True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

Style Wars
Made in the early 1980s, this film was the first to celebrate urban graffiti
as true art – at a time when everyone else considered the creators vandals,
and their works a crime. We meet some of the kids and hear what
they were thinking and why they “tagged.”
By Tony Silver
1983, 70 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
This film originated as an effort by an artist to collect still
photographs of the graffiti on subway cars and then hunt
out the kids responsible for this art (top). The kids, often
from the suburbs (above), believed they were bettering the
dilapidated trains. At one point the graffiti inside the cars
reached saturation point which New Yorkers took as signal
of the demise of law and order in the city. In reaction cops
were sent to ride the cars (right above). The tagging artists
were not deterred and would rendezvous at good viewing
points and celebrate together as one of their works paraded
by (right).
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