A video interview with Lyken from around about 1998-ish. Been sitting on this for quite a while. Look out for his explanantion of the "art school wank" and "no fucking letters" comments painted next to his piece and the interviewer trying to get to grips with graff and explain that "its a visual art form" so letters dont really matter. Think your missing the point slightly missus arent you!
Some really good stuff in here interview wise giving a snap shot of what was happening at the time, as well as a capturing some of the work from the Blackness spot. Well worth watching.
10 comments:
Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
*talentless.
*fud
I'm not calling anyone talentless, merely correcting the spelling. As I believe untalented is just an americanism, though I may be wrong.
I would say all graf is abstracted to some extent. The letters are abstracted from their original form into wildstyle etc etc.
As far as normal art goes - I think You can easily tell the difference between somebody who is talentless and paints a load of shite wonky looking circles and calls it "abstract" and somebody who knows how to use colour, composition and form and make "abstract" paintings, or murals or whatever. what about some of the digital abstract stuff on sites like deviantart or behance? Just my two cents worth
its a nice wee capture of a moment and i think lyken beems a cool light on his view and activity in the scene of the time.
when you getting flicks up of the painting he just did down in london that is fresh, the elph isnt to shabby either.
pores
hahaha ^^
Pores - two points in repsonse to your question.
1 - I dont have a copy of his painting from London. He, or someone else would need to send it in.
2 - I wouldnt class what Lyken is now doing as graffiti in any way shape or form. If his London painting is the same as his recent works then it wouldnt fit in with the content of the site. Therefore even if I had a flick of it, I wouldnt add it to the site. Thats not a criticism of his work just a fact that it doesnt fit in with what im trying to document - graffiti.
Here now! all these comments and nobody's pointed out the dodgy 90's art college fashion worn by the girl behind the interview?
Those shoes the jimmy sommerville hairdo waist coats etc a definite "Art" get up.
If your going to abstract something then you need a form to abstract like asones pointed out Graffiti writing has always been about taking letterforms and bending reshaping them along the way abstract styles have evolved from this process.
However most styles are still readable so for me thats the best graffiti the stuff that still retains a flow and real letter forms.
The vast majority of so called "abstract graffiti" is no more than what most people would do with there fill or background theres no real abstraction involved . Ask anyone making this sort of art what it is there abstracting i would imagine 9x out of 10 they would say nothing, what most of these artists are doing is just free styling with paint with out the form of letters nothing wrong with that if you can come up with something thats still retains a strong identity within the context of Graffiti writing as thats the world they belong to .
Thats where the problem for me lies as most of the work i'm seeing which is being tagged as Graffiti Futurism still fits into what i consider 80's graffiti look at Bando he was taking parts of Futura 2000's abstract works and fusing it with letterforms back in 84 i don't see any difference between Futura or Seen it's all graffiti writing to me i was stoked to see either.
When any of those artists try to step out of the Graffiti world or distance themselves as straight up abstract artists then they set themselves a whole new heap of challenges.
I'm going to leave you with this quote from Terror 161 aka J-Son
" My position is that the way the Art world accepts graffiti writers is when they modify or eliminate what got them famous in the first place- letters. The majority of them do not even put solely graffiti on a canvas and if they do it’s a letter here or a letter there, almost as filler or as a reminder of who they once were. When they make the transition, when they decide to evolve as they would view it into fine artists, as you said the other day they are going against 5000 years of painting and the greatest artists of all time, and they become as a minnow to a whale in art’s ocean. Images have been around forever. Cats who were great in the domain we all created often become insignificant in the cross-over. Not me I certainly wasn’t one of the first but the Graffiti Movement was created and it’s a fairly new one, differing from what DaVinci or Michelangelo were doing for sure. So once you extricate yourself from the realm where you were that big fish, you become a small fish and 9 times out of 10, get lost in the shuffle.
I understand from talking to a lot of my friends who have art careers and are successful that Graffiti is a very restrictive medium on canvas. Doing the same letter forms over and over again bores the shit out of them. They can draw and they have a lot more to say than just a letter can express. I get it, but love the letter forms. They are the foundation of the genre and what makes graffiti unique."
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