A Quote by Jme

Graffiti is art, but you don't see graffiti in the National Gallery. Graffiti is on the street - that's where it belongs. — © Jme
Graffiti is art, but you don't see graffiti in the National Gallery. Graffiti is on the street - that's where it belongs.
Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn't become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you're the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you.
Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.
Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.
I did an art show for Donald Trump at his house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a bunch of pop art and stuff like that, so I wasn't doing any graffiti at that time, so I'd say from about 2000 to 2006, I wasn't doing any graffiti.
Many people decorate their homes with designer graffiti, even though most of them would probably have real graffiti scoured off the walls of their buildings.
In college, all my friends were graffiti writers, but I never wrote graffiti. I wanted to participate and do something cool on the street, so I'd make these portraits of people. I'd isolate them on a white wall, make a silkscreen of it, and do these portraits in bathrooms and all around. That's how I started the Polaroids.
My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.
One piece of graffiti doesn't mean much. Forty pieces of graffiti might mean something... It's all about connecting the dots.
Obviously my own work comes from a conceptual art tradition, but I love the graffiti artists, and I feel spiritually closer to them than to most contemporary art; they make the city a free space of diverse voices and we shouldn't get all cynical about them just because Banksy made some money. I collaborate sometimes with Krae, who is an old school east London graffiti writer.
All the work I did was to challenge politics, culture, and women's rights. I felt like I really wanted to break out. That's why I wanted to use graffiti. It's more open. I don't need people to come to an exhibition. Graffiti gives a voice to the walls.
I have always been a Peter Blake fan and love street art and graffiti. I really like this street-art collective called Faile. They're from Brooklyn and make these prints of beautiful women.
Street art, unlike graffiti, adds to the environment and is a positive experience for the artist and community.
I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.
I had just been doing graffiti around New York and this real estate investor guy had walked through meat packing in New York and saw some of my graffiti. He was impressed and asked if I sold canvases. I really had not made any canvases of my graffiti work yet, but told him I could make one for him. He then commissioned me to make ten paintings and put on my first art show. Between the sold out show and the cops chasing after me it created a lot of media and I've been doing really well since then.
I didnt start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didnt know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.
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