Hasta La Ideas

Suit shopping with Retna on the eve of his Hallelujah World Tour

Behind gate 37E on Washington Street lies a warehouse with a Buick Regal parked inside. Photographers are snapping away, laptops are out, and well-dressed critics buzz throughout the space. This was the scene when I visited “Breaking Bread,” the first stop on Retna’s three-continent-spanning Hallelujah Tour on the day before its opening.

Sponsored by VistaJet and Bombardier, the tour will see the L.A. graffiti legend spend the better part of the next year on the road, painting all original material in NYC, Hong Kong and London—and with a just-announced surprise show in Venice along the way. The series of shows comes on the heels of Retna’s successful solo show at L.A.’s New Image Art gallery, where powerhouse Museum of Contemporary Art director Jeffery Deitch compared Retna to Keith Haring, positioning it as “one of the most exciting exhibitions that I have seen this year.”

For someone arguably at the peak of his career, Retna speaks casually about the worldwide tour, describing how the origins of the show started with a studio visit from the concept’s impresarios Andy Valmorbida and Vlad Restoin Roitfeld. “I thought it was cool, I was down with the cities. Then the sponsors came in and they wanted to put the ad on the plane digitally. I was like, ‘Nah, if my work’s gonna be out there it’s gonna be real, I don’t photoshop shit. If you want my work on that plane it’s going to be one 100% real.’ So now they’re locking down some super hanger so I can paint in it.”

If this newfound big league is unexpected or overwhelming, Retna doesn’t show it. “You know that’s why I still listen to the same music as I did back then. I’m still that same kid trying to get up on walls chasing the dream. When I was young I didn’t know what it was, but now that I’m here I guess this is the dream, I’m living it now.” Just after Retna shares these insights, a scruffy group of men who could be Hell’s Angels approach us. “You really out did yourself this time bro, looks great.”

The man clamps my hand, “Haze, good to meet you. This is my girl Rosie.” As in Perez, and Haze himself is one of graffiti’s inventors. Our corner of the room starts to fill up with members of Retna’s MSK crew, making it feel like a celebration. And there’s a lot to celebrate, not only Retna but the culture he represents—a kid from the gang-infested streets of L.A. who desperately wanted to join a gang at 13 but was told to focus on art instead. “You know they didn’t do that for just anybody,” he recalls. “They told me you can chill with us, you can smoke with us, you can paint our walls, but you ain’t a gangbanger.”

Retna introduces me to Revok1, who was recently arrested in Australia in what was called “the vandal vacation.” Revok1 explains, “Something like 10,000 kids went out to Melbourne from all over the country when they heard what was going down. They painted like 70% of all of the trains. The mayor came out and declared a state of emergency and called it a disgrace.”

Retna asks if we should continue the interview at a bar so he can relax, but before we can decide where, two enthusiastic assistants corner us saying, “This dinner is a huge deal! It’s like $100,000 a plate, and they’re auctioning off your painting. Bill Clinton is going to be there.” Retna, seemingly unaffected, is more interested in rounding up his friends for a quiet night downtown somewhere. After some back and forth with the assistants, it’s decided that his presence is required as an ambassador of “street art” culture. This is his world now whether he likes it or not. “I’m not a street artist dude, I mean, they can’t do what we do. I’m a graf writer. I always have been. Graf writers were getting gallery shows since the ’80s. This isn’t new, they just like that tag because it’s safe.”

With no suit on hand for the black tie event, we begin shopping through Soho, punctuated by “Fear and Loathing” moments, like Retna walking around Hugo Boss shirtless. The manicured men standing at attention find his antics less than amusing, even scoffing at his lack of interest in their style.

With the same courage he showed when he faced jail time and the same unflagging desire to paint, Retna does it all for the culture now so warmly embraced by high society. Before he disappears into the crowds of Soho, he turns with eyes open hugging the sky, “not bad for a lil nigga from the hood!”

Kicking off the Hallelujah Tour, “Breaking Bread” opens 10 February 2011 and runs through 21 February 2011 before moving on to its next port.

