Aug 17 2007
Graffiti Fridays: Tag Sale
Today I thought we’d start talking about tags. But first, a few words on form and method. Much of what I’ll say here can be considered praise, or what writers call “jocking.” We’ll save the whole discussion of the graffiti subculture’s laughable hyper-masculinity for another time. The point to make here is that jocking or being a “fan” is considered, well, distasteful. That said, I’m not really part of the culture any more, so I’ll risk it. If you want a look at how the discourse works internally, there’s really no better site than Streets are Saying Things (known as SASTER). Click on any picture with a lot of comments and you’ll enter a world that you probably wouldn’t want to inhabit for too long. (For a particularly noxious example that will also give you the real flavor of it, go to SASTER, do a search for MQ, and click on the yellow fill-in with a white outline).
Second point: my tastes were forged in the classic NYC street and highways days of the late 1980′s through mid-1990′s, so I have a prejudice towards styles and writers from that era. I’ll just own that here. The larger point goes to method, however. I’m not doing a whole lot of work trying to find the best Chicago graffiti, at least not yet. I’m just snapping pics of local stuff that I happen to come across. So when I compare that to some of the – in my opinion – great stuff that you find online (and again, mostly from my era), it’s a bit unfair, like comparing a little league player at a local ballfield to Derek Jeter. But the comparison, however unfair, may still be instructive for those who don’t know baseball, and also, one would hope, for the little leaguer. So, without further ado, I’ll provide some tags that I consider good, explain why I think so, and then show you the local stuff which is, sadly, not so good.
We’ll start with the deceptively “simple,” tags that are very legible, but nevertheless stylistically sophisticated. The first is this DERA tag, below. While seemingly made up of simple block letters, it also includes touches that distinguish it, like the extended stems on the D, E, and A, and the unequal distribution of cross-lines on the E (notice that the middle line on the E is closer to the bottom than the top line, effectively elongating the letter). The letters are more rounded and separated than in some of the tags we’ll see below, and angled slightly to the left. The DERA tag, to my mind, proves that your tags don’t have to be all crazy to be good.
Moving just a bit off the plain style, we have SP’s tag (SP ONE BFB), below. The letters remain rounded and retain a slight left angle (especially the S and B’s). However, their compression is tighter, with more overlap. This is essentially a classic graffiti style, an almost perfect tag. Notice the consistency of the S and the E in their curves and top flourishes, as well as the switch to lower case for the N (which allows for tighter spacing). Notice also the flare for the closing B in the extension of the bottom counter. This allows the BFB to frame the SP ONE above it. As an added touch, SP even placed a period after the P, so that newjack toys wouldn’t go around saying Spown. Nice.
Now we move to a somewhat different style in SPOT, below. SPOT deviates more from the plain style with the circular flourishes in the S and the T (notice their consistency as well). His letters are also taller and more straight-up-and-down. For me, the best feature of this tag is the bottom of the S. Most writers create some sharpness or angularity in the top of their S’s, leaving the bottom more curved. SPOT reverses this classical formulation, leaving the top rounded (and even exaggerating its roundness with an interior loop) while creating a hard angle in the bottom. This is almost counter-intuitive. Where writers do this, they tend to bring the bottom out much further to the right, so that the bottom of the S forms a kind of rectangle along the same line as the letters (some more angular SAINT tags did this, for instance). Here, the angle is at almost 45 degrees to the letters. It’s hard to do. Go ahead, try to imitate that S. SPOT also does a nice job of elongating the counter in the P to give the whole tag a squatter look; the center dot in the O (and that’s old school) aligns perfectly with the P counter, too. Nice touch. Now, look back at the SP ONE tag above and note the clear differences in the “SPO” height, curves, and compression.
Moving further away from squat, rounded tags, we have this OPTICK tag, below. This is also a fairly classic style, much more angular than the tags above (almost sharp in its angles, really), and with a stronger leftward tilt. I wish I had time to find a similar style with a rightward tilt, which I always considered to be a Manhattan style, but I find what I find. The effect of height is produced here by shortening the P counter, and by moving the connection point in the K higher on the stroke line. OPTICK essentially creates a taller x-space. Compare the O in OPTICK and SPOT with the short, rounded O in SP ONE.
