Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.): Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation
Reprinted from the original review.
The catalogue Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation, accompanying the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibition, is as multifaceted and dynamic as its subject. Edited by Liz Munsell and Greg Tate, this robust volume unravels the layers of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic world and his role within a transformative cultural era. It positions Basquiat not just as an individual artist but as a pivotal figure in a constellation of intersecting movements reshaping art, music, and performance in 1970s and 1980s New York City.
The book is as much a cultural chronicle as it is an artistic study. It captures the chaotic, electrifying energy of a New York where the boundaries between “high” and “low” art dissolved, and the street became an unregulated gallery. The text delves into the social and cultural exchanges between the Uptown and Downtown scenes—worlds simultaneously divided and united by race, class, and artistic vision. These layers are vividly brought to life through essays that explore the societal forces shaping Basquiat’s era: the collapse of urban economies, the rise of hip-hop, and the cultural syncretism that defined the city’s creative spaces.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation ? | Publisher: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (May 5, 2020) ? | Authors: Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.) With contributions by J. Faith Almiron, Dakota DeVos, Hua Hsu, and Carlo McCormick ? | Language: English
Fourth of July weekend stretched into at least three days this year for many New Yorkers—some staying in town to catch the spectacular fireworks displays over the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan, others escaping to Long Island, Upstate New York, or New Jersey. Chasing cooler air and a patch of green, they rent, borrow, and maybe even steal cars for the chance to go camping, canoeing, fire up a barbecue, and revisit Aunt Eloise’s legendary Ambrosia Salad—a chilled “salad” of mini marshmallows, canned mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple, coconut, and Cool Whip. Anyone want a hot dog?
Back in the city, stoop sales and block parties occupy the streets, murals are going up, and conversations drift between the Fourth of July Subway Series games with the Mets and Yankees, the newly approved rent-control rate hikes, and the eye-popping sums raised by the city’s elite to defeat the Socialist Democrat currently leading the mayoral race.
There’s also unease over the Big Beautiful Billsigned by the president on July 4th—an enormous, controversial budget that offers major tax breaks for the wealthy while cutting food and healthcare programs for the poor. It’s being called one of the most consequential—and divisive—pieces of legislation in decades. As you read over the text and see where the money is disappearing from and who it is going to, it may appear to you as a dark mirror version of a well-known children’s story, like a “Reverse Robinhood.” Yet, the debt will still increase…
Here’s a glimpse of the latest graffiti, street art, and murals captured in this week’s survey, including Aida Miro, Frankie Botz, Humble, Juliana Ruiz, Kong Savage, Lao Art, Lina Montoya, Minhafofa, MSK Crew, Musicoby, OSK, Paolo Tolention, Phetus88, Pixote, Qzar, Rambo, Sonni, Steve Sie, Tess, and Zoot.
Ten summers later, the Cvta Street Fest in Civitacampomarano is still a stubborn bonfire in Molise that refuses to extinguish—exactly the kind of smoldering ruin that draws Elfo like a moth with a paint roller. The village, half-abandoned and sliding gently into the weeds, gives him a ready-made stage set: crumbling stucco, porous stone, and few humans around to complain if the punch line lands a little hard. Perfect. Elfo, the “ever-clever minimalist” who prefers snappy text to splashy figuration, once again proves that a few uneven letters can shout louder than a ten-story portrait.
With “Mary Poppins Go Home,” he greets Civita’s volunteer army—those locals who sweep, scrub, and scaffold their way through festival week—with a wink and a nudge. No magical nanny descends from the clouds here however; this revival is strictly DIY. The brusque black letters, rolled straight onto a battered façade, laugh at both civic boosterism and the grand-mural industrial complex. The smallest of gestures, but he still lands a wallop – deserved or not.
Writer Giulia Blocal Riva describes it this way: “Rejecting the gigantism of large-scale murals, Elfo created three text-based works in Civitacampomarano—ironic, provocative, and surreal interventions. With nothing but a paint roller, the artist offered a reflection on the village’s condition, caught between depopulation and renewal.”
