New Works”, solo exhibition by Crash at Can Isidusron, Ibiza, Spain.
“Crash Superheroes”, solo exhibition by Crash at Martin Lawrence Modern, New York.
Group exhibition including Daze at Barbara Braathen Gallery, New York.
“Graffiti”, group exhibition including Daze, Lee (Quinones) at Klarfeld Perry Gal-
lery, New York.

SOURCES TO APPENDIX 1 IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Craig Castleman, Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York (1982).
Steven Hager, Hip hop – the Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, And Graffiti (1984).
Louise Robbert and Pia Sundqvist, (ed.) Amerikanskt 80-tal: måleri, skulptur, textil,
[från] Neue Galerie, Sammlung Ludwig Aachen (1985).
Keith Haring and John Gruen, Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography (1991).
Froukje Hoekstra and Frans Haks, Coming from the subway – New York graffiti art:
Geschichte und Entwicklung einer aussergewöhnlichen Bewegung (1992).

181
 John Crash Matos, Celebrating 15 Years Above Ground (1995). Exhibition catalogue for
exhibition including John ‘Crash’ Matos, Daze, Dondi White, Futura (2000), Lady
Pink, Lee Quinones, and Zephyr.
Staffan Jacobson, Den spraymålade bilden: graffitimåleriet som bildform, konströrelse och
läroprocess (1996).
Claudia Gould & Valerie Smith (1998). 5000 Artists Return to Artist Space: 25 Years
(1998).
Andrew Witten & Michael White, Style Master General: The Life of Graffiti Artist
Dondi White (2001).
Joe Austin, Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York
City (2001).
Alain “Ket” Maridueña, Part One – The Death Squad (2009).
Jack Stewart, Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970’s (2009).
Coco 144 (interview 2009).
Part One (interview 2009).
Snake 1 (interview 2009).
Jeffrey Deitch, Roger Gastman, & Aaron Rose, Art in the Streets (2011).
Carlo McCormick & Sean Corcoran, City as Canvas: New York City Graffiti From the
Martin Wong Collection (2013).

2. Selected Quotes on Berlin Wall Graffiti 1974–1990

A targeted search (conducted 2010-01-05) in Newspapers/“Berlin Wall” Graffiti, from
the English-langague database LexisNexis Academic returned 988 results. Limiting the
search to the period 1978–1990, and to those newspapers that contained at least three
matches, narrowed the material to 162 articles in 20 newspapers from USA, UK, Cana-
da, and Australia (full list of news papers and number of results below). These articles
have been the main material from which the collection of quotes has been selected.

East Germans whitewash over anti-Communist graffiti on Berlin Wall. Carter notes that
action is indicative of deprivation of human rights. The New York Times, 1978-07-16
The Berlin Wall, which the East Germans whitewashed before President Jimmy Car-
ter arrived here, was covered again yesterday with anti-Communist slogans. Ivan
Go Home, one slogan said. Another, in a reference to two jailed East German
dissidents, said: Freedom for Nico Huebner and Rudolf Bahro. The Globe and Mail
(Canada), 1978-07-19
The scribblings are a touch of humanity on the impersonal stretch of concrete that
cuts through the heart of Berlin. So are the wreathes and crosses commemorating
lives lost trying to cross the perilous, 103-mile obstacle course to the West. Christian
Science Monitor (Boston, MA), 1981-08-13
Berliners may not accept the wall, but they have learned to live with it. Graffiti scraw-
led on the Western side has lost its angry, polemical tone and become whimsical.

182
 ‘Love to Mom from the Berlin Wall,’ and ‘Attention, next Coke 10,000 kilometers,’
are now more common than ‘Death Alley’ and ‘Prison Wall.’ But sometimes cyni-
cism prevails, as in ‘Warning, East German high-jump training area.’ The Globe and
Mail (Canada), 1981-08-13
Haunting aerial views, meanwhile, are a reminder that the Berlin Wall extends out of
downtown Berlin and into the countryside, desecrating nature as well as the notion
of liberty. “Broken Dream” is one of the scrawls of graffiti on it; yet, later, bubbly
tourists pose against it for snapshots. The students denounce it as “a human perver-
sion” and for the fact that even this perversion has become a sightseeing attraction.
The Washington Post, 1982-06-09
East German border guards peered over the top of the Berlin Wall to photograph the
event. West German citizens, police officers and a crowd of reporters gathered on the
other side. A United States Army helicopter hovered in the sky. Everyone had come to
see Keith Haring paint. […] Since the first six feet of land on the Western side belong
to the East, the artist was not just defacing property of the East German Government
– he was entering that country without a visa. A West Berlin policeman used a megap-
hone to warn him of the fact. But Mr. Haring continued, sporadically leaping back onto
Western soil when East German border guards looked as if they were about to arrest
him. […] “It’s a humanistic gesture, more than anything else,’’ said the artist, who called
his work “a political and subversive act - an attempt to psychologically destroy the wall
by painting it.’’ The New York Times, 1986-10-24
The wall, of course, is a happening in itself; on the western side it has long since been
covered with vivid graffiti and modern-day frescoes, and it will doubtless be freshe-
ned up with new slogans and caricatures by the time the birthday party opens next
April. Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), 1986-05-09
Meanwhile, Berliners on both sides will go on living with the Wall as a fact of life.
Next year they will elaborately celebrate the 750th anniversary of their city in
contrasting styles. The graffiti, the psychadelic colours and primitive artwork on
the Wall’s western side will continue to be matched by the white and grey sobriety
on the east. The Guardian (London), 1986-08-11
For West Berliners, the wall is a repugnant scar that continues to draw emotional reac-
tions. Its western side is covered in anticommunist graffiti. […] Such protests can hard-
ly be matched on the eastern side, where the wall is far less conspicuous -- and more
menacing than infuriating. Houses on the border have no west windows. There is no
graffiti, only an eerie white wall which few approach closely. Newsweek, 1986-08-18
Over the years, however, there have been enough less august figures to cover the wes-
tern side of the wall with jokes and rude graffiti about communism. ‘East German
high-jump team training area’, one says. There are also entries of varying degrees of
affection or obscenity on the subject of pop singers. People who live nearby say that
first it was Elvis Presley; now Boy George is popular. The graffiti are in all major
languages except Russian. The Times (London), 1986-08-06

183
 Less than two miles away, at a somber ceremony in the former Reichstag building,
which lies hard by the graffiti-daubed western side of the wall, Chancellor Helmut
Kohl condemned the 13-foot-high barrier as ‘‘perhaps the most visible expression of
the moral difference between a free democracy and totalitarian Communism.’’ The
New York Times, 1986-08-14
The Wall, the greatest monument to the postwar world -- a serpentine 99 miles long
-- has riven Berlin for more than a quarter century. On the western side, it is most-
ly covered with swirls of graffiti expressing a wide range of political, sexual and
scatological desires. On the eastern side, though, its cement-gray minimalist style
remains pristine. Armed guards imported from the provinces and stationed atop
285 watchtowers ensure that there are no creative improvements. The Washington
Post, 1987-01-06
Standing Friday beside the stark, concrete barrier separating two ways of life, Presi-
dent Reagan dared Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and
prove he wants world peace and freedom. […] The wall was covered with graf-
fiti, but included the freshly painted words “Welcome Ronald Reagan” directly
behind the speakers’ platform. The new message covered an anti-Reagan slogan
that had been painted the previous day, according to several West Berliners. The
Miami Herald, 1987-06-13
Often with courage and by sheer energy the Berlin artists have fought - perhaps
quixotically - to assert humanity and demand freedom in global terms, an urge so
movingly apparent in the riotous painting and graffiti that cover long stretches of
the Wall. The Globe and Mail (Canada), 1987-07-11
The entire Western expanse of it looks like a New York City subway car, a monument
to urban graffiti; not an inch of it remains unpainted. In the East, of course, where
one can’t approach it so readily, let alone express oneself freely through spray paint
or otherwise, the wall is clean and gray. The Miami Herald, 1987-08-28
As it is, the Berlin Wall preserves the Western sector from going the dull, bland way
of other German cities. Rather than being condemned as the culprit behind one of
the 20th century’s most heartless and inhumane eyesores, perhaps Ulbricht should
be thanked for the wallspace upon which is written such arresting graffiti. The Gu-
ardian (London) April 1, 1988-04-01
Graffiti-scarred but still forbidding, the wall endures. On his final official trip abroad
last week, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz called for the dismantling of the
27-year-old barrier between the two Berlins. Newsweek, 1989-01-30
When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, it was grey and ugly and threatening. Its
appearance suited the politics behind its erection. No longer. Whatever they may
think of the wall, artists, graffiti jockeys and doodlers have transformed the wall
into a carnival of cheerful color. The Globe and Mail (Canada), 1989-04-26
Gorbachev says the Wall, which leaves an island of capitalism in the heart of a commu-
nist world, was built for a specific purpose and not out of evil intention. It is a hard

184
 argument to accept in the face of how a concrete barrier, sprawled with graffiti on its
western side and guards on its east, has cut asunder a society of the same flesh and
blood to live lifestyles of painful, demoralising contrast. The Advertiser, 1989-06-21
In a strange reversal of political reality, the 15-foot Wall is unimposing on the West
Berlin side, almost a work of art in its mantle of bright day-glo graffiti. It is from East
Berlin that the Wall comes alive. Blank, stark, pristine white, it appears to loom hig-
her and is far more menacing in its forced nakedness. USA Today, 1989-10-09
In parts of Berlin, the wall has been painted white, but the coils of barbed wire and
paths for patrolling police and dogs on the eastern side leave no doubt as to its
purpose. On the western side, local artists have covered the wall with graffiti. […]
Indeed, the wall separates the glittering, exploding prosperity of West Berlin from
the drab mixture of grandiose 19th century buildings and colorless high-rises, the
pride of the East German economy. The Washington Times, 1989-11-06
The Berlin Wall is one of the ugliest monuments in the world, the only structure in
Europe that is actually improved by the graffiti scrawled across it. The wall is the
great symbol of the division of Europe into two parts, one in which great personal
freedom prevails and one in which it does not. The Washington Post, 1989-11-10
The wall’s graffiti are among the wittiest and most political anywhere in the world.
Artists pour petrol on the structure and set fire to it to make it seem to disap-
pear. They daub it with pictures of hope and despair. Perversely it has become the
most important tourist attraction in the western part of the city. The Times (Lon-
don), 1989-11-10
West Germans made their own comments, some bitter, some whimsical. The Wall is
covered in many spots with paintings and graffiti. One French artist mounted a uri-
nal surrounded by depictions of dinosaurs - only to have it destroyed by humorless
East German guards. The Globe and Mail (Canada), 1989-11-11
The announcement came on the fourth day of wild celebrations in West Berlin, in
which an estimated 2 million to 3 million East Germans streamed through the
graffiti-scarred Berlin Wall for a brief taste of long-denied freedom. The Washington
Times, 1989-11-13
Rene was one of a dozen, including several newly-freed East Germans who chipped,
clawed and scraped away at the wall under torchlight early on Friday. “I have made
more money in six hours from selling bits of the wall which once kept us in than
I would make in two weeks working in the DDR (East Germany),” said a former
East Berliner nearby. “Everybody wants a bit with graffiti on it and for this they
don’t mind paying a little more.” Courier-Mail, 1989-11-18