Ci ha pensato Sprayground.
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Preparate gli UniPosca, questo DIY 8 inch Box Truck non aspetta altro che essere dipinto! Se cercate delle ispirazioni fatevi un giro qui.
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“Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art” is a behemoth of a book loaded with a who’s-who of the contemporary urban art scene edited by Patrick Nguyen and Stuart. Surveying the work from figureheads such as Aaron Rose, Wooster Collective, Deitch Projects, Stephan Doitschinoff, Faile, Brad Downey and Swoon, in-depth interviews supplement loads of color images and artist biographies to create a 400-page tome of information.

Below, Cool Hunting gets an exclusive preview of the book (it comes out in the U.S. on 20 May 2010) with this interview excerpt conducted by Nguyen with New York-based artist Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO.

Londoners can catch the U.K. book launch party the Friday, 7 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Phillips de Pury & Company on Howick Place. For those in New York, the event takes place Thursday, 27 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Deitch Projects.

Pick up the book from Gestalten or pre-order from Amazon.

What led you to become an artist in the first place?

It was just raw, desperate hunger for attention. Because I grew up in a household with a lot of other children, drawing was a way to separate myself from the pack. So I got into it as a three-year-old and have been a compulsive drawer ever since.

Is it true that you were an art school dropout? If so, why did you quit?

Yeah, I dropped out of two different art schools. I just had a sneaking suspicion as I was handing over my tuition that you probably didn’t need anything they were teaching at art school to be an artist. Like being a musician, either you have it or you don’t. If you have the talent and you put in the hours and you get lucky, art school’s not going to help you anyway.

When did you start doing graffiti?

I was doing graffiti as a teenager, basically as a sophomore in high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was something new to me. It was just brutally breaking out of the neighborhoods of New York and Philadelphia and starting to go national with “Style Wars” and “Subway Art.” And it had everything I wanted in art: color, design, line, it was illegal, but not that illegal—all the things that captivate teenagers. Typically in those days, in the mid-eighties in Philadelphia and New York, it was really a young person’s game. They’d start at 12 and were done at 18. I started a little late at 16, and I didn’t really finish until I was 30.

Continue reading and see more images after the jump.

Could you describe some of the background to the ESPO tags you used to do on storefront grates in New York?

At a New Year’s party in 1997, I got in an argument with a graffiti video director/producer. I basically laid out the theory that I could paint anywhere in New York any time I wanted, and get over without getting arrested for it. He said, “Absolutely not. It can’t be done.” It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. At the time, Mayor Giuliani wanted people to be responsible for the graffiti on their own properties and for owners to be fined if they didn’t remove it. Well, the property owners in New York are an extremely powerful group of people, so that never really came to pass. But I liked the idea of doing something so fundamentally benign like painting over graffiti and then turning it into graffiti at the last minute. I didn’t anticipate the reaction it would get, but once I’d done it a couple of times, I decided to keep going and ended up doing around 75 grates. The rule of thumb in New York is that if you’re doing something new, you can’t just do it once or twice; otherwise, the next person’s going to pick it up and take all the credit for it. So in doing it as many times as I could, I really held on to the idea for myself.

When did you stop painting illegally and become a “respectable member of society?”

I stopped doing graffiti in ’99. I’d been painting for 15 years by that point and had done everything two or three times over. I really just wanted to focus on making art. To me, the term graffiti art is an oxymoron. Graffiti does its own thing; it doesn’t need to aspire to anything more than graffiti. It’s cool if it does, but I think calling yourself a graffiti artist places an unnecessary burden on you. You’re probably not going to make that good graffiti, and you’re probably not going to make that good art if you’re trying to do both at the same time.

Dans la continuité du travail de l’artiste urbain Blu avec Combo, voici ce film réalisé par Tant et Unga de l’équipe “Broken Fingaz,” en provenance d’Israël. Du graffiti en stop-motion, sur une bande son de Boreta et The Glitch Mob. A découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Snask Film
• Nobody Beats The Drum
• Out Of A Forest