And now for one of my all-time favorites. I’d suspect that those of you with no knowledge of graffiti would have a hard time reading the following tag, even though it’s clear as day to me. Moreover, if you could read it, you probably wouldn’t believe that someone would want to go around with all his friends calling him that. Take a gander:
This guy is, for my money, one of the top taggers, period. Just from a standpoint of technique, that’s an extremely clean marker tag with consistent thickness in its lines and a solid stroke throughout. But since you probably can’t read it, I’ve used the magic of Fireworks to separate the letters out for easier identification, here:
What do you see now with the letters separated? Hint: the first letter is a lower case “e.” That’s right, it’s EARSNOT, who for several years during the late 90′s and early 00′s was just killing Manhattan subway stations with these marker tags. He also had his share of paint tags and straight letters, particularly downtown, although those were not my favorites. So, what’s so great about EARSNOT? Highly angular, highly compressed, highly consistent, and with remarkable flourishes. The great innovation of this tag is to just bang out the E as far as possible, x-space be damned. It almost explodes at the opening, and the swirl interrupting the line only adds the this effect. Indeed, EARSNOT seems to have taken the halo that runs fairly standard in tags (you can see the halo over SP ONE and SPOT) and mashed it into the E while making it mobile. The effect adds depth to the surface, as if the swirling halo is on another plane, being dragged in by the gravitational pull of the monstrous E. And EARSNOT closes with another giant letter, the stem of the T shooting off the column, so that you have this really strong opening and closing. What’s in between works as well. Notice the sharp angles capping each letter, and notice that the angle remains more or less consistent for the A, R, S, and N. Notice also that these letters have consistency of height (clearly visible in the separated version) and compression (they overlap at about the same distance throughout). I also want to point out the N as a clear indication of strong style. It’s slight curve coming off the stem is perfectly executed, and ends in a sharp angle. This kind of letter always had a cathedral or gothic architecture type of effect for me, like pointed arch stained-glass. It’s quite beautifully done.
So, that’s the good stuff. Now on the the local stuff that I found. You’ve seen the Jeters. Here are the little leaguers.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of tags, and I hardly ever have trouble reading them, but this one is truly beyond my powers. My best guess is that it says DEVOLVES. The DE..O..ES is clearly visible, but the rest of the letters are a giant mishmash of random strokes and idiocy. The lines are terrible, it lacks all consistency in size, angle, compression, and roundness, and the technique is itself atrocious. A really disgusting effort. Compare this again with EARSNOT, above, who pulls off a wilder styled tag effectively. There is nothing to recommend DEVOLVES(?) at all, really. Somewhat better, but still hardly passable, is JULS, below:
To be fair, I’ve since seen more recent JULS tags that are much better, but it’s useful to know why this one doesn’t work. The letters are completely inconsistent in height and angle. The J is rounded and shortened by its serif, while the U, L, and S are elongated and thin. Moreover, the J is a left leaning letter, while the L is right leaning, and the U and S don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing. The placement, size, weight, angle, and roundness, then, are seemingly random with little effort put toward creating a consistent effect. The flourishes, such as the long stem on the L and the bottom curve of the S, not only don’t work, but actively counter each other, producing discordant angles to no observable effect. But you can also see why JULS got better. He (or she) understands letters, I think, but just didn’t know how to build them together. He solves some of these problems in his later work, which I hope to show, maybe next time.
So, that’s the quick run down on tags, and should give you a sense of how I’ll be discussing them going forward. Yes, I’m an awful formalist who values consistency and a unified aesthetic effect, except where deviation constitutes new subjective effects (as in EARSNOT’s tag, above). We’ll have to live with that.
I’m wondering about two things you didn’t mention. First, on the “Spot” tag, there’s a little circle above the “p” and second, on the “Optick” tag, there’s a little man or something (perhaps the Japanese kanji for “tree”) on top of the “t”. I know you’re focusing on the form of the letters, but what are those?
And in addition to that, I’m also wondering about the cultural context for tags and so yes, the meaning. In the book I’m reading about the cultural history of hip-hop, it discusses how tags and hip-hop emerged simultaneously as individuals in the Bronx began to look for ways to express themselves outside the gang and outside the gang’s turf. So, “tags” basically announced “I was here.” Apparently, Norman Mailer once commented that graffiti writers were composing advertisements for themselves. And in a sense, much of the break-dancing and hip-hop that began to emerge at the same time in the mid-70s was the same thing — like when Abraham says to God, “here I am” (which is perhaps the fundamentally most important sentence in the Bible.)
Several points: 1) I did mention the circle above the “P” in SPOT. It is a halo, and the same appears in the SP ONE tag. I mentioned it in my discussion of the EARSNOT tag, since he pushes the halo into the E, a very innovative move. The halo is a fairly standard add-on for tags, and has been since the late-1970′s. 2) The “little man” above the T in OPTICK is much simpler than your Japanese kanji hypothesis. It is merely the dot for the I. OPTICK is dotting his I here with a star. The way he composes the star is also very common in graffiti. You’ll see the same kind of star in the SP ONE tag (There it’s the dot in the closing question mark).
In terms of context, the development of graffiti is extremely complicated. I don’t think there is anything like a homogeneous motivation, and the drive to tie graffiti to race and class protest is tending to far towards romanticization for my tastes. It is beyond the scope here, in any case. I’d like to avoid grand statements about graffiti, even of the “Here I am” variety. How does the practice operate? What are its internal regularities? Your question seems poised for some manner of social redemption. Remember Rule #1 from Graffiti Friday #1: Social redemption ruined graffiti.