Rolling Thunder Graff

The original article is here: Hippy Writers

“Rolling Thunder Writers” refers to a clique of graffiti artists that painted the New York City subway cars in the early and mid-1980s. Their fascinating history is recounted in volume two of “Henry Chalfant’s Graffiti Archive: New York City’s Subway Art and Artists Volume 2: RTW, SA.” The made-for-iPad book also recounts the history of the Soul Artists, a graffiti club instrumental in RTW’s development.

Graffiti art aficionados will be readily familiar with some of the luminaries in this book: Min, Revolt, Zephyr, Quik, SE3, Mare and Kel to name a few. There are over 80 photos of their artwork emblazoned on the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s subway cars. Decades have gone by since these artworks rolled through New York’s five boroughs, and these photos are some of the best that give testament to that exciting period of New York’s history.

The photos will endlessly fascinate a younger audience, but for art collectors, history buffs and ageing b-boys there is a wealth of new info, exclusive video-interviews and Chalfant’s memories of these writers and their particular imprint on history.

Like the previous volume, this one starts with Chalfant’s introduction sprinkled with photographs of the environment which the art was created in. This volume features his famous photo of Min painting, and a hilarious picture of Chalfant tagging a train. So much for Anthropological neutrality and thank goodness for the statute of limitations! Chalfant often gets criticized for this very thing: a lack of impartialness. However, to my mind this approach is ultimately more honest. Rather than having to poke and prod for the author’s biases hidden behind strained obfuscation, Chalfant wears his biases on his sleeve making it easier to frame his work in the overall panorama of graffiti art history.

RTW broke the mold of the public perception about graffiti artists. Mainly, that some weren’t rich white kids from the Upper West Side, or that they were even old enough to drive. The history of New York graffiti generally cut through every demographic, so it isn’t fair to say that RTW was entirely unique in this regard but its members were some of the first to garner media attention via their affiliation with Soul Artists.

Soul Artists formed in the early 70’s and disbanded after their leader, Ali, was badly burned in a subway accident. He later reformed the group around 1979 with the idea of taking graffiti into the art galleries. Many artists known today such as Lee, Daze, Tracy 168, Mare, Futura 2000, and Revolt frequented the Soul Artists meet-ups. Soul Artist train photos are sprinkled throughout the book, and their history, mostly recounted in Haze’s (SE3) interview, seems to permeate discussions of Rolling Thunder Writers.

My perception of RTW’s writers were generally that, “these guys are hippies.” Frankly, this iBook does little to quash my preconception. But what’s wrong with that? It isn’t mentioned in the book, but to my mind RTW sort of took off where early 1970’s graffiti writers like Stay High 149 ended - a sort of psychedelic, underground comix inspired graffiti explosion. They would hang out at the Central Park band shell, painted Vaughn Bode characters, and executed a style that was much more free-form than some of their contemporaries.