Johnvon with one of the paintings displayed in his solo show at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami.
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MIAMI – Art has taken over South Florida this week with the annual Art Basel fair and several satellite shows. A new exhibition describes the origins and evolution of a type of art for which the city is known: graffiti and street art.
It’s at the Miami Mural Museum, which bills itself as the world’s first museum dedicated to graffiti and street art. The museum is located in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, an arts-forward community where large, colorful murals adorn the exterior of nearly every building.
Inside the museum, one of the first exhibits is not of art, but of an artist’s medium – in this case, cans of Rust-Oleum spray paint. Museum founder and curator Alan Cate picks up a special can. “It’s a cascade green rust-oleum paint,” he says. “This was in 1973.”
Today, collectors will pay $1,000 for a vintage can. Kate says it’s a color prized by graffiti artists. “This green color was only made by Rust-Oleum,” he says. “No other brand made anything this good. So, when you paint a rusty train this mint green, the effect is quite extraordinary.”
The Graffiti Museum is located in a Miami neighborhood where almost every building is covered in large, colorful graffiti.
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Kate founded the graffiti museum with a partner six years ago to tell the story of an art movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s, when teenagers spray-painted their names on surfaces throughout New York City.
One of those teenagers, John Perello, now 61, is an artist who goes by the name JohnOne.
His paintings cover Air France jets and are featured on Hennessy Cognac labels. He now lives in France, but nearly 50 years ago, as a teenager he started tagging buildings and subways in New York. “I had no money, so I was stealing all my spray paint,” he says. “I would say that was the first grant.”
Johnvon says he started tagging by putting his name on buildings in his Washington Heights neighborhood. His paintings became more elaborate over time, and, like many of his friends, he began painting on New York subway cars. He says, “For me, trains were like an open gallery. All kinds of people could visit it – tourists, business people, people going to work, poor people. It became like a walking canvas, a walking museum that would come to you.”
Then, as now, that type of guerrilla art was not popular with authorities and others who considered it vandalism. But early on, some artists started commuting to the studio by subway.
The graffiti museum’s exhibition displays paintings from important moments in the development of graffiti art. It was the first time that the work of young street artists was exhibited in a New York gallery. Alan Cate says, “The Razor Gallery show in 1973 was a huge boom that showed these young artists that they had a lane, they had an opportunity that they could pursue.”
Kate says that in the decades since that show, graffiti has spread globally and has been accepted by the art world, luxury brands and even governments. The works of some artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy, have sold for millions of dollars. “Now, graffiti artists are called street artists,” he says. “And they are commissioned by cities around the world to create monumental public art projects.”
Alan Cate co-founded the Graffiti Museum six years ago to document the origins and evolution of the street art movement.
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Kate has consulted with museums on exhibitions of graffiti and street art, but says, despite its wide popular appeal, it has not yet received the recognition it deserves from the art establishment. This was what inspired him to open the graffiti museum. He says blue-chip institutions will host temporary exhibitions, but have been slow to add street art to their permanent collections.
Even as a teenager, Johnvon says he knew it was only a matter of time before the art he and others were doing on subway cars would be recognized. But street art still carries a certain stigma, he says. “It’s like that girlfriend you don’t want to show your mom, you know? You love her and everything, but you don’t want to bring her home…sometimes I feel like that.”
JonOne’s solo show will be at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami through June. The Origins exhibition, documenting the beginnings of the movement and showcasing work from the seminal show of 1973, will continue until the end of the year.
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