Graff Vs Muralists Panel
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Monthly Archives: August 2009
BIO vs DMOTE (final round)
Dil : “The Gathering”
The Seventh Letter
This isn’t called the seventh letter because it’s the seventh e-mail (it’s not even that). This is about the legal arm of the largest graffiti crew in the country (probably the world), called The Seventh Letter. Bear with me. This does apply in an abstract way to our business.
While still studying filmmaking at Chapman University (awesome film school by the way – blows USC out of the water), our eldest son Keegan directed a documentary about graffiti titled Piece of Mind. He has always been fascinated with street art of all sorts, from random scribbles to Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and Robbie Conal. During the filming of the movie he became quite familiar with the artists and ethos involved in graf, and so by extension I did as well (albeit to a much smaller degree). Two crews in particular are featured in his film – MSK and AWR. These guys are the artists (or vandals if you prefer) behind the Seventh Letter.
The guys who are good at graffiti are amazing artists, all the more so because they do their art at a breakneck pace while perched on a narrow scaffold 30 feet or more above the ground in the wee hours of the night, ducking whenever a car goes by. Granted there are plenty of guys that just make a random mess of everything in sight – but the ones who do it right are beyond.
Where it gets interesting is in the crossroads of art, ethics, money, and law. Back in 2007 there was a fantastic exhibit at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art featuring the artwork of Murakami. For those of you not familiar with Murakami, suffice it to say he is kind of the Andy Warhol of Japan, but bigger. MOCA put up huge pink billboards around town promoting the show that basically just said MURAKAMI in big white letters. Two of the MSK guys, Revok and Augor, bombed one of the billboards one night. Murakami saw a photo of the result, then had the billboard taken down and shipped to Japan for his personal collection. Even though it was illegal art Murakami appreciated the beauty of the work.
Have you ever noticed that graffiti on billboards only goes so high? Makes sense when you think about it – the artists can only reach to about a foot over their heads and the bottoms of the billboards are usually at least several feet above the scaffolds.
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