The vibe stays punch-drunk with “Hey Macarena Aiy”—a title that mashes up ’90s dance fever with this town now neglected – a strange nostalgic ennui that now haunts the age we live in. Elfo’s scrawl stretches across a wall so pitted it looks pre-chewed, teasing Civita’s awkward shuffle from near-ghost-town to Insta-friendly tourist stop.
Riva says: ” plays on the tension between the past, the present, and a possible future. Once nearly abandoned, the village is slowly becoming a tourist destination—thanks in large part to public art projects that have brought it to wider attention.” And, we may add, publishers and platforms like this one.
Finally comes the two-word mic-drop “Dubai Dubai,” comparing Molise’s cracked masonry to the Gulf’s glass pyramids. It’s a laugh-out-loud mismatch that also stings—why chase sterile luxury when you’ve got real history flaking into your lap? Says Riva, “Dubai Dubai draws its irony from the stark contrast—visual, social, and historical—between the tiny Molisan village and the hyper-modern metropolis of Dubai.”
Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 is an essential document of the Lisbon-based artist’s transformative approach to street art, sculpture, and environmental activism. Published in conjunction with his massive solo exhibition ATTERO in Lisbon, the book chronicles six years of Bordalo II’s relentless exploration of waste as both material and message. Known for his large-scale animal sculptures crafted from discarded objects, Bordalo II turns industrial, commercial, and consumer debris into expressive works that challenge the culture of overconsumption.
In ATTERO, his creative process is laid bare—viewers enter a warehouse where bicycles stack in layers, office chairs wave their legs in the air, and white garbage bags form soft, meringue-like piles. As an immersive study, the book mirrors the artist’s ability to organize chaos into order, crafting a visual language of urgency, beauty, and critique.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 ? | Published on the occasion of Bordalo II’s ATTERO Exhibition in Lisbon in 11 / 2017. Hard cover. ? | Author: Bordalo II ? | Language: English
NYC’s 55th annual Pride March down 5th Avenue kicks off today, themed “Rise Up: Pride in Protest,” taking on a decidedly defiant stance on equality for all. Suppose you are in the subway, dance club, or park in Bushwick, Chinatown, or midtown. Like every June, it’s a lavender parade all weekend, with all members of the LGBTQUA+ communities from around the country and the world laughing, dancing, fighting, posing, and canoodling.
Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani clinched the Democratic nomination here this week after defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, possibly igniting a polarized reaction across NYC politics. Hm, wonder if anyone will mention his religion in the next few months. What do you think? But, de facto, he’s going to be the next mayor – unless Bloomberg wants to blow more money before the November election.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Andre Trenier, Dirt Cobain, Drones, Dzel, Fear Art, Jappy Agoncillo, Jason Naylor, Jeff Rose, Kam S. Art, Manik, Modomatic, Par, Riot, Senisa, Tom Bob, Werds, and Zimer.
The new exhibition Terra Forma from Saman and Sasan Oskouei at IRL Gallery is a quiet storm—an atmospheric meditation on fragility, formation, and the traces of life left behind as nature and industry brush against one another. The brothers don’t shout their critique; it would be folly. Instead, they whisper it across surfaces that suggest ancient terrain, marginalized neighborhoods, and the factory floor—a cross-current of poetics and rusted precision.
Formerly known to many as the street-art duo Icy & Sot, the Oskoueis have moved far from their early stencil-protest days, carrying the soil—and perhaps a few chunks of pavement—of that journey with them. In Terra Forma, cherry-wood spheres rest in arms of bent steel, organic gestures rising from hard geometries. “These fabricated plants carry forth smooth spheres of warm cherrywood as if they were sacrificial gifts—or the building blocks of a not-too-distant future,” notes writer and historian Signe Havsteen, whose exhibition text captures the tension between the natural and the manufactured.
Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)
Mutation and evolution play out here as industrial flora absorb the ambient residue of urban life. Muted hues emerge from layered surfaces—traces of changing landscapes that resist permanence, hovering somewhere between formation and collapse. There is no romanticism; instead, the Oskoueis offer a quiet ambiguity, a recognition that the ground beneath us is ever shifting.
Steel curves because someone bent it; wood gleams because someone carved it. These are materials with histories, and under the hands of Saman and Sasan they become vessels for what remains. Terra Forma invites you to experience them as weight, as scent, as memory made solid.
Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)Saman & Sasan Oskouei. “Terra Forma”. IRL Gallery. (photo courtesy of the artists)
At the corner of Primorska 3 in Novi Sad, where vendors at an informal NAJLON PIJACA flea market lay out used clothes and household items on the pavement, a new mural has appeared. It shows a burning crown, painted directly onto a low wall beside the rag-tag but prim market. The work is by French-German artist MTO, known for his precise technique and sharp social commentary.
The mural follows a national tragedy. On November 1, 2024, at 11:52 a.m., the concrete canopy of Novi Sad’s central railway station collapsed, killing 16 people. The incident was widely seen as a consequence of poor oversight and alleged corruption, particularly involving foreign construction firms. In response, students organized protests that quickly grew into a national movement. Their actions included campus shutdowns, an 80-kilometer march from Belgrade to Novi Sad, a bicycle ride to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and daily 15-minute silences at the time of the collapse.
MTO’s mural, though unsanctioned, has become part of the response. “The painting of the crown on fire,” he writes, “is not a portrait of grief, but a declaration—that the monarchy of impunity must burn.” The crown isn’t aimed at royalty, but at what the artist sees as unchecked power. The mural now sits among other public expressions of remembrance, including flowers and candles at the station.
MTO, originally from France and based in Berlin, is known for its large-scale grayscale portraits, which often incorporate symbolic elements. His work has appeared in cities such as Lisbon, Berlin, Miami, and Sarajevo, usually featuring political and social critique. The mural in Novi Sad continues that approach. It also connects to broader public sentiment: in the U.S., the recent “No Kings” marches have voiced similar calls for accountability and limits on concentrated power. In both cases, public space becomes a site for protest and reflection.
This week, we mark the passing of Brooklyn-born photographer Marcia Resnick, whose camera cut through the cultural chaos of late 1970s and early 1980s New York punk subculture with clarity, bite, and precision. She wasn’t just in the room—Resnick was part of the scene. Her black-and-whites told the truth, or at least a version of it that compelled you. She caught peacocks like Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and Stiv Bators when nightlife was a contact sport and celebrity was going through a re-evaluation. Gritty or mundane, she captured pockets of the city—Mudd Club, CBGB—where the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Bad Brains blew out the walls and made mockery of mainstream, and where cultural conduits like Fab Five Freddy slipped between scenes, wiring punk to hip hop and graffiti before most people knew there was even a circuit.
Resnick had a particular skill: people—posturing poets, punk detonation squads, intellectual misfits—trusted her even when they shouldn’t have. Lydia Lunch, Klaus Nomi, Quentin Crisp, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Allen Ginsberg, and John Belushi – each showy in their own way and more iconic than the last- were captured. She made them look less like icons and more like complicated mammals with dreams, drugs, and dirty laundry. Her whole visual archive sings like a live wire, and we thank her for it.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Branded Art, Elena Ohlander, INEPT, Karat, RIPE143, Rita Flores, Tones One, Trek6, and Yalus.
A powerful new mural emerges this summer in Hell’s Kitchen, where West 47th Street meets the edges of the park. Painted by Italian artist Fabio Petani, BOTANICAL PULSE: Insulin & Spartium Junceum is more than a striking visual gesture—it is a message written in flora and chemistry, an atmospheric gift to the neighborhood. Tall, quiet, and surprisingly layered, the mural brings together golden blooms of Spanish broom (Spartium junceum) with floating shapes and forms that echo chemical diagrams, referencing insulin. This hormone regulates energy in the body. As is his practice, this is a fusion of science and nature, with Petani offering an urban meditation on the balance between breath and density, body and structure, biology and atmosphere.