LIST OF NEWSPAPERS
15 articles in The Guardian (UK)
14 articles in The Times (UK)
13 articles in New York Times (USA)

185
 12 articles in Miami Herald (USA)
10 articles in The Globe and Mail (Canada)
9 articles in Herald Sun/Sunday Herald Sun (Australia)
9 articles in The Independent (UK)
9 articles in The Washington Post (USA)
8 articles in San Diego Union-Tribune (USA)
7 articles in The Christian Science Monitor (USA)
7 articles in The Oregonian (USA)
7 articles in St. Louis Post-Dispatch (USA)
7 articles in St. Petersburg Times (USA)
7 articles in The Toronto Star (Canada)
6 articles in The Advertiser/Sunday Mail (Australia)
6 articles in The Orange County Register (USA)
5 articles in The San Francisco Chronicle (USA)
4 articles in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
3 articles in The Washington Times (USA)

3. Articles on Graffiti in the Newspaper Metro 1995–1999

These are all texts that in different ways refer to graffiti, usually through the word “klot-
ter” (Swedish term with a denotation equivalent with the English term ‘graffiti vanda-
lism’). The texts have been indexed under four categories. “Articles” represents editorial
material with its own headline, and may thus refer to smaller news items as well as
news articles and longer features. The category “SL-direkt” covers articles published in
the daily page that SL (Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, Stockholm Public Transport) had
access to in the paper during these years, as well as in some cases articles published in
different newspaper supplements to Metro issued by SL. “My opinion” (in Swedish,
“Min mening”) refers to letters from readers published in the newspaper under the vig-
nette “Min mening”. The list also includes three advertisements, all issued by the City of
Stockholm. The total amount of published objects is 219.
Headline Date Type
Klottret skrämmer Stockholms turister 1995-04-20 My opinion
SL satsar på tryggare trafikmiljö 1995-05-05 SL-direkt
Stockholm, Europas renaste stad 1998 1995-05-18 Advertisement
Ni som sabbar T-banan förstör för er själva 1995-05-31 My opinion
Killar - är ni dumma eller? 1995-06-02 My opinion
Klottraren vill bli sedd av de vuxna 1995-06-08 My opinion
– Tunnelbanan allas ansvar! 1995-06-20 SL-direkt
Tankarna i Söderort 1995-09-05 SL-direkt
Våldet har nått ner bland lågstadiebarnen 1995-09-16 Article
Många steg för tryggheten 1995-10-02 SL-direkt

186
Att tycka om SL 1995-10-25 SL-direkt
Att tycka om SL 1995-10-30 SL-direkt
Alla får betala för klottret 1995-10-30 SL-direkt
Hallå stockholmare 1995-10-31 Advertisement
Ta i ordentligt mot klottrarna 1995-11-06 My opinion
Rena regnskydd för väntande 1995-11-07 SL-direkt
En framtid utan spray 1995-11-09 SL-direkt
Att tycka om SL 1995-11-13 SL-direkt
Se på dig själv - är du kyckling eller man? 1995-11-13 SL-direkt
TV-övervakning stoppar klottret 1995-11-15 My opinion
Är det manligt att klottra? 1995-11-15 SL-direkt
Ge klottrarna kännbara straff 1995-11-16 My opinion
– Vakna vuxna! Unga klottrar även på nätterna 1995-11-22 SL-direkt
Människors slit för ren trafik 1995-11-29 SL-direkt
Klotterpengar till tvärresor 1995-12-06 SL-direkt
Klottret kan stoppa T-banan på natten 1995-12-14 Article
Klottra på strömskenorna ny livsfarlig trend 1995-12-14 Article
Förbjud alla sprayfärger 1995-12-19 My opinion
Stoppa vandalisering av tunnelbanan 1995-12-19 My opinion
Sällskapsresor är geniala 1996-01-11 SL-direkt
Tunnelbanan säker plats 1996-01-16 SL-direkt
Skadegörelse är inte förortskultur 1996-01-16 SL-direkt
– Fuskåkare fyller Globen 1996-01-22 SL-direkt
Rinkeby går före 1996-01-29 SL-direkt
Tryggare i T-banan 1996-01-31 Article
– Satsa på kontakten med barnen, SL! 1996-02-08 SL-direkt
Fridfull station på TV-skärmen 1996-02-22 SL-direkt
Långt bort och länge sedan 1996-02-27 SL-direkt
Kajsa firar på kvinnodagen 1996-03-08 SL-direkt
Italienare förälskad i vår tunnelbana 1996-03-11 SL-direkt
Dina tips mot förstörelsen 1996-03-20 SL-direkt
Hallå stockholmare 1996-03-26 Advertisement
Dr. Alban: Rätt att betala 1996-04-10 SL-direkt
Stockholm på väg att förslummas 1996-04-11 My opinion
Sätt in värnpliktiga mot klotterdiktaturen 1996-04-16 My opinion
I kamp för ungas framtid 1996-04-18 SL-direkt
Affisch stör utsikt och insikt 1996-04-22 SL-direkt
– Vi har ett gemensamt ansvar 1996-04-30 SL-direkt

187
 Vandalism kräver nya metoder 1996-05-07 SL-direkt
Klotter kostar pengar och liv 1996-05-09 SL-direkt
Fråga SL-direkt 1996-05-28 SL-direkt
Stationen där tågen aldrig stannar 1996-08-06 Article
Glada av färger 1996-08-15 SL-direkt
Onödigt köpa nya tunnelbanevagnar 1996-08-19 My opinion
Högt tryck mot klottret 1996-09-04 SL-direkt
Hypermodernt i Singapore 1996-09-09 SL-direkt
Klottret har blivit välorganiserad brottslighet 1996-10-04 Article
Välorganiserade klottrare kostar miljoner varje år 1996-10-04 Article
Snuskig T-bana avskräcker resande 1996-10-11 My opinion
Doft av skärgård i T-banan 1996-10-17 SL-direkt
Ambassadörer vill bötfälla nedskräpare 1996-10-21 Article
Låt klottrarna vara i fred SL 1996-10-24 My opinion
SL:s hårda tag mot klottrare är helt rätt 1996-10-28 My opinion
Trångt på bussen i Kiev 1996-11-04 SL-direkt
Klottersanerare ur spår 1996-11-06 SL-direkt
Nya t-banevagnar i kamp mot klottret 1996-11-11 Article
Tips till SL stoppar klotter 1996-11-13 SL-direkt
Ingen vinner klotterkriget 1996-11-20 Article
SL vill skärpa regler för sprayfärg 1996-11-20 Article
T-banan blir tryggare och snyggare 1996-11-22 Article
Per och Gülan tycker till 1996-12-02 SL-direkt
Mer hyfs i tunnelbanan efterlyses 1996-12-27 Article
Hon hyllar handarbetet 1996-12-27 SL-direkt
Molnet på städhimlen 1997-01-09 SL-direkt
Hårt jobb för ren tunnelbana 1997-01-13 SL-direkt
Tunnelbanan ökar städningen 1997-01-16 SL-direkt
41 bussar blev nedklottrade 1997-01-22 Article
Sluta klottra och få glädje inombords 1997-01-27 My opinion
Kungen vill stoppa klottrare 1997-02-10 Article
Borgarråd ger kungen rätt om nedskräpningen 1997-02-11 Article
Jag vill se Persson städa tågvagnar 1997-02-14 Article
Kungen gnäller inte om Stockholms förfall 1997-02-19 My opinion
Adelsohn vill ha lokala insatser mot klottret 1997-02-20 Article
Singaporemodell gör Stockholm rent 1997-02-20 My opinion
Hallå där Lennart Gabrielsson (fp) 1997-02-25 Article
Befria kungahuset från munkavlen 1997-02-26 My opinion

188
Klottrarna behöver ett behandlingshem 1997-02-27 My opinion
Nattbevakning kan minska klottret 1997-02-28 My opinion
Kd-ledaren vill snygga till tunnelbanan 1997-03-04 Article
Varför stoppas inte vandalerna i T-banan 1997-03-06 My opinion
Ryska poliser åkte T-bana 1997-03-06 SL-direkt
Katt troligen dödad av sprayfärg 1997-03-13 Article
SL satsar miljoner för att förebygga klotter 1997-03-19 Article
Polisen: Ingrip men ta inga onödiga risker 1997-03-25 Article
SL:s verklighet är tung för tunnelbaneförare 1997-03-25 My opinion
Tycka om SL 1997-03-25 SL-direkt
Brottsligheten sjunker i New York 1997-04-01 Article
SL – The name of the Game 1997-04-03 SL-direkt
SL vill minska våldet med kameror 1997-04-04 Article
SL:s nya vagnar bra för oss med ryggproblem 1997-04-19 My opinion
Vandalism gynnar inte djurens sak 1997-04-30 My opinion
Kvinnan bakom SL-konsten 1997-04-30 SL-direkt
Gå ej på spåret! 1997-05-12 SL-direkt
Ta itu med klottret också, Adelsohn 1997-05-16 My opinion
Tunnelbanan ska bli snygg och trygg 1997-05-17 Article
Satsa SL:s pengar på fritidsgårdar istället 1997-05-29 My opinion
Intervju m Kjell Eriksson, chef för SL Trafik 1997-06-03 SL-direkt
Operation Trygghet 1997-06-03 SL-direkt
– Jag vill att trafikanterna ska känna sig trygga
med oss 1997-06-03 SL-direkt
Mindre klotter om spritpennor förbjuds 1997-06-09 My opinion
Hård kritik mot smutsigt Stockholm 1997-06-25 Article
Nattrafik i Stockholm… 1997-06-26 SL-direkt
Kan klottraren betala sina skulder 1997-08-12 My opinion
Världens vakraste tunnelbana 1997-08-18 SL-direkt
Klottret drabbar skattebetalarna 1997-08-19 My opinion
Danska klottrare får städa efter sig 1997-08-20 My opinion
SL provar nytt skydd mot klotter 1997-08-23 Article
Deras jobb tar aldrig slut 1997-09-03 SL-direkt
SL på schemat 1997-09-08 SL-direkt
Tågklottrare greps på bar gärning 1997-09-15 Article
Klotter med livet som insats! 1997-09-17 SL-direkt
Klottrare kan få 800000 i böter 1997-09-17 Article
Konst i T-banan ser ut som klotter 1997-09-22 My opinion
Fri uppfostran ger brott och missbruk 1997-10-04 My opinion

