One graffiti artist turned a train tunnel into his gallery

In the '70s, graffiti moved to subway cars

Unlike static walls, the silver cars moved throughout the city, like a canvas in perpetual motion. That made them highly desired by graffiti artists, especially because tagging them was considerably more difficult and, in turn, more impressive than a simple tag in an alley.

Keith Haring was inspired by graffiti's accessibility

The visual artist—known for his vibrant pop art—loved how graffiti was a democratic form, available to everyday people who wouldn't otherwise visit museums or galleries. He began drawing chalk murals in New York subway stations, remarking that it was an ideal venue because it attracted a diverse audience.

One Martin Wong painting contains a secret homage to graffiti culture

After the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired painter Martin Wong's "Houston Street," they discovered there was another work on the back of the canvas that featured contributions from some of the luminaries of the 1980s New York graffiti scene.

In 1974, Norman Mailer touted graffiti as an intellectual art form

The Pulitzer Prize winner explored the style in his 1974 Esquire essay, "The Faith of Graffiti," before expanding on it in a book with 81 photos by Jon Naar. In it, he traces the form back to its ancient roots and compares graffiti writers to Renaissance painters.

Banksy turned graffiti into high art

The anonymous artist is renowned for his puckish, often stenciled street art. He's also known for the eye-popping sales those works command once they're up for auction. This podcast dives into the history of the singular artist, exploring how a British graffiti artist became a cultural icon.

Graffiti became an integral part of hip-hop culture

The visual art form began taking off in New York alongside the music of hip-hop. Both were postmodern forms of art that repurposed preexisting materials. For graffiti, that was by using the city as canvas. For rap, that was through sampling. This retrospective not only shows how the two forms intersected, but also how the public perception of both changed over time.

Read the New York Times profile of TAKI 183

The 1971 article about the young graffiti artist and his many acolytes exposed the burgeoning subculture to a large audience and also detailed the effort to clean the work from the city's walls. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

View photos of classic New York graffiti

Henry Chalfant was one of the foremost documentarians of early graffiti and hip-hop culture, photographing some of the era's most iconic pieces and playing a part in the genre-defining "Style Wars" film. This interview with him is accompanied by some of his photos from an exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, showcasing the art form as it came into its own.

The documentary 'Style Wars' captured graffiti at its height

The film explored the tension between graffiti's innovation and its illegality, following some of its most popular artists, such as Mare 139 and Futura, as well as its detractors, including Mayor Ed Koch. The documentary first appeared on PBS in 1983, introducing the movement to a national audience. You can watch it in its entirety below.

A graffiti artist breaks down the fundamentals of the form

Graffiti is more than just tagging a name. Legendary street artist Carlos Mare, also known as Mare 139, breaks down how to paint several of the form's popular styles and motifs, from quickly drawn throwies to intricately planned masterpieces.

The theory behind public art

Proponents of public art, including graffiti, argue that its free access and visibility breaks down the elitism and financial barriers of galleries and museums, allowing people to interact or ignore the work as they see fit.

Basquiat helped move graffiti from the streets to the galleries

He took graffiti's aesthetics—cryptic slogans, bold colors, and repurposed iconography—and placed them on his canvases, helping to create what some called "post graffiti." These short documentaries, produced in 1982 and 1983, capture the nascent movement as it emerged in the mainstream art world.

As graffiti grew more popular, New York worked to stop it

In 1972, the NYPD made over 1,500 graffiti-related arrests. By 1973, the city was annually spending $10M to remove and limit graffiti. That same year, a poll conducted by an anti-graffiti task force found that the "vast majority" of residents did not consider graffiti to be art.

After the death of jazz legend Charlie Parker, Beat Generation poet and artist Ted Joans adorned New York's walls with some of its earliest graffiti that read 'Bird lives!'

Graffiti has its own visual language, including simple 'tags,' large block letters, and complex 'pieces.'

Philadelphia's Cornbread claims to be the first modern graffiti artist

Darryl McCray began writing his nickname, "Cornbread," across his hometown of Philadelphia in the 1960s. That style was a way of posting a personalized signature across neighborhoods and would become known as "tagging." In time, that style spread to New York, where it took off among other young people.

New York mayor Ed Koch railed against graffiti in the '70s and '80s

Koch was outspoken in his hatred of the form and, during his three terms, launched an anti-graffiti campaign with the help of several New York celebrities. This 1984 BBC report documents some of the scorn graffiti artists had attracted, including from Grace Glueck, the New York Times' art critic, who said, "I don't consider it an art form on canvas at all."

Cities and parks often work to prevent graffiti

Although some call it art, many see it as an eyesore and try to prevent it through prohibitive designs, lighting, and vandal-proofed coatings that make spray paint easier to remove. This guide from the Project for Public Spaces outlines some of those strategies and more.

