Revisiting City as Canvas at the Museum of the City of New York

We took a trip recently to the Museum of the City of New York and we want to share some of our pictures with you. We are happy to all those that contributed to the exhibit and if you have not gone yet, this is a must see. We posted here some of our favorites from some of the greatest of all time.

To start we have Zephyr who started writing (doing graffiti) in 1977. He was one of the first writers to push for graffiti to be put in galleries. Seen below is one of his original canvas works with his traditional lettering style.

Zephyr Canvas

Next up we have the great Lee Quinones. Pictured below is one of our favorite quotes “Graffiti is a art, and if art is a crime, let god forgive us all.” Quinones’s character were instrumental innovations in the graffiti world which started as a traditionally text based art form. In the 80’s, Lee did a great piece of an Elephant on the Lower East Side. A small piece of it can still be seen on our classics tour.

Lee Quinones piece from the City as Canvas Exhibit

Early in the 80’s writers started painting the entirety of trains known as burners. When the burners covered the whole train car they were called whole cars. This Dondi White whole car is a classic picture and reminds us of the good all days when trains were traveling canvases.

Below is a classic New York City Subway Car. If you look closely you can make out the War tag in white in the middle of the train.

The ideas for the whole cars were worked out long before in writer’s black books. Writers would sketch and test out different styles until they came up with something they were happy with. Below is a Crusader piece all fleshed out ready to be implemented onto the MTA.