189
 Konsten i T-banan inte bättre än klotter 1997-10-18 My opinion
Stor sanering på gröna linjen 1997-10-21 Article
Fickstölder och andra brott 1997-10-21 SL-direkt
Rent av trevligt i tunnelbanan 1997-10-23 SL-direkt
Fryshuset vill utbilda i graffiti 1997-10-25 Article
Med livet som insats 1997-10-31 SL-direkt
Det farliga spåret 1997-11-03 SL-direkt
Så ska trafiken bli tryggare 1997-11-20 SL-direkt
T-banepolisen tillbaka 1997-11-21 Article
Klottrare tycks vara olika inför lagen 1997-11-27 My opinion
Förstörelse kostar på 1997-12-11 SL-direkt
SL får videofilma åkande i t-banan 1997-12-27 Article
Tvinga ristarna rista hos varandra 1998-01-08 My opinion
Klotterkriget trappas upp 1998-01-09 Article
Gäckande klottrare greps på bar gärning 1998-01-16 Article
Storklottraren häktades igår 1998-01-17 Article
Hårdare tag mot stadens klottrare 1998-01-23 Article
Polisen slår till hårt mot alla brott i T-banan 1998-01-24 Article
19-årig klottrare inför rätta 1998-01-24 Article
En minut med Kjell Hultman 1998-01-28 SL-direkt
Vanställande klotter i T-banan 1998-01-28 My opinion
New Yorks fotgängare protesterar mot hårda tag 1998-01-30 Article
Storklottrare fick sänkta straff 1998-02-07 Article
SL vädjar om hjälp från vittnen 1998-02-10 Article
Tiggandet ett växande ordningsproblem 1998-02-12 My opinion
Klottret kostar SL som 35 bussar 1998-02-13 Article
100 T-banevagnar vandaliseras svårt varje dag 1998-02-13 Article
Klottrare från hela Europa väntas till Stockholm i år 1998-02-13 Article
Klottret kostade SL 71,1 miljoner kronor 1998-02-13 Article
Hur ska det gå för Johan? 1998-02-13 SL-direkt
Stockholm har världens längsta konstutställning 1998-02-14 Article
Han är trött på vandaler 1998-02-14 Article
Konst i T-banan finns i 40 städer 1998-02-14 Article
Sabotaget i tunnelbanan 1998-02-16 SL-direkt
T-banesabotage på väg att klaras upp 1998-02-20 Article
Rinkebyskolan ett föredöme 1998-02-20 SL-direkt
Strängare lagar i T-banan stoppas 1998-02-21 Article
Klotter på bussen förstör kläderna 1998-02-21 My opinion

190
Klottrare riskerar miljonskadestånd 1998-02-25 Article
Noll tolerans mot klotter i New York 1998-02-25 SL-direkt
Klottrare tvingas betala rekordstort skadestånd 1998-03-11 Article
SL-bussar kan snart bli videoövervakade 1998-03-16 Article
Vittnesmål fäller inte klottrare 1998-03-17 Article
SL ska rusta upp äldsta pendeltågen 1998-03-18 Article
Raka besked om klotter 1998-03-23 SL-direkt
Fräschare tågvagnar 1998-03-26 SL-direkt
Klottrare borde gå och lära sig måla 1998-04-16 My opinion
Stockholms T-bana är en rullande slum 1998-04-24 My opinion
Klotter en livsfarlig hobby 1998-04-27 SL-direkt
Dina värdar under resan 1998-05-04 SL-direkt
Danne på tröskeln till “finrummet” 1998-05-07 SL-direkt
Tågföraren Kim värnar Vagn 2000 1998-05-08 SL-direkt
Pendeltågsresenärer färdas genom en slum 1998-05-22 My opinion
SL bör stoppa förstörelsen 1998-05-25 My opinion
T-baneklotter har blivit en industri 1998-05-28 Article
Klotter lönsam affär 1998-05-28 Article
Busskurer är hotade 1998-06-12 SL-direkt
Tågvärdarna ger trygghet i tunnelbanan 1998-08-27 SL-direkt
Internationell klotterliga gripen 1998-08-29 Article
Klottrare dömd till fängelsestraff 1998-09-12 Article
Klottrare dömd till fängelse 1998-09-15 Article
Polisen grep en av de värsta klottrarna 1998-09-25 Article
SLs ansikte i skolan 1998-09-30 SL-direkt
Nolltolerans införs i kollektivtrafiken 1998-10-10 Article
Kommuner vill skärpa straffen för klottrare 1998-10-15 Article
SL på schemat 1998-10-21 SL-direkt
Titta på klottrare kan vara medhjälp 1998-10-27 Article
Ung blick för historien 1998-10-30 SL-direkt
Pendeltågens nya look 1998-11-18 SL-direkt
Vandalisering står skattebetalarna dyrt 1998-12-05 My opinion
Tunnelbanans förkämpe 1998-12-10 SL-direkt
Stockholm är en nedgrisad stad 1999-01-09 My opinion
Klottrare filmades i smyg av väktare 1999-03-11 Article
Kungsängens nya ansikte 1999-03-17 SL-direkt
Guider protesterar mot klottret 1999-04-29 Article
CGEA vill minska brotten i T-banan 1999-05-05 Article

191
 Fransmännen bör ta hand om klottret 1999-05-12 My opinion
Bostadsområde får egna väktare 1999-07-07 Article
Klottret minskar i T-banan 1999-08-06 Article
SL har använt sig av maskerade väktare 1999-08-23 Article
SL stödjer klotterforskningen 1999-08-23 SL-direkt
Vårstädat under sommaren 1999-08-23 SL-direkt
Polisens nya ansikte 1999-09-06 SL-direkt
Bråk om klotter på pendeltåg i Järna 1999-10-25 Article
Åtta järnvägsvagnar nedklottrade i Tomteboda 1999-10-26 Article
Halv miljon kronor satsas mot klotter 1999-10-29 Article
Civila spanare på spåret 1999-11-04 SL-direkt
SL och polisen samarbetar 1999-11-09 SL-direkt
SLs eldsjäl mot klotter 1999-11-10 SL-direkt
Personal nyckeln till trygghet 1999-11-15 SL-direkt
Sluta förstöra Solnas T-banestationer 1999-11-24 My opinion
Låt kultureliten få se en nedklottrad station 1999-11-25 My opinion
Meningslöst klotter på renoverad T-station 1999-11-27 My opinion
Säkerhetsventiler ska hindra klottrare 1999-11-29 Article
Ny uppfinning hindrar klottrare 1999-11-29 Article

4. Glossary of Glossaries
This glossary of glossaries is a compilation of definitions of the 58 most frequently
found words in the glossaries of 19 books on graffiti published between 1984 and
2013. A full compilation of all concepts would contain approximately 400 words.
Synonyms and words with a different spelling, but relating to the same concept,
have been grouped together. Each of the definitions is accompanied by informa-
tion on the author, main country of usage, and year. The glossaries that have been
utilized have been found in the following books (in chronological order):
Steven Hager, Hip hop – the Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, And Graf-
fiti (1984).
Martha Cooper & Henry Chalfant, Subway Art (1984).
Peter Skaarup, Dansk Wildstyle Graffiti (1985).
Henry Chalfant & James Prigoff, Spraycan Art (1987).
Jack Stewart, Subway Graffiti (1989).
Olivier Monmagnon, Sabotage! (1996).
Phase 2, Style: Writing from the Underground (1996).
Staffan Jacobson, Den spraymålade bilden (1996).
Nancy Macdonald, The graffiti subculture (2001).

192
Ivor L. Miller, Aerosol Kingdom (2002).
Tobias Barenthin Lindblad & Malcolm Jacobson, Overground (2003).
Paul 107, All City, Canada (2003).
Nicholas Ganz, Graffiti World (2004).
Joseph Rivera, Vandal Squad (2008).
Eric Felisbret & Luke Felisbret, Graffiti New York (2009).
Jack Stewart, Subway Graffiti (2009).
Andrea Caputo, All City Writers (2009).
Gregory Snyder, Graffiti Lives (2009).
Chris Ganter, Graffiti School (2013).

ALL CITY
When a graffiti writer gets his tag written on all the major subway lines and in every
borough, he has gone “all city”. Hager, USA (1984)
To paint all over the town. [Att måla över hela stan]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A writer whose work can be found in many different locations. Macdonald, England
(2001)
A term of ultimate recognition used to identify those whose names are up throughout
the city. During the subway writing era, it identified a writer who was up on all
trains. An original writer’s term. Miller, USA (2002)
To go all-out; to have saturated the city with your name. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
Describes a writer and/or crew whose tags are prevalent throughout every borough in
New York City. Rivera, USA (2008)
A writer who is particularly active on all urban surfaces with tags, throw-ups, pieces
on trains, along track lines, and in every relevant spot. Caputo, Italy (2009)
The distinction of writing in all five boroughs or on all major subway lines. Felisbret
& Felisbret, USA (2009)
A writer whose name is up all over the city. In New York this means tags, throw-ups,
and pieces in all five boroughs. Snyder, USA (2009)

B-BOY
Originally used to describe the hard-core dancers at a party. Later used as substitute
for break dancer. Hager, USA (1984) [Illustrated, and defined]
Breaker and/or graffiti writer [Breaker og/eller graffitimaler]. Skaarup, Denmark
(1985)
He who is of the hip hop or inner city mode/dancer. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Member of the hip-hop culture. [Medlem i hiphop-kulturen]. Jacobson, Sweden
(1996)
Hip-hopper. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A term which indicates a person who is involved in the hip-hop movement, more
specifically in the discipline of breakdancing. Caputo, Italy (2009)

193
 BACKJUMP
Train painted at the terminal station before turning around. Barenthin Lindblad &
Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A method used to paint train lines that are particularly well-guarded. In Europe
in the 90’s, it was one of the few methods to ensure one’s name would circulate.
Backjumps probably originated in Scandinavia with Nug and VIM crew. Trains
are painted directly in the station during the brief time they stop. It’s a particularly
risky and adrenalized action because it involves trains that are in service with pas-
sengers on board. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A graffiti piece painted on a train that is stationary but in service. Ganter, Germany
(2013)