Listen to a jazz composition triggered by the New York City Subway

A creative coder created a (synthetic) jazz ensemble that uses the locations of the city's trains to determine its performance. It's both a fascinating bit of internet culture and a fitting homage to New York, one of jazz's major hubs.

TAKI 183 was a teenager whose graffiti drew widespread attention

Inspired by graffiti he saw throughout the city—including some tags he saw as early as 1964—the 16-year-old began tagging surfaces with "TAKI 183," a reference to a Greek nickname for Demetrius and his street (183rd) in Washington Heights. After a 1971 New York Times profile, his tag—and graffiti culture in New York—exploded.

In 2018, a graffiti artist sued HBO for including their work in one of the network's shows

An episode of the HBO show "Vinyl" featured a scene with a woman walking down a New York street and passing by a dumpster tagged by graffiti artist Itoffee Gayle. Gayle filed suit against the network, despite not owning the dumpster, claiming that the network had violated his copyright and trademark rights by including his work in the show without his permission. The court sided with HBO, saying that Gayle's claims "bordered on frivolous."

New York named a street after Basquiat in 2025

The influential pop artist made his name (and developed his unique graffiti-inflected style) in the city's East Village. In 2025, the city added his name to one of the neighborhood's streets in his honor. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Why are subway walls tiled?

In the early days of subway tunnels, architects needed to deal with dirt and moisture and make the cavernous stations less dank and dark. Ceramic tiles were easy to clean, and their glossy, bright finish helped illuminate the cave-like areas.

Graffiti exists in a legal gray area

"Street art" has become a major seller in the art world, yet many states still consider graffiti to be illegal vandalism. Copyright law complicates the situation further, offering protections for "original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression," even if they've been created illegally.

Graffiti's lexicon includes slang for methods and aspirations

Quickly covering an area with graffiti, often fast tags and throwies, is called "bombing," a word that's intended to evoke images of an aerial raid. "Heaven" is a double entendre: It's a very high spot, both desirable and potentially fatal.

Before using his own name, Jean-Michel Basquiat tagged his graffiti as SAMO

In the late '70s, Basquiat, alongside Al Diaz, began tagging downtown New York with the name "SAMO©," usually followed by a phrase criticizing the art establishment. The tag became notorious in the New York art scene, and Basquiat eventually revealed he was behind it.

A collection of ancient graffiti from Pompeii, Herculaneum

From cavemen to marker-wielding children, humans have always wanted to leave their mark. Read some of the graffiti left by ancient Romans here. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum feature exquisite levels of preservation due to the nature of their demise. Viewers can see the surviving graffiti by clicking through the site's featured collections, which include topics such as poetry and love.

Archaeologists discovered over 11,000 examples of graffiti in ancient Pompeii

Residents drew various figures and announcements on homes, temples, and walls, much of it preserved by volcanic ash. While some were clearly intended to be artistic, scholars have noted that the ancient graffiti has more in common with social media than with the tags and murals we associate today with the art form.

NYC's first subway was built largely in secret

In 1870, Alfred Ely Beach secretly tunneled under Broadway in 58 nights, disguising his pneumatic subway as a mail tube to fool Tammany Hall, the corrupt political machine that ran New York City. Nearly half a million New Yorkers rode it before politics, and a stock market crash killed the project.

View Jean-Michel Basquiat's artwork

The iconic artist had a short career, but he produced a massive body of work and changed the style of American art by bringing together pop art, graffiti, hip-hop, and punk. His work still hangs in galleries across the world. View scans of the most famous ones here.

A reading of ancient Rome's best graffiti

Graffiti has been surprisingly common throughout history, and even the grandeur of ancient Rome's walls wasn't spared. This clever and funny video reads through some of the more notable messages relayed via graffiti in ancient Rome, from tidbits of wisdom like "A small problem gets larger if you ignore it" to more unsavory observations of lovers, friends, and enemies.

The spiralling structure of the Guggenheim Museum in New York is itself a work of art

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Manhattan's Upper East Side. The contemporary art museum, known for its unique spiral structure, was Frank Lloyd Wright’s final work.

Trove of posthumous paintings reveals Basquiat's technical skill and process

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art exhibited 50 paintings by the artist in 2026 that had not been shown before. Focused primarily on heads and anatomy, the artworks are touched with signs of his process: smudges, footprints, splashes. The exhibit is annotated with comments from contemporary artists on Basquiat's visionary skill, with some describing him as one of the world's greatest. View a sampling and read more about them here.

A group claims a man is trapped inside Chicago's 'Cloud Gate'

Although they appear to be performance artists, the group claims they're earnestly protesting the captivity of a man inside the iconic public art piece designed by Anish Kapoor. City officials say there is no man inside the object.