Known for his thoughtful combinations of botanical illustration and scientific symbology, Fabio Petani has painted his signature visual language on public walls from Europe to the Americas. Initially from Pescara, Italy, he approaches each mural as site-specific, researching the environment, history, and ecology of a place before selecting his subjects. His work often pairs the Latin name of a plant with a chemical compound that has metaphorical or environmental significance. Here in New York, Insulin & Spartium Junceum speak of resilience, adaptation, and inner rhythms—fitting themes for an NYC neighborhood shaped by constant movement and reinvention.
But this mural does more than speak—it acts. Painted with a mineral-based technology that interacts with sunlight and airborne pollutants, the wall itself performs a kind of quiet urban alchemy. Every day for years to come, this mural will reduce the impact of traffic emissions on the surrounding block. It’s a reminder that public art can serve a purpose beyond aesthetics, offering beauty as well as benefit. Without branding or slogans, it invites passersby to consider what it means to live in a city where art and air quality might improve side by side.
The composition has an elegance and a calm conviction. Petani’s cool tones and open structure give the work room to breathe, while its underlying scientific references suggest invisible forces at play. It is a mural that functions on many levels—as a work of art, an act of care, and a public pulse check.
Welcome to Part II of II of our photo collection from the 14th Annual Bushwick Collective Block Party. This year’s edition, held on May 31, 2025, brought together a powerful fusion of beats, paint, and community spirit—just the kind of vibrant energy we at BSA love to celebrate.
Everybody’s proud of their neighborhood, and even though Bushwick continues to change, become more unaffordable, a little suburban, and sometimes feels like it is erasing the hardworking community that made it great, it takes a block party like this to remind you about what Bushwick is. Shout out to Joe and his family and team for incorporating the graffiti heads into the mix and allowing street art and graffiti to coexist in a way many predicted would be impossible; a truly unique collection of artists, styles, disciplines, inspirations, and themes.
As usual in 2025, it was a casual week of parades, protests, and military deployments—just your average backdrop for all the high school graduations, weddings, camping trips that happen this time of year. In Los Angeles, 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines were deployed after ICE raids shook entire neighborhoods, prompting the governor to cry federal overreach. Meanwhile, the “No Kings” movement lit up an estimated 2,000 cities with protests against authoritarian drift, right as Trump celebrated his 79th birthday with a U.S. Army parade in DC featuring tanks, jets, fireworks, and an ambiance best described as “military cosplay meets birthday bash.” To keep the global tension meter on high, Israel launched strikes on Iran, and Iran responded by hitting Tel Aviv—because apparently, world affairs now follow the same script as a group chat argument, with grave consequences.
In art and culture news, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating federal funding for NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the House approving a $1.1 billion rescission that is now headed to the Senate. Simultaneously, over 500 arts grants from the National Endowment for the Arts have been revoked—especially those tied to DEI or LGBTQ+ themes—and the 2026 budget proposes dismantling the NEA entirely.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Bonut, Drew, Duster, Four Star, Great Boxers, Hef, JJ Veronis, KAM, Kristy McCarthy, LNE Crew, Nite Owl, Seaizing, and SHC.
In a decisive nod to the city that shaped him, legendary graffiti artist DAZE (Chris Ellis) has unveiled two new large-scale murals at 550 Madison Avenue, transforming the building’s soaring street-level space into a canvas that bridges worlds. Painted live in public view, these works are part of “Above Ground Midtown: MCNY x DAZE.” With their vibrant forms, layered textures, and intuitive energy, DAZE’s murals draw from the pulse of New York City, the geometry of Philip Johnson’s iconic building design, and the surrounding garden oasis that gently appears in midtown Manhattan.