BAD
Good, beautiful, well done. Stewart, USA (1989)
Good, cool. [Bra, Häftig]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
Something which is great or fantastic. Macdonald, England (2001)

BATTLE
Competition between writers or b-boys. [utslagstävling mln writers eller b-boys].
Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A competition between writers using pieces or tags. Macdonald, England (2001)
A competition whose scope is to resolve conflicts between individuals or crews. Battling
can include different disciplines of Hip Hop such as Rapping, Breaking or Writing.
Adversaries give their best while spectators judge. Afrika Bambaataa used battles to
extinguish violence in the streets of the Bronx during the 70’s. Caputo, Italy (2009)

BEEF
Altercation/problem. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Static; interpersonal conflict. Miller, USA (2002)
[Graffiti Beef ]: Going over, crossing out, or dissing another vandal’s work. Rivera,
USA (2008)
A disagreement or conflict. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Disagreement, argument, or eventual clash between individuals or crews. Caputo, Italy (2009)
Disputes, often caused by painting over (dissing) someone else’s work. Snyder, USA (2009)

BITE
To copy another writer’s style. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To steal someone else’s style. Used by graffiti writers, break dancers, and rappers.
Hager, USA (1984)
To steal style and characters from another. [Stjæle stil og figurer fra andre]. Skaarup,
Denmark (1985)

194
To copy another writer’s style. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
To copy. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
To plagiarize, steal someone else’s ideas. [Plagiera, stjäla ngns idéer]. Jacobson,
Sweden (1996)
To copy another writer’s work. Macdonald, England (2001)
To copy; considered ripping off, disrespectful to the originator of the ideas one bor-
rows. Miller, USA (2002)
To copy another writer’s style. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
To copy another writer’s style. This is plagiarism, but with different consequences –
usually ridicule and a sound trashing. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
To copy the style of another writer. It’s considered an intolerable act, although it is
acceptable to borrow styles from other contexts, like comic books. Biting involves
copying every element of a piece, from the structure and composition of the letters,
to the colours, to the calligraphy of the tag. In some cases there’s a fine line between
copying a style and being inspired by it. Caputo, Italy (2009)
To plagiarize. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
To copy another writer’s style. Something unoriginal. Snyder, USA (2009)
To copy another writer’s images or concepts. Stewart, USA (2009)
To steal the lettering or ideas of another writer. Ganter, Germany (2013)

BLACK BOOK/PIECE BOOK

A writer’s sketchbook. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
A writer’s sketchbook. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
Sketchpad in which one develops one’s pieces. [Skissblock där man utvecklar sina
pieces]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A sketchbook containing writers’ graffiti design. Macdonald, England (2001)
Book where a writer collect photos of his pieces. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson,
Sweden (2003)
The sketch book of a graffiti artist. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A sketchbook used by vandals to plan and design their pieces. The books are often
passed around to share ideas, techniques, styles, and inspiration. Rivera, USA (2008)
A notebook containing photos of trains and walls painted by a writer, a reinterpreta-
tion of an artist’s portfolio. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Black book or Piece book]: A writer’s sketchbook, which is used for personal artistic
development and the collecting of other artists’ work. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA
(2009)
[Black book or Piece book]: A writer’s sketchbook, used to keep outlines and also
autographs from other writers. Snyder, USA (2009)
[Black book or Piece book]: A writer’s collection of photos or sketches. Ganter, Ger-
many (2013)

195
 BLOCKBUSTER
A simple and thick block lettering style, usually in three dimensions, with each letter
ideally the same height and width. This style was originally used to cover earlier hits
over large portions of the subway car. Miller, USA (2002)
Huge block letters that take up as much space as possible. Often, the purpose is to
cover other writer’s throwups and tags. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A large-scale, two color, straight letterwork that is easy to read. Originally invented
to go over other vandals and paint whole trains easily, blockbusters also appear on
buildings for maximum exposure. Rivera, USA (2008)
Large, wide block letters. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A piece with large block letters, often tilted to the right or left, and almost always
filled with one colour, usually silver. This style was invented to cover other writers’
pieces or to cover an entire train in a short period of time. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Blockbuster style]: 3D-effect lettering that covers as much of the background as
possible. Ganter, Germany (2013)

BOMB, BOMBING
Prolific painting or marking with ink. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To write a large amount of graffiti at one time is to “bomb”. Hager, USA (1984)
[Bomming]: To write or paint wildly. To paint over others’ “pieces”. [Tagge eller male
vildt. Overmale andres “pieces”]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Prolific painting or marking with ink. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
Covering a train with graffiti. Stewart, USA (1989)
Painting (or) doing tags. Monmagnon, France (1996)
Saturating trains/other places with one’s name. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
To cover a surface with tags [Att täcka en yta med tags]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[also referred to as cane, destroy, kill]: To completely cover something in graffiti. Mac-
donald, England (2001)
To tag a lot. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
Bomb: Painting or marking with ink. To coveran area with your tag, throwups, etc.
Bombing: To go out writing graffiti. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
Prolific spray-painting on trains and walls. Ganz, Germany (2004)
Prolific writing of graffiti. Rivera, USA (2008)
When an individual or crew extensively covers a specific area with tags and throw-
ups. Caputo, Italy (2009)
To write prolifically; measured in terms of quantity rather than quality. Felisbret &
Felisbret, USA (2009)
To paint a name often in any form on many different surfaces. Snyder, USA (2009)
To cover a train with graffiti. Stewart, USA (2009)
Graffiti completed quickly, mainly tags and throw-ups. Ganter, Germany (2013)

196
BUBBLE, BUBBLE LETTER
A graffito letter style in which all corners are rounded giving the letter the appearance
of being inflated. Stewart, USA (1989)
[Bubble, synonymous to Softie]: A widely used soft rounded Bronx lettering style.
Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Often used for throwups. They are bubbly, ballonish letters developed in the 1970s.
Paul 107, Canada (2003)
An early type of lettering, which developed in New York and gives letters a rounded
appearance, making them look like bubbles or clouds. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A graffiti letter style in which all corners are rounded, giving the letter the appearance
of being inflated. Stewart, USA (2009)

BUFF, TO BUFF
Any means employed by the Transit Authority to remove graffiti from trains. Cooper
& Chalfant, USA (1984)
To remove graffiti. […] Hager, USA (1984)
To remove graffiti. [Fjerne graffiti]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Any means employed by the authorities to remove graffiti from trains or walls. Chal-
fant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
Cleaning graffiti from a train car using highly caustic solutions. Stewart, USA (1989)
[Noun]: Place where the trains get buffed. [Verb]: to clean, remove the pieces from
the train. Monmagnon, France (1996)
Transit authorities cleaning of subway car. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Chemical removal of graffiti. [Kemisk borttagning av graffiti]. Jacobson, Sweden
(1996)
To chemically clean graffiti from the surface of a train. Macdonald, England (2001)
To remove graffiti. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
The chemical cleaning process undertaken by local authorities to rid trains or walls of
graffiti. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A term used by writers when referring to the removal of graffiti from subway cars.
Introduced by the New York MTA in March 1977, it used toxic chemical substances,
causing health and environmental problems. Caputo, Italy (2009)
To remove writing or artwork. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
To clean graffiti off of a surface with chemicals or by painting over it. Snyder, USA
(2009)
Cleaning graffiti from a train car using highly caustic solutions. Stewart, USA (2009)
To paint over or obscure graffiti with a single colour. Ganter, Germany (2013)

BURNER
A well-done wildstyle window-down whole car; a burner is a winner. Cooper & Chal-
fant, USA (1984)

197
 A graffiti piece that shows up the opposition is a “burner”; any multi colored piece
that shows original style. Hager, USA (1984)
Brilliant graffiti. [Suveræn graffiti]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Colorful elaborated pieces. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
The best piece in style, execution, etc. [Bästa graffitimålningen i stil, utförande mm].
Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A well executed piece. Macdonald, England (2001)
A highly stylized piece masterfully designed and rendered to burn the competition. A
burner is a piece that stands out, that has finesse. Miller, USA (2002)
Very good graffiti painting. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A simple piece that burns whatever else is on the wall. It’s more elaborate than a
throwup and has a few more colors. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A piece with a recognisable style, usually carried out in Wildstyle. It was called this
because it seemed to “burn” off the walls or trains. A burner is a piece that stands
out from other pieces of the same aesthetic impact. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A technically and stylistically well-executed wild style piece that is generally done in
bright colors. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A painting exhibiting intricate style and impressive use of color. Snyder, USA (2009)
An outstanding graffiti piece. Ganter, Germany (2013)

CAP
[Fat or skinny]: Interchangeable spray-can nozzles fitted to can to vary width of spray.
Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Fat cap, often taken from cans of oven cleaner, fat caps are inserted into spray paint
cans to provide a wider spray of paint. First used by Super Kool 223. Cooper &
Chalfant, USA (1984)
[Fat or skinny]: Interchangeable spray-can nozzles fitted to can to vary wifth of spray.
Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
Spraycan nozzle, fitted to can to vary width of spray (fat or skinny cap). Monmagnon,
France (1996)
Fat cap, special top used to fill in wide areas/thick line. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
The nozzle of a spray can. Skinny/normal/fat. [Sprayburkens munstycke. Skinny/nor-
mal/fat]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[Fat or skinny]: Spray can nozzles which make the spray width wide or narrow. Mac-
donald, England (2001)
[Fatcap]: Nozzle for spray can that emits a wide spray. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacob-
son, Sweden (2003)
[Fat or skinny]: Spraycan nozzle that can be fitted to alter spray width (to produce
thicker or thinner lines). Ganz, Germany (2004)
Interchangeable spray can nozzles that can vary the width of spray. Rivera, USA
(2008)

198
A mechanical device designed to control the flow of paint. More commonly, the
nozzle of a spray can. Writers use caps from other cans in order to achieve specific
results. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[w.g., fat skinny, German thin]: Interchangeable spray-can nozzles fitted to paint
cans to vary width of spray. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
[Fatcap]: Tips for aerosol cans used to vary the width of the spray paint. Snyder, USA
(2009)
Caps, Fat caps, Skinny caps Spray nozzles taken from other spray products, such as
foam rug cleaners and spray starch. Writers put them on spray paint to improve or
control the coverage of paint. Stewart, USA (2009)
A spray can’s plastic nozzle. Ganter, Germany (2013)

