Getting Up. Subway Graffiti in New York by Craig Castleman (review)

Books 331 intelligently about such issues as inventive page design, alternatives in the paginated presentation of information, and experiments in binding and shrewdly asserts that the current "tendency towards crossfertilization also allows an artist to belong to no explicit discipline while referring to many." Then, without notice, Guest limits his discussion and thus his exhibition to only those books produced by famous artists. This limitation explains his inclusions and omissions. Artists in many fields are making alternative books-books that are different in size and shape and filled with materials other than evenly justified horizontal lines of type punctuated by occasional illustrations. Some of the most artistic books-works which I call "book-art books"-are by Paul Zelevansky, Gerhard Ruhm, Jose Luis Castillejo, David Arnold, Peter Barnett, Emmett Williams, Manfred Mohr, Jean-Francois Bory, Madeline Gins, Raymond Federman, Tom Ockerse, J. Marks, R. Murray Schafer, none of whom are mentioned here. For instance, Dick Higgins, an adventurous book artist, is mentioned only for his collaboration with the well-known Berlin visual artist WolfVostell, not for his own extraordinary books. The book closes with an essay by Germano Celant, a prolific Italian art critic with a penchant for dropping strings of hot names in lieu of explanations or detailed evidence. Celant admits that the subject is not really the book as art, or book-art, but something else-books by prominent visual artists. Thus, in Celant's scheme, Andy Warhol is credited as the first 'artist' to produce his own exhibition catalogue (at the Moderna Musset in 1968). He ignores the already established tradition of lesser-known creative figures producing books about their own work. The exhibition book is another example of talking about an emerging art not in terms of genuine critical categories but in biographical categories. What is important is not what you do, but where you came from or where you went to school. The result, ifnot the purpose, of this approach is nothing less than snobbery. Biographical categories also have the merchandizing advantage of being more attractive to the buying public than are art categories. "New York School" was easier to sell than "Abstract Expressionism". Books by Artists would have more integrity if its title identified its real subject, "Books by Prominent Visual Artists", which is very different from the far more interesting contemporary art of alternative, artistic books. Getting Up. Subway Graffiti in New York. Craig Castleman. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982, 191 pp. illus. $15.00. ISBN: 0-262-03089-6. Reviewed by Clive Ashwin* This is the first substantial study of graffiti, a subject of major cultural significance. Graffiti date back to antiquity, but in the last twenty years *School of Related and Historical Studies, Middlesex Polytechnic, Cat Hill, Barnet, Hertfordshire EN4 8HT, U.K. have acquired an added dimension and social significance. The development of the aerosol spray permits graffiti writers a scale and speed of execution previously undreamt of. The evidence of their handiwork is now so ubiquitous and obtrusive that it has had to be recognized, for good or ill, as the inescapable voice of an identifiable cultural minority. Craig Castleman's book is authoritative in content and lively in tone as it deals with the history and social character of a special area of graffiti writing. It is also scholarly and for the most part impartial, eschewing explicit moral judgements of the graffiti culture or of its opponents-the city council, the police, and their allies in the suppression of graffiti. However, Castleman does not maintain scientific impartiality in two notable respects. First, since the book is about graffiti subculture and not its opponents, the former receives more extensive coverage of its ideals, lifestyle, and values, much in its own peculiarly graphic language. The forces ranged against graffiti writers are marginalized, with the result that they appear as humourless and impotent killjoys, spending ever more public cash to less effect. Second, the language used to describe the graffiti compromises the principle of scientific impartiality. The author quotes graffiti writers' assessments of their own endeavours in terms of relative excellence of "style", "technique", and "form". This, of course, is perfectly legitimate in impartial enquiry. But Castleman sprinkles his own commentary...