To fans of New York graffiti and street art, DAZE needs no introduction. A member of the second wave of graffiti writers in the late 1970s and early ’80s, he began painting subway trains as a student at the High School of Art and Design, developing a signature style marked by wildstyle lettering, surreal characters, and a painterly sense of movement. Over the decades, he has nurtured a career, evolving into a fine artist while continuing to honor the raw urban energy of his roots. “I think of these pieces as a continuation of a language I started developing underground,” DAZE tells us. “Only now, we’re bringing it out into the light—quite literally.”
Curator Sean Corcoran of the Museum of the City of New York sees this installation as an extension of the museum’s current exhibition, Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection, which includes early works by DAZE and many of his contemporaries. “This project is about visibility—making sure the public understands graffiti not just as something from the past, but as a living, evolving art form with deep ties to the city’s history,” he says. “Having DAZE create these murals in real time, for anyone to see, reinforces the idea that this movement was always meant to be in dialogue with the street—and with the people of New York.”
BSA asked DAZE and Corcoran a couple of questions about the project:
Brooklyn Street Art (BSA): DAZE, these new canvases feel like they’re in direct conversation with the city itself — its architecture, movement, street energy, and natural elements. How do they reflect your biography as a New Yorker and a writer who came up in the 1970s and ’80s?
DAZE: In creating these two paintings I wanted to capture the feeling of someone somehow say, in a taxi, going uptown and watching how the cityscape changes from one neighborhood to the next. At the same time I wanted to inject certain natural images within the painting. Even though we all live in a city that is noisy and congested, there are still areas where one can find a nice park to sit and have a quiet moment. I felt like that side of the city had to be represented too.
BSA: You created these pieces live, in a high-visibility Midtown space, a far cry from painting trains in the dark. What does it mean to you to create something so public and above-ground in the heart of a city you’ve been documenting and writing a visual diary for over 40+ years?
DAZE: I was very aware of the architecture of the building and its history. One of the unique things about the space is that the ceilings are so high. It’s an interior space, however, you feel as if you’re outside, which is quite unique.
It was amazing to create something large scale in an area of New York City that receives both many tourists and people who are working there. It exposes my work to a new audience.
BSA: Sean, DAZE’s career spans the early days of illegal train writing to significant institutional recognition — how does his presence here at 550 Madison, and possibly in the Martin Wong Collection, help tell a fuller story of graffiti’s evolution in New York?
Sean Corcoran: Daze’s career is an excellent example of the trajectory of a number of the artistically ambitious writers who emerge from the “train writing”’ era movement that developed a long and impactful studio career that helped export the regional subculture to a worldwide phenomenon. Martin Wong, the Lower East Side painter and generous donor of the majority of the Museum’s collection of more than 300 paintings and 60 black books, was interested in telling the story of this a youth culture that largely sprung up in New York City.
He wanted to trace the youthful rebellion of you people painting on subway trains and public spaces, but he was equally interested in the communication and artistic inclinations as well, and he actively encouraged and supported this by not only buying canvases, but by being a friend and sometimes mentor.
BSA: The title Above Ground for the Martin Wong Collection—and this above-ground exhibition by a writer known for his work on underground trains—suggests a subculture being brought into the light. In curating this collection today at the MCNY, what conversations do you hope it sparks about the place of artists like DAZE in both the art world and the cultural history of the city?
Sean Corcoran:Above Ground is intended to loosely trace the early efforts of train writers as they moved out of the tunnels and layups and into the studio. The exhibition notes the importance of several transitional moments in this history – The United Graffiti Artists (founded in 1972), Sam Esses Studio in 1980, the advent of East Village galleries like Fun and 51X soon after in the early 1980s, and then the jump to blue chip galleries, including Sidney Janis, and opportunities in Europe. These are all examples of the long road these artists took in developing their careers. The paintings in the gallery reflect both Martin’s collection and the various paths the artists took, from maintaining a letter-based art to moving into abstraction and figuration. The exhibition ends in the early 1990s just as the “train writing era” ends, but we all know that that was just the end of the beginning of the story…..
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
