\u201cMostly, I think you can say consumerism and the idea of mass-produced individuality is what Samo\u00a9 was making fun of. Thinking that you\u2019re so unique when you\u2019re just wearing a hip uniform kind of thing,\u201d Al says. Al saw Basquiat elevate to a fine art world while Al remained on a street level, continuing his individual practice of tagging Bomb One across the city (a nickname he had gotten from \u201cblowing up\u201d on someone in a game of tag). \u201cI worked for artists. I was around art from a very young age, but I wasn\u2019t trying to be friends with Andy Warhol. I had no desire for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graffiti in many ways is similar to branding and identity making. The process of tagging is a kind of mark making, in an artistic and territorial sense, and tagging can be a way of creating a persona, an alias, an identity \u2013 one that can hold significant ideas. It\u2019s also important in the way that citizens can sew something into the fabric of a city, to make private property feel more public. \u201cI think it often is a way of claiming some sort of ownership: \u2019This is my area.\u2019 For us New York graffiti artists, it was definitely that,\u201d says Al. \u201cIt\u2019s accessible in terms of adventure, camaraderie \u2013 delinquent, sneaky, risky behaviour. It gives you a sense of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n
10 years after Samo\u00a9\u2019s resurrection from the dead, Al has switched his painting material from hype to legacy, especially in the shadow of Basquiat\u2019s death, which has annoyingly followed Al his entire career. With news of a film titled Samo Lives coming out, which will chronicle the youth of Basquiat and Al (who will be played by Top Gun: Maverick\u2019s Danny Ramirez), hopefully Al will get his long-due flowers, but nevertheless, he is doing it on his own terms. \u201cThis is a new era. It\u2019s a more adult era, it\u2019s more articulated, it\u2019s an older voice,\u201d says Al. \u201cI felt it was my obligation to tell that story. And I can do it with authority, because there\u2019s no other person on planet Earth that can tell you that story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMostly, I think you can say consumerism and the idea of mass-produced individuality is what Samo\u00a9 was making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-628181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}