CHARACTER
A figurative element (animals, comical figures etc) of a picture. In the early days,
characters were used as ancillaries to letters but now they are an independent style
group. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A figure taken from comic books, cartoons, or popular culture in general, in order to add att-
raction to a piece and decorate the letters which make up the name. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A graffiti figure, usually taken from comic books. Snyder, USA (2009)
A figure or cartoon used to decorate a piece (often in a funny or meaningful way).
Ganter, Germany (2013)

CREW
Loosely organized group of writers, also known as a clique. Cooper & Chalfant, USA
(1984)
A group of friends; as in dance crew, crime crew, hanging out crew, etc. A person may
belong to several crews at the same time. Hager, USA (1984)
Group. [Gruppe]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Loosely organized group of writers, also known as a clique. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
[Writers’ clubs]: Organized groups of graffiti writers. Stewart, USA (1989)
Organized group of writers. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A group of acquainted individuals. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Group of writers, loosely organized, with its own name. [Målargrupp, löst samman-
satt, med eget namn]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A group of affiliated writers. Macdonald, England (2001)
Group of graffiti writers. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A group of graffiti artists who create group pieces and tag the crew initials along with
their name. Ganz, Germany (2004)
The collective name for a loosely organized group of vandals. Best known by initi-
als, which can stand for varied names representing the same group. Vandals often
belong to more than one crew. Rivera, USA (2008)

199
 A group of writers. A crew is indicated by an acronym. For example, TF5 stands for
The Fabulous Five. Crew Names can be made up of two, three or four letters, but
are usually made up of three letters. Caputo, Italy (2009)
An organized group writers. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A group of writers who formally come together for camaraderie, to promote a style,
and to insure physical protection. Snyder, USA (2009)

CROSS OUT, CROSSING OUT

[Also referenced as dog out, line out] To put a line through another writer or crew’s
name. Macdonald, England (2001)
Scribbling or writing on top of another writer’s name; considered highly disrespectful.
Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A piece painted over by a subsequent writer Stewart, USA (2009)
Usually entails painting a line over another writer’s tag or piece. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Cross]: To deface a graffiti piece with a line or a tag. Ganter, Germany (2013)

DEF
Really good (derived from “death”). Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Cool; okay; superior; short for “death”. Hager, USA (1984)
Really good (derived from “death”). Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
[Synonymous with fresh]: Splendid, clear in color (regarding a painting). [Läcker, klar
i färgen,(om målning)]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
Excellent (derived from definite and death). Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

DIS
Short for disrespect. Hager, USA (1984)
Disrespected/ to disrespect. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
To disrespect, despise. [Missakta]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[Diss, also referenced to as cuss]: To disrespect or insult another writer. Macdonald,
England (2001)
To insult someone, or to paint over someone’s graffiti. Snyder, USA (2009)

DOWN
In, part of the group or action (e.g. “He’s down with us”). Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Connected with; as in “He’s down with our crew”. Hager, USA (1984)
In, part of the group or action (e.g. “He’s down with us”). Chalfant & Prigoff, USA
(1987)
A writer who is part of a crew or highly respected. Macdonald, England (2001)
Dressing down is dressing to the max. Being down is being ready or being a part of a
group or an activity. Miller, USA (2002)
Part of a group or action. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

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E-TO-E, END-TO-END, E-2-E
A graffito decoration from one end of a subway car to the other. See “top to bottom”.
Stewart, USA (1989)
Piece going from the left side to the right side of the car. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A piece or painting the length of a subway car (window down or top to bottom).
Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Side of a train painted from one end to the other. [Målad tågsida från ena änden till
den andra]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A piece covering the entire length of a train carriage. Macdonald, England (2001)
A train painted from one end to the other. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A picture below the windows on a train, stretching the whole length of the carriage.
Ganz, Germany (2004)
A graffiti decoration covering an entire subway car from one end to the other. See also
top to bottom. Stewart, USA (2009)
A piece painted along the entire length of a train car, below the windows. It’s more
precisely called: end-to-end window-down. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A train car sprayed with graffiti along its entire length. Ganter, Germany (2013)

FADE
To blend colors. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To get colors to gradually blend into each other. [Få farver til at gå gradvis over i
hinanden]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
To blend colors. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
A technique used to create soft transitions between two colors. [En teknik att skapa
mjuka fördrivningar och övergångar mellan två kulörer]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
Getting two colors to blend into each other. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A graduation of colors. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

FILL-IN
The color and design that is used to “fill-in” an outline. Hager, USA (1984)
Coloring of a piece or other framing. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Surface that shall be filled with colors. [Yta som ska täckas med färg]. Jacobson,
Sweden (1996)
An interior shade of a piece, throwup or dub. Macdonald, England (2001)
A throwup with a filled-in center. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
The solid area inside a letter, which is colored in. Ganz, Germany (2004)
The interior colour of letters on a piece or throw-up. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[1]: The base colors of a piece that fall within the outline of letter. [2]: A simple piece
usually rendered in two colors. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
The area inside the letters of a piece that is filled with color; also, another name for a
throw-up. Snyder, USA (2009)

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 The colour(s) used to fill in the letters. Ganter, Germany (2013)

FREIGHT, FREIGHT TRAIN

[also referred to as BR’s]: Overland trains which travel across the country. Macdonald,
England (2001)
A railroad freight car. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
One of the main targets of American writers. A secondary target for most European
writers. Caputo, Italy (2009)

FRESH
Right in the eye, the height of cool. [Lige i øjet, dødlækkert]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Synonymous with def. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
[Synonymous with def ]: Splendid, clear in color (regarding a painting). [Läcker, klar
i färgen,(om målning)]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
Refreshing, polished, new, and exiting. Miller, USA (2002)

GETTING UP, GET UP, GET YOUR NAME AROUND, GETTING AROUND
Successfully hitting a train. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To get around, as in someone who writes large amounts of graffiti. Hager, USA (1984)
To paint or tag one’s name. [Komme opp – male eller tagge sit navn op]. Skaarup,
Denmark (1985)
Having one’s name in quantity or in many places. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
To spread one’s tag, to make a name for oneself. [Sprida sin tag, göra sig ett namn].
Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[Also referred to as Tagging and Hitting]: Writing one’s name or signature. Macdo-
nald, England (2001)
Getting your name up; also the action of going out and tagging. Paul 107, Canada
(2003)
To write a lot of graffiti – everywhere, on anything. Rivera, USA (2008)
When one’s name is prevalent on a city’s walls and trains. It means to hit up every
surface in the city. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Get up or Getting up]: Achieving high visibility through proliferation of name.
Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
To get your name up on any surface. Snyder, USA (2009)
To cover many surfaces in public places with one’s graffiti name. Stewart, USA (2009)

GOING OVER
One writer covering another writer’s name with his own. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
One writer covering another writer’s name with his own. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA
(1987)
To write over another writer’s name with your own. Macdonald, England (2001)

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Crossing out someone else’s work with your own. The idea is to do something better
in order to burn the other person off the wall. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
One vandal crossing out the name of another. Rivera, USA (2008)
Covering another writer’s Name with one’s own Name. When the graffiti phenome-
non first began in New York, Cap was the master of black and white throw-ups
which covered other writer’s Names. Caputo, Italy (2009)

HALL OF FAME
(Famous) writers’ meeting point. [(Berömda) målares träffpunkt]. Jacobson, Sweden
(1996)
A legal or semi-legal walled painting site. Macdonald, England (2001)
Consistently frequented places to write graffiti. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson,
Sweden (2003)
Mostly legal walls on which high-quality pictures are produced. Ganz, Germany (2004)
[Hall (of Fame) Piece]: Legally sprayed graffiti. Ganter, Germany (2013)

HIT, HITTING
To tag up any surface with paint or ink. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To tag up any surface with paint or ink. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
To write a graffito name, usually in small scale. Stewart, USA (1989)
[Also referred to as Tagging and Getting up]: Writing one’s name or signature. Mac-
donald, England (2001)
To make your presence known in any shape or form. Hit could mean to rack-up (ste-
al) in a store or to paint your signature. A signature painted on a wall or on a subway
car. A first generation writers’ term from the early 1970s. In the late 1970s, the term
became “tag”. Miller, USA (2002)
[Also referred to as hammer, pound and smash]. To write a lot of graffiti. Rivera, USA
(2008)
[Noun]: A tag, throw-up, or piece. [Verb]: To write. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
To write a graffiti name, usually in small scale. Stewart, USA (2009)
To tag any surface with one’s Name. Caputo, Italy (2009)

HOMEBOY, HOMEY
Friend. Hager, USA (1984)
Friends. [Venner]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Friends (from home), one’s own bunch. [Kompisar (hemifrån), det egna gänget]. Ja-
cobson, Sweden (1996)
Commonly used to denote a person who is very close, almost a brother. Caputo, Italy (2009)

HOT 110
A derogatory expression written over a writer’s tag to indicate the writer is inexpe-

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 rienced. Originally used as a deterrent to chastise writers who had violated the
unspoken codes of graffiti. Hager, USA (1984)
A name used to write over those who write over others. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
A derogatory term for an inexperienced or incompetent graffiti writer. See toy. Felis-
bret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A derogatory term used to describe a young, inexperienced graffiti writer. See also toy.
Stewart, USA (2009)

INSIDES
Tags executed inside a subway car. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A train carriage that has been spray-painted inside. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A subway car interior. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Tags inside of subway trains. Caputo, Italy (2009)

KILL
To hit or bomb excessively. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To hit or bomb excessively. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
To completely cover a surface with graffiti, especially subway cars. Stewart, USA (1989)
To bomb excessively. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
To completely cover a surface with graffiti. Stewart, USA (2009)
To excessively hit a city’s wall or trains with one’s Name. Caputo, Italy (2009)

KING, KING OF THE LINE

The best with the most. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Title given to a writer who dominates a particular subway line; as in “king of the 2s”
or “king of the D train.” Hager, USA (1984)
The best of a certain thing. [Den bedste til en bestemt ting]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
The best with the most. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
A title bestowed upon the graffiti writer who is the most prolific on any one of the
various subway lines. Stewart, USA (1989)
The one who (at a given time) is the best in e.g. style, does the most tags, or dominates
a train line. [Den som (för tillfället) är bäst i t.ex. stil, gör flest tags eller dominerar
en tåglinje]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
The most accomplished or prolific writer. Macdonald, England (2001)
The highest compliment you can receive in graffiti. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
The most prolific or skilled vandal, be it the master of a style or type of graffiti. Rivera,
USA (2008)
The best writer. This nickname is given to different writers, considering their skills,
attitude and/or tenacity. Caputo, Italy (2009)
The most accomplished writer in a given category. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA
(2009)

