Lot 117: BLADE (STEVEN OGBORNE)

BLADE (STEVEN OGBORNE) AMERICAN B. 1957 GRAFFITI ANEW signed on the reverse Steven Ogborne spray paint on canvas 130 by 230 cm. 1987/1988

Groninger Museum, Coming from the subway - New York graffiti Art. Geschiedenis en ontwikkeling van een controversiële beweging, 1992/1993

H. Pijnenburg, Blade - King of Kings, Amsterdam 2009, p. 92 illustrated, pp. 143-146 correspondence and illustrated
Exhibition catalogue, Groninger Museum, Coming from the subway - New York graffiti Art. Geschiedenis en ontwikkeling van een controversiële beweging, 1992/93, p. 78 illustrated

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Graffiti Art – coming from the subway
The Graffiti movement came into existence in the late 1960s at the time of the famous Martin Luther King march and is violent death on 4 April in 1968. Young artists started to place their 'tags' (autographs) on trains of the New York transit system. In this metropolis pedestrians are bombarded with advertisements and corporate logos. Similarly, the logos or tags of these artists incorporate or patent their Selves.

The exterior of trains offered new opportunities: space and internal communication. The more surfaces you conquer, the more respect you win. This quality of space meets up with a quality of presentation: peers become the most knowing judges and the most avid competitors. On the other hand, because of graffiti was strictly forbidden from 1972 onwards, it had to take place in the middle of the night. The graffiti artists had to work at a frenzied pace, since the trains had to be up and running before dawn. Therefore, graffiti artists started to make preparatory drawings of their designs and made photographs of the trains.

As the subway is not cross-Atlantic and there is a last stop in the subway a new phase in the development of graffiti started around 1980 when artists began to work on canvas. True to what canvas has always performed in the history of art by being culture's means for transmitting visual information, these artists, in their habitually swift, dynamic manner, use this portability of painting for distances no train can travel. This facilitated them to work undisturbed in their studio.

(from: Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, exhibition catalogue: Graffiti, 1983, pp. 5-38)

Graffiti Anew or Graffiti Reinvented
The spray paint on canvas of the present work tells the story of the New York Graffiti Movement; the main character in the painting closes a train door behind which we see the old subway graffiti period by night. This period ends in the 1980s, marking a new era where graffiti artists enter the "real" art world. It is a transition of mixed feelings, judging by the doubtful look on the face of the puppet. Even the style of the letters differs from traditional graffiti, it shows more resemblance to an early expression of New Age Art (or the later Abstagraff).