IDS 101: Graffiti: Art, Intervention, Crime: Websites and Films

Los Angeles graffiti artists discuss the themes and motivations of their work and how they evolved from taggers to artists. Several artists are shown at work on projects, indoors as well as outside. The history and significance of graffiti is addressed, as is its role in the Hip Hop culture.

In 1981 Jean Michel Basquiat, a nineteen-year-old unknown graffiti writer, takes the New York art world by storm.

This film tells the story of graffiti from its cave-painting ancestors through its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70's and 80's as living museums appeared on trains rolling between the Bronx and Brooklyn. This film explores the many manifestations of "bombing," the global graffiti culture where the love of art and ego clashes explosively with law and order.

This is the inside story of Street Art - a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide. It follows an eccentric Los Angeles based French shop-keeper turned amateur film-maker as he attempts to capture many of the world's most infamous vandals on camera, only to have British stencil artist Banksy turn the camcorder back on its owner with wildly unexpected results.

Infamy features interviews with six scene-leading graffiti artists: Claw, Earsnot, Enem, Jase, Saber, and Toomer, examining the culture of graffiti and the obsession that drives normal individuals to tag everything in sight. In cities from New York to Los Angeles, Philadelphia to San Francisco to Cleveland, the featured artists are articulate about their obsession with the idea of leaving their mark on the world around them, literally.