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A term for a graffiti writer who is the most up in any given area; a general term for a
highly talented and successful writer. Snyder, USA (2009)
A title bestowed upon the graffiti writer who is the most prolific on any one of the
various subway lines. Stewart, USA (2009)
The most highly regarded sprayer. Ganter, Germany (2013)

LAY-UP
A siding where trains are parked overnight and on weekends. Cooper & Chalfant,
USA (1984)
Areas at the ends of the subway lines where the trains are stored or “laid up” on week-
ends and non-rush hours on the center, or express, tracks. Some of these lay up
areas are in tunnels near the ends of the lines. Stewart, USA (1989)
Place where one or several trains are momentarily parked. Monmagnon, France (1996)
An underground/elevated track where the trains are parked. Phase 2, Italy & USA
(1996)
[Labeled under yard]: A place where trains are berthed. Macdonald, England (2001)
Side tracks where one or two trains are painted. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson,
Sweden (2003)
The siding in which a train is left between use. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A location in the subway system (usually unsecured underground between levels or
on sublevels) where trains are parked overnight so that they are ready to pull out
for the morning rush. Lay-ups are accessible through the tunnels, outdoor hatches,
and yards. Rivera, USA (2008)
Tracks where trains are parked overnight and on weekends. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A single or double track in a tunnel or elevation where trains are parked during
off-peak hours. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Underground holding area for out-of-service trains. Snyder, USA (2009)
Storage areas, usually located at the ends of the subway lines, where trains are parked
overnight, on weekends, and during non-rush hours. Some lay up areas are located
in tunnels near the ends of the lines. Stewart, USA (2009)

MARRIED COUPLE
Two cars permanently attached, identified by their consecutive number. Cooper &
Chalfant, USA (1984)
Double whole car. Monmagnon, France (1996)
Two permanently attached subway cars that share a motor and are identified by their
consecutive numbers. These cars were desirable when artwork on a connected car
was directly relevant. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Two attached whole-cars painted at the same time. Originally in New York it referred
to two cars permanently attached, identified by their consecutive numbers. Caputo,
Italy (2009)

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 A large spray painted graffiti on the outside of subway cars. It is usually kept below
the windows but parts of the letters often reach up into the windows in places.
Stewart, USA (1989)
A combination of outlined filled in stylized letters. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
A large-scale, time consuming, well-thought-out work involving several colors and
intricate paint work. Rivera, USA (2008)
A high quality piece on a wall or train requiring time and elaboration. Caputo, Italy (2009)

OLD SCHOOL
From the earlier graffiti generation (opposite: new school). Monmagnon, France
(1996)
Original, a specific era, day one. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
An older generation of writers. Macdonald, England (2001)
Denotes old graffiti. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
Refers to the early days of graffiti, from the early 70s through the early 80s. Rivera,
USA (2008)
Pre-1989 writing culture; this date can vary greatly depending upon whom you ask.
Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Term denoting a writer who belongs to the first generation. Old school writers are re-
spected for having been present when it all began. Old school New York writers are
the most respected as true and tried pioneers of the movement. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[1]: An experienced writer, who has been spraying for a long time; [2]: Classic style
from the 1970s and early 80s. Ganter, Germany (2013)

OUTLINE, LINE
The contour of a graffito letter that has breadth. Stewart, USA (1989)
A piece’s structure/hollowed out shell. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
[1]: Outer contour. [2]: Sketch. [1. Ytterkonturlinje 2. Skiss]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
The line silhouetting a piece, throwup or dub. Macdonald, England (2001)
Contour line in a graffiti painting. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
The outline of letters. Ganz, Germany (2004)
1. See “Sketch” [A rough pencil drawing made in a notebook before actually executing
a piece]. 2. A rough drawing of a piece or letters on a wall, which then gets filled in.
3. The final line drawn around the piece to finish it or define the shape of the letters.
Caputo, Italy (2009)
The skeleton or framework of a piece. See Final outline. [Final outline: An outline
that is re-executed to define letters after fill-in and design have been applied].Felis-
bret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A piece sketched on paper that may or may not be a template for a graffiti mural.
Snyder, USA (2009)

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PANEL PIECE
A painting below the windows and between the doors of a subway car. Cooper &
Chalfant, USA (1984)
Piece situated under the windows and between two doors of a car. Monmagnon,
France (1996)
Piece between the doors but under the windows of a train. [Målning mellan dörrarna
men under fönstren på tåg]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A picture painted below the windows of a train. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A painting below the windows and between the doors of a subway car. Felisbret &
Felisbret, USA (2009)
Originally, a piece painted below the windows and between the doors of a New York
subway car. Today, it’s used for any piece on any type of train, still window down,
but it’s no longer defined by the two doors but usually occupies two to four win-
dows. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A discrete graffiti piece on a train. Ganter, Germany (2013)

PIECE
A painting, short for masterpiece. To piece, to paint graffiti. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
[used as synonymous to masterpiece]: An elaborate design painted on the outside of
a subway car. Hager, USA (1984)
Painting, “a work”. [Maleri, “værk”]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
A painting, short for masterpiece. To piece, to paint graffiti. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA
(1987)
A graffito with design content as well as the literal content of the words. They are
ususally a foot high or larger. They are always larger than a hit. Stewart, USA (1989)
A painting, short for masterpiece. Monmagnon, France (1996)
Short for “masterpiece”, a complete graffiti painting. [Förkortning för “masterpiece”.
Fullständig graffitimålning]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[Noun]: A painting, short for masterpiece. [Verb]: To paint a word or image with
more than two colours. Macdonald, England (2001)
From “masterpiece.” A large-scale word or name rendered in spray paint on a train,
wall, or canvas. Miller, USA (2002)
Graffiti painting. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
Short for “masterpiece”, the expression for a spray-painted letter oriented picture.
Ganz, Germany (2004)
Short for “masterpiece”. Rivera, USA (2008)
A painting by a writer, short for “masterpiece”. Invented by Super Kool in 1972, it was
later elaborated by every other writer. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Noun]: Short for “masterpiece”, an artistic and complex form of writing featuring
stylized letters, color, depth, and a variety of designs. [Verb]: To execute a piece.
Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

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 As a noun (short for “masterpiece”), a graffiti mural; as a verb, to draw or paint a mas-
terpiece. Snyder, USA (2009)
To work with another writer or writers on the same car or area. Stewart, USA (2009)

RACK, RACK UP, RACKING UP

To steal. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Shoplift in large quantities. Hager, USA (1984)
To steal. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
[Invent]: To steal. In the graffiti vernacular to invent is to create something that was
not there before, i.e., to get something that one did not have before. It usually re-
fers to stealing felt marking pens and cans of spray paint. [Liberate]: To steal. See
“invent.” Stewart, USA (1989)
The confiscation of spray paint and other items. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
To shoplift spray cans. [Snatta sprayburkar]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
To steal. Macdonald, England (2001)
To steal; synonymous with “Bogart,” because he played a tough guy. […] Miller, USA (2002)
To steal. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
To steal. Rivera, USA (2008)
To steal. Originally, New York writers would steal all materials for painting, this prac-
tice was later exported to Europe in the 80’s and 90’s. Caputo, Italy (2009)
Stealing, shoplifting. The original term was “inventing.” Snyder, USA (2009)
To steal spray paint or other materials. Stewart, USA (2009)
To steal. Ganter, Germany (2013)

REP
The short word for “reputation,” gained by extensive and accomplished graffiti activi-
ties. A reputation is very sought after by the graffitiists. Stewart, USA (1989)
“Reputation”. [Rykte]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A writers reputation. Macdonald, England (2001)
A term used to describe a graffiti writer known for his or her extensive and accomplis-
hed activities. Stewart, USA (2009)

RESPECT
A term of praise for graffiti writers with a reputation. Stewart, USA (1989)
“Respect”. [Respekt]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A sense of admiration for older, more experienced writers. Caputo, Italy (2009)

STYLE
Genre, personal mannerisms, or general creative abilities. [Genre, personligt manér
eller allmänt gestaltande fenomen]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
An aesthetic, a way of doing things. In hip-hop culture, style is related to modes of

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 speaking, moving, dressing, making music, writing, and painting. In New York City
writers’ culture, stylists are architects that build visual statements out of letters. […]
Miller, USA (2002)
Previously a synonym for the individual letters of a writer; now refers to an artist’s
individual style. Ganz, Germany (2004)
The distinctiveness, flourish, and decorativeness that characterize the work of many of
the most respected graffiti writers. Stewart, USA (2009)
[The concept of style]: A writer who achieves a recognisable style and immediately
earns the respect of the entire community. Caputo, Italy (2009)

TAG
A writer’s signature with marker or spray paint. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
A writers name is his “tag”; to write graffiti is to “tag”. Hager, USA (1984)
A writer’s signature. [Skriveres underskrift]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
A writer’s signature with marker or spray paint. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
A graffito signature, or logo. Stewart, USA (1989)
A writer’s signature. Monmagnon, France (1996)
The codified, calligraphically designed logo, the spray signature. [Den kodifierade,
kalligrafiskt utformade logon, spraysignaturen]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A writer’s name or signature. Macdonald, England (2001)
[Noun]: A graffiti writer’s signature. [Verb]: To write tags. Barenthin Lindblad &
Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
A writers signature. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
Striking signature of a graffiti artist. Ganz, Germany (2004)
[Noun]: What you write. [Verb]: The most basic form of graffiti, tagging is the act of
writing your name with no added elements. Rivera, USA (2008)
A writer’s signature with a marker or spray paint, considered the most basic form of
graffiti. Testimonial of the presence of a writer in a determined spot, usually executed
quickly with connected letters. A tag is a writer’s personal logo. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Noun]: A graffiti writer’s name and signature. [Verb]: To execute a signature. Felis-
bret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
As a noun, a graffiti writer’s signature; as a verb, to mark one’s name on any surface.
Snyder, USA (2009)
A graffiti signature or logo. Stewart, USA (2009)
A writer’s stylized signature, often just a few letters long. Ganter, Germany (2013)

TAGGING UP
Writing signature with marker or spray paint. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Writing signature with marker or spray paint. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
[Also referred to as Hitting and Getting up]: Writing one’s name or signature. Mac-
donald, England (2001)

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 Executing a signature. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

THROW-UP (ALSO SPELLED THROW UP AND THROWUP)