The archaeological sites uncovered through London's Crossrail Project

The Crossrail Project is an underground train system in London, which saw 26 miles of new tunnels created over more than a decade. The project provided unique access to long-buried layers of London's history, and a massive parallel archaeological excavation took place.

'Graffiti' comes from the Italian for 'a scribbling'

The word was first used in 1851 to describe the ancient inscriptions on Pompeii's walls. "Graffiti" is the plural form of "graffito," which means "a scribbling."

The architectural evolution of New York City's Chinatown

Cityscapes continuously evolve, and each stage in their transformation tells a unique story. In Manhattan's Chinatown from the 1940s to today, the architecture has bloomed from an ethnic conclave for often mistreated migrants to a vibrant cultural hub today. See varying elevations and facades over time.

How legendary artists overcame creative block

For most artists, creative block—the unfortunate experience when new ideas suddenly disappear—is inevitable. This Artsy article looks at six artists (including Picasso, Monet, and O’Keeffe) who dealt with creative block and overcame it by experimenting with new media, moving to a new place, or by sheer willpower. It also highlights one artist, Chuck Close, who claims that he never dealt with creative block because he simply viewed his artistic practice as any other job.

Explore a database of ancient graffiti

Take a look at thousands of pieces of graffiti from the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii, including name tags, crude jokes, and crude drawings. The database, maintained by classical scholars, allows you to explore maps of the cities and images of the original inscriptions.

Banksy once sold his highly valued artwork on the street for $60

The notorious (and anonymous) street artist has a history of sending up the art world's pretensions. In 2013, he sold his artwork, valued at approximately $20K per piece, for $60 on a New York street. Some unassuming, but apparently aesthetically discerning, patrons took home world-renowned work that day at a steep discount.

The southbound Underground Railroad: finding freedom in Mexico

Until recently, the southbound Underground Railroad, as some scholars call it, has been largely overlooked, mainly because it left so few traces in surviving records. Read this article to learn more about this dangerous path and its travelers.

A gallery of New York cats alongside their feline reflections

Comedian Jim Tews began capturing photos of cats from the Big Apple in 2014 as a joke mimicking the highly popular site "Humans of New York," which captured random New Yorkers accompanied by their quotes. The site grew in popularity and Tews...

Aaron Douglas' art defined the visual aesthetic of the Harlem Renaissance

Douglas learned about Harlem's cultural scene while teaching high school in Kansas City and was eventually recruited to New York by Charles S. Johnson, the editor of the National Urban League's periodical. Soon, Douglas was illustrating periodicals and books affiliated with the movement. In 1934, the Works Progress Administration commissioned him to paint the "Aspects of Negro Life" murals. One of those murals, "Song of the Towers," pictured below, portrays Black life during the Harlem Renaissance.

'Behind the Gare St. Lazare' (1932) famously froze a moment of spontaneity

Henri Cartier-Bresson's photo of a man jumping over a puddle inspired generations of future street photographers. Cartier-Bresson was known for capturing "decisive moments," as he called them.

How the underground maze below the Gaza Strip works

Hamas militants have constructed a web underneath the Gaza Strip filled with tunnels, residential areas, bunkers, and more. This article and illustrations explore the underground maze as detailed in photo and video evidence and witness accounts.

The Six Gallery, and San Francisco at large, helped the Beats grow

The Six Gallery was located in the “Harlem of the West,” where jazz musicians, filmmakers, painters and poets experimented with no regard for commercial success. “If Ginsberg had broken new ground,” historian Rebecca Solnit writes, “the Six had made it possible to go public with it.”

Basquiat's crown motif acts as an artistic signature

While tagging graffiti across New York, Basquiat began to appreciate the power of repetition and branding, especially while establishing mystique through his “SAMO” tag. Some art critics argue that his crown motif serves a similar purpose, enabling viewers to recognize his work immediately.

Toronto's downtown has 18 miles of underground pedestrian tunnels

Known as the "Path," these tunnels have helped reduce pedestrian traffic on Toronto's busy downtown streets for over a century. They were first built by local business owners, prompting a network effect of add-on tunnels.

The hidden hallway behind Mount Rushmore and why it’s unfinished

Mount Rushmore was designed to be more than a massive monument to US presidents, and its ambitious plans were part of the reason why. This fascinating video explores its backstory, creation, and the hidden tunnel behind President Lincoln's head.

Gary Panter's punk art defined the '70s and '80s counterculture

The artist got his start providing fliers and logos for early Los Angeles punk bands, but later took his psychedelic, Pop Art-vision to designing on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse," for which he won three Emmy Awards.