A name painted quickly with one layer of spray paint and an outline. Cooper &
Chalfant, USA (1984)
To write one’s name quickly with big letters. [Skrive sitt navn hurtigt med store bogs-
taver]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
A name painted quickly with one layer of spray paint and an outline. Chalfant &
Prigoff, USA (1987)
A quickly executed outline filled in with only one or two colors. Stewart, USA (1989)
Quick and repetitive piece. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A scarcely filled in or quick piecing style out (most notably popularized by In/Kill3)
Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Large and fast tag, outline in one color, possibly including a fill-in with another. [Stor
och snabb tag, outline i en färg, ev. fill-in med en annan]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A quick outline of a writer’s name with a black or white painted interior. Macdonald,
England (2001)
An outline of a name filled in with one or two colors, so called because it is quickly ex-
ecuted. Usually rendered in a bubble letter style. Many writers think of the throw-
up as an art form unto itself, as the trademark or logo of a writer. They consider a
piece to be an extension of the throw-up. Miller, USA (2002)
Fast, single-outlined letters with or without fill-in. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson,
Sweden (2003)
Your name in big (often bubble) letters, executed in between twenty-five seconds and
three minutes, depending on whether it’s filled in or not. Originally used to cover
space and other writer’s work. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
Simple letters, often only with an outline or a single-color fill-in, which are generally
painted very quickly. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A quickly executed work usually employing bubble letters. Rivera, USA (2008)
A quickly-painted piece, usually composed of one or two color and an outline, imperfectly
filled in. It can consist of two single letters or an entire word. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A quickly executed piece consisting of an outline with or without a thin layer of spray
paint for fill in. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A name painted with two colors, an outline, and a fill-in color; also called a fill-in.
Snyder, USA (2009)
A graffiti tag made very quickly, usually using only initials. Stewart, USA (2009)
Quick letter outlines, often filled with hatching or a single colour. Ganter, Germany (2013)

TOP-TO-BOTTOM, T-TO-B, T2B

A piece which extends from the top of the car to the bottom. Cooper & Chalfant,
USA (1984)

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A graffiti piece that covers a subway car from top to bottom. Hager, USA (1984)
Piece from the top to the bottom of a train car. [Piece fra overkanten til underkanten
af en togvogn]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Piece which goes from the top to the bottom of a car. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A piece or painting from the top to the bottom of a subway car. Phase 2, Italy & USA
(1996)
Train piece from top to bottom. [Tågmålning uppifrån och ner]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A piece reaching from the top of a train carriage to the bottom. Macdonald, England
(2001)
A piece that covers a carriage from top to bottom. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A piece that extends from the top of the car to the bottom of the car, completely
covering it. Rivera, USA (2008)
Piece that extends from the top of the car to the bottom, covering it completely. Ca-
puto, Italy (2009)
A piece that extends from the top of the subway car to the bottom.. Felisbret & Felis-
bret, USA (2009)
Originally, a graffiti painting that stretched from the top of the train to the bottom.
Today it is used for any that fills the entire space. Snyder, USA (2009)
A graffiti decoration covering the entire height of a subway car. Stewart, USA (2009)
A train car sprayed with graffiti for its entire height. Ganter, Germany (2013)

TOY
Inexperienced or incompetent writer. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Beginner. Hager, USA (1984)
Inexperienced or incompetent writer. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
A derisive word connoting inexperience and/or ineptitude. It is most commonly used
to describe a novice or to insult a respected graffitist. In the graffiti vernacular all
Transit Police are toy cops. Stewart, USA (1989)
Inexperienced or incompetent writer. Monmagnon, France (1996)
Originally a writer with no status or recognition, usually due to lack of hits or master-
pieces. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Bad or inexperienced writer, beginner. [Dålig el. oerfaren writer, nybörjare]. Jacobson,
Sweden (1996)
A young, inexperienced or artistically incompetent writer. Macdonald, England (2001)
Beginner or poor graffiti writer. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
An inexperienced writer. Like a poser in the skateboard world. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
Derogatory term for a beginner or unskilled graffiti artist. Ganz, Germany (2004)
[1]: A derogatory term for an inexperienced or incompetent writer. [2]: A small felt-
tip marker. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A neophyte writer with no skills and little clue of the history of the culture. Snyder,
USA (2009)

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 A derisive word connoting inexperience or ineptitude. It is most commonly used to
describe a novice or to insult a respected graffiti writer. Stewart, USA (2009)
A beginner on the graffiti scene (or a derogatory term for an experienced writer).
Ganter, Germany (2013)

UP
Describes a writer whose work appears regularly on the trains. Cooper & Chalfant,
USA (1984)
A prolific writer. Macdonald, England (2001)
A writer who is active and has a noticeable amount of “work” around town. Paul 107,
Canada (2003)
Appearing regularly on trains or throughout the city. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA
(2009)

WAK, WACK
Substandard or incorrect (derived from “out of whack”). Cooper & Chalfant, USA
(1984)
Stupid; unoriginal; unimaginative. Hager, USA (1984)
Substandard or incorrect (derived from “out of whack”). Chalfant & Prigoff, USA
(1987)
Not good. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Bad, ugly. [Dåligt, fult]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[also referred to as dry, lame]: Something which is bad or of substandard quality.
Macdonald, England (2001)
Substandard or incorrect. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

WHOLE CAR
A graffiti piece that covers an entire subway car. Hager, USA (1984)
Piece from end to end of a train car. [Piece fra ende til ende af en togvogn]. Skaarup,
Denmark (1985)
One side of a car totally painted. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A piece or painting expanding a subway car’s width and length. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
A whole train-side painted E-2-E and T-2-B. [En hel tågsida målad E-2-E och
T-2-B]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A piece covering the entire surface of a train carriage. Macdonald, England (2001)
Graffiti painting covering the whole side of a train car. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacob-
son, Sweden (2003)
A train car painted end-to-end, top-to-bottom. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A carriage that has been spray-painted all over. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A piece covering an entire subway car. Rivera, USA (2008)
Mural covering the entire length of a subway car. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)

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A piece which covers an entire car from top to bottom (T2B) and from end to end
(E2E). Caputo, Italy (2009)
A train car that has been completely covered in graffiti. Ganter, Germany (2013)

WHOLE TRAIN
All cars of a train, painted on one or both side. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A whole train, a.k.a. “worm”. [Ett helt tågset ä.k. “worm”]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
[also referred to as worm]: A piece or series of pieces extending the entire length of a
train. Macdonald, England (2001)
A train that has been spray-painted all over. Ganz, Germany (2004)
[Worm]: A graffiti piece covering an entire train. Stewart, USA (2009)
Covering an entire train with a series of whole-car pieces. Whole-Train Win-
dow-Down: a sequence of end-to-end pieces from window down along the entire
length of the train. Caputo, Italy (2009)
A train completely covered in graffiti. Ganter, Germany (2013)

WILDSTYLE
A complicated construction of interlocking letters. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
To be the best at whatever you do with your life is to be “wild style”; invented by Tracy
168; sometimes mistakenly confused with mechanical letters. Hager, USA (1984)
Broken or twining letters entangled into each other. [Knækkede eller slyngende bogs-
taver, der vikler sig ind i hinanden]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
A complicated construction of interlocking letters. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
An ornamented, difficult-to-read letter design. [En ornamenterande, svårläst bok-
stavsdesign]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A complex writing style characterized by its angular interlocking letters. Macdonald,
England (2001)
Wild Style was a writers’ crew in the 1970s led by TRACY 168. The term has since been
adopted widely by writers to denote complicated lettering forms developed by many
innovators throughout the course of the aerosol movement. Miller, USA (2002)
Interlaced, hard-to-read lettering style. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden
(2003)
A very complex construction of entwined letters Ganz, Germany (2004)
Construction of interlocking letters. A complicated style composed of arrows and
connections. Complex pieces which are often undecipherable for non-writers. Ca-
puto, Italy (2009)
[1]: (Original definition) A Bronx crew from the 1970s founded by TRACY 168. [2]:
A complicated construction of interlocking letters. [3]: A classic film on hip-hop
culture directed by Charlie Ahearn. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Name given to any unreadable or fresh graffiti style. The origin of this term has a long
and contested history, with Tracy 168 and Phase II often being credited. Wild Style

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 is also the name of graffiti’s most famous film, which gave the term national and
even worldwide currency. Snyder, USA (2009)
A letter style that features highly fractured forms that seem to bounce off one another
at oblique angles. Stewart, USA (2009)

WINDOW-DOWN, WINDOW DOWN END TO END

A piece done below the windows. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Piece below the train windows. [Piece under togvinduerne]. Skaarup, Denmark (1985)
Piece painted below the windows of the train. Monmagnon, France (1996)
A piece or painting the length of a subway car and under the windows. Phase 2, Italy
& USA (1996)
Piece below the windows. [Piece under fönstren]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
A piece painted below the windows of a train carriage. Macdonald, England (2001)
Painting under the windows along an entire train car. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacob-
son, Sweden (2003)
A piece done below the windows of a subway car. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A piece done below the windows of a subway car. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
A piece done below the windows of a subway car. See “Piece”. Caputo, Italy (2009)

WRITER
Practitioner of the art of graffiti. Cooper & Chalfant, USA (1984)
Someone who writes graffiti. Hager, USA (1984)
Practitioner of the art of graffiti. Chalfant & Prigoff, USA (1987)
One who frequently writes graffiti. Stewart, USA (1989)
People who writes graffiti. Monmagnon, France (1996)
One who writes, especially as an occupation. Phase 2, Italy & USA (1996)
Graffiti painter. [Graffitimålare, sv. “skrivare”]. Jacobson, Sweden (1996)
Someone who writes graffiti. A member of the subculture. Macdonald, England
(2001)
Graffiti painters. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
Someone who does graffiti. Paul 107, Canada (2003)
A graffiti artist who generally concentrates on letters (tags, styles etc). Ganz, Germany
(2004)
A graffiti vandal. Rivera, USA (2008)
A practitioner of the art of graffiti writing. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
One who practices graffiti. Stewart, USA (2009)
A person who writes his Name on a city’s walls or trains Caputo, Italy (2009)
A graffiti sprayer. Ganter, Germany (2013)

WRITERS’ CORNER, WRITERS’ BENCH, BENCH

The station platforms, of which there are several favored by the graffitiists, where they

214
 congregate to socialize and watch their names go by on the trains. Stewart, USA
(1989)
Meeting point for graffiti writers. Barenthin Lindblad & Jacobson, Sweden (2003)
Waiting for painted trains at stations to photograph them. Writer benches were spe-
cific stations where writers would gather to comment on each other’s styles in New
York during the 70’s. Caputo, Italy (2009)
[Noun]: A subway station where writer congregate and watch trains. [Verb]: To
watch trains. Felisbret & Felisbret, USA (2009)
Places such as the 149th Street subway station where writers would congregate to dis-
cuss the work on the trains. Snyder, USA (2009)
A subway station platform favored by graffiti writers, where they congregate to socia-
lize and watch their names go by on the trains. Stewart, USA (2009)

YARD
Place where the trains are parked. Monmagnon, France (1996)
[also referred to as lay up and depot]: A place where trains are berthed. Macdonald,
England (2001)
A depot where trains are put when they are out of use. Ganz, Germany (2004)
A multiple track facility where trains are stored, assembled for service, repaired, and
cleaned. Rivera, USA (2008)v

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A dissertation project is a long process, and it is largely a collective work in which a
number of people contribute in different ways. This thesis has been developed over
more than five years in conversations with a large number of people. This book would
not have been possible without their joint efforts.
First, I would like to thank my two dedicated, encouraging, and critical, supervisors
Magdalena Holdar and Hans Hayden.
Thanks also to Marta Edling, who did a thorough reading of the first manuscript of
this thesis, and gave many valuable comments on the project.
The research project has taken place at the Department of Art History at Stock-
holm University, and it could not have been done anywhere else. I am indebted to all
of my current and former colleagues of the PhD-student group, as well as the senior
researchers and other scholars who have participated at the higher seminar in Art
History: Christian Björk, Sara Callahan, Anna Dahlgren, Vendela Grundell, Peter
Gillgren, Stina Hagelqvist, Malin Hedlin Hayden, Anna-Maria Hällgren, Charlotta
Krispinsson, Fredrik Krohn Andersson, Johan Linder, Anna Lundström, Charlotta
Nordström, Sonya Petersson, David Rynell Åhlén, Mårten Snickare, Lisa Skog, Jes-
sica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Karolina Uggla, Jeff Werner, and Maja Willén – thank you all
for all the intellectual feedback.
At the Department I would also like to thank the administrative staff: Anna
Bengtsson Alzén, Åsa Asplund, Nina Engholm, Alexandra Svensson Thorsman,
Victoria Rosander, Torbjörn Wilson, and Birgitta Trobrandt Åkerström.
I also want to take the chance to give my thanks to Bus 126, Carlos Mare, Coco 144,
Crime TDC, Part One, Snake 1, Thierry Noir, and all the other graffiti writers and
artists that in one way or another have contributed to this project.
Shout outs to the colleagues within the Nordic Hip-Hop Studies network: An-
ders Ackfeldt, Kalle Berggren, Andrea Dankić, Alexandra D’Urso, Hannah Gordon
Tornesjö, Susan Lindholm, Inka Rantakallio, Kristine Ringsager, Ove Sernhede, and
Johan Söderman.
I have also had the fortune of participating in a network for graffiti and street art
scholars, from which I especially want to thank Peter Bengtsen, Ulrich Blanché, Heike
Derwanz, Pedro Soares Neves, Ljiljana Radosevic, and Daniela V.de Freitas Simões.
Other people who in one way or another have participated in making this project
possible are Daniel Adams-Ray, William Alcaro, Björn Almqvist, Martin Ander, Tobias
Barenthin Lindblad, Francisca Beckert, Frida Berglund, Kristian Borg, Charlotte Byd-
ler, Sven Carlsson, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Liv D’Amelio, Per Englund, Rick-
ard Falk, Eric Felisbret, Kolbjörn Guwallius, Erik Hannerz, Nathan Hamelberg, Lutz
Henke, Ceylan Holago, Anton Hultberg, Malcolm Jacobson, Staffan Jacobson, Petter
Kallionen, Dan Karlholm, Jocke Kellokumpu, Katarina Kindström, Adam Mansbach,
Katarina Macleod, Håkan Nilsson, Polki Nordström, Johan Palme, Pålle Pettersson,

216
Oskar Rendell, Stefania Renzetti, Anssi Räisänen, Hugo Röjgård, Mareike Röper, Da-
niel Silberstein, Johannes Stahl, Magnus Wallström, Daniel Åberg, and Tomas Örn.
I have also lectured on parts of the material presented in this thesis, and received
valuable comments from both students and staff at Stockholm University, Konstfack
University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, and Berghs School of Communication.
Last, but certainly not least, I thank my wife Jana Kimvall Hagel, who throughout
this project has been the greatest supporter, as well as the most challenging critic.
Thank you for being you.

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 INDEX
Almqvist, Björn: 27
Amrl (Bama): 59, 174, 175
Artist Space: 60, 61, 62, 68
Austin, Joe: 19, 21, 28, 38, 48, 49, 55, 57, 63, 106, 107, 153
Bal, Mieke: 27, 28
Bando: 42
Barbara 62: 41
Barenthin Lindblad, Tobias: 27
Baudrillard, Jean: 16, 27, 28, 65, 66, 109
Bengtsen, Peter: 19, 25, 31
Bio: 71
Blade: 41, 58, 65
Borroughs, William: 65
Caine I: 41
Caputo, Andrea: 27
Carter, Jimmy: 89, 93
Case 2: 58
Castleman, Craig: 9, 10, 22, 23, 29, 30, 42, 43, 55, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 106, 107, 155
Cat 87: 59
Chalfant, Henry: 26, 29, 39, 40, 41, 71, 82
Cliff 159: 41
Coco 144: 17, 58, 59, 61
Cooper, Martha: 26, 29, 39
Corcoran, Sean: 27
Cortez, Diego: 65
Crash: 65
Cubrilo, Duro: 27
deAk, Edit: 60
Deitch, Jeffrey: 27
Dickens, Luke: 28
Doc: 58
Dondi (White): 27, 58, 64, 65
Doze: 58
Drechsel, Benjamin: 28, 82, 83
Elkins, James: 31, 86
Fechter, Peter: 89
Felisbret, Eric: 26
Felisbret, Luke: 26
Ferrell, Jeff: 25, 28

218
Flint 707: 59
Foucault, Michel: 12, 13, 14, 154
Freedberg, David: 31, 132, 133
Fun Gallery: 64
Futura 2000: 64, 65
Gallery Brandstrom Stockholm: 125
Gallozzi-LaPlaca Gallery: 61
Ganz, Nicholas: 26
Garelik, Sanford: 12, 13, 49
Gastman, Roger: 26, 27
Giuliani, Rudy: 47, 105
Goldin, Nan: 65
Groninger Museum in Groningen: 27
Gruen, John: 27
Grünzweig, Walter: 30
Halsey, Mark: 28
Haring, Keith: 27, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97,
156, 157
Harvey, Martin: 27
Høigård, Cecilie: 25
In: 41
Iveson, Kurt: 28
Jacobson, Malcolm: 27
Jacobson, Staffan: 17, 24, 27, 31, 38, 55, 56, 57, 90, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115
James, Todd: 27
Johnson, Michael: 24, 25, 47, 136, 137, 139
Jonsson, Björn: 28, 108
Karlholm, Dan: 31, 56
Kosuth, Joseph: 65
Kramer, Ronald: 28, 107, 135
Kurlansky, Mervyn: 26
Kuzdas, Heinz J.: 17, 18
Lachmann, Richard: 28, 66, 67, 68, 69
Lady Pink: 58, 65, 72, 112
Lee (Quinones): 22, 41, 58, 59, 65, 112
Lee 163: 59
Lewisohn, Cedar: 27
Lunch, Lydia: 65
Macdonald, Nancy: 10, 11, 21, 22, 29, 38, 67, 68
Mack: 71
Mailer, Norman: 26

219
 Mansbach, Adam: 50
Mapplethorpe, Robert: 65
Maridueña, Alain “Ket”: 27
Martinez, Hugo: 59, 60, 63
McCormick, Carlo: 27
Mico: 59
Miller, Ivor L.: 21, 22, 28, 39, 47, 55, 59, 72
MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority): 22
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen: 65
Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie: 18, 92, 94, 95, 96
Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angles: 27, 47, 48
Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux: 52
Museum of Modern Art: 45
Naar, Jon: 26
Neef, Sonja: 28, 44, 82, 83, 100
Neelon, Caleb: 26
Nelli, Andrea: 23
New York City Breakers: 89
New York City Parks Department: 52
Nicer: 71
Nitzsche, Sina A.: 30
Noc 167: 65
NOGA (Nation of Graffiti Artists): 63, 64, 72
Nova 1: 52
Nungesser, Michael: 89
Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G.: 30, 40, 68, 69
Pape, Chris (Freedom): 40, 41, 42, 46, 58
Part One: 17, 27, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 69
Phase 2: 19, 26, 40, 41, 42, 43, 50, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 72
Pistol I: 43
Prigoff, James: 26, 40, 82
PS1: 65
Quik: 64, 65
Rahn, Janice: 22, 29, 30
Rammellzee: 65
Razor Gallery: 58, 59, 60
Riff 170: 42
Reagan, Ronald: 64, 89, 93, 96, 99, 100
Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum: 100
Rose, Aaron: 27
Rose, Tricia: 30

220
Räisänen, Anssi: 42, 43, 58
Saunders, Frances Stonor: 31, 86, 87
Schacter, Rafael: 26
Schjeldahl, Peter: 60, 62
Schloss, Joseph: 30
Seen: 58, 65
Sernhede, Ove: 30
Shannon, David: 24
Sidney Janis Gallery: 62
Sjk 171: 59
Sjöstrand, Torkel: 27
Snake 1: 17, 50, 59, 60, 61
Snyder, Gregory J.: 25, 38, 39, 40, 132, 135
Soul Artists: 64
Stahl, Johannes: 23, 26, 27, 31, 82, 84
Stamer, Karl: 27
Stay High 149: 41, 50
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: 52
Stein, Mary Beth: 28, 84, 85, 90, 92, 93
Stewart, Jack: 23, 39, 44, 66, 67, 69, 109, 153
Stewart, Susan: 28, 29, 40, 41, 48, 49
Stitch I: 59
Stockholm City Museum: 126
Super Kool 223: 42, 43
Söderman, Johan: 30
T-Rex 131: 59
Taki 183: 41
The Museum of the City of New York: 27
Top Cat 126: 42
Tracy 168: 41
UGA (United Graffiti Artists): 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68, 72
Villorente, David: 27
Von Eschen, Penny M.: 31, 86, 87, 89, 96
Waclawek, Anna: 20, 26, 31, 47, 55, 56, 57, 62
Warhol, Andy: 65
Weide, Robert D.: 28
WG (Wicked Gary): 59
White, Michael: 27
Yaki Kornblit Gallery: 64
Young, Alice: 28
Zephyr (Witten, Andrew): 27, 65

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