Style Wars: The Original Hip Hop Documentary by Tony Silver

This past weekend, while babysitting and inevitably surfing Netflix, I found an intriguing documentary called Style Wars. Made in the early 80's, it focuses on the story of an emerging art form in the subways of New York called "bombing" (what we today call "graffiti"). Bored teenagers, calling themselves writers, wrote their names in graphic designs on the sides of subway trains, ensuring that everyone in the city would know what they called themselves. It was a sort of backlash against commercial advertising and an experiment on how far they could spread a name or an idea; how many places they could get their name on the walls.

Writers identified with a bigger cultural movement occurring in the city at the same time call HIP-HOP. Break dancers creating new and interesting moves on flattened cardboard-box-stages danced to rap and hip hop music, which had a simple recipe of strong beats and rhythmic spoken word.

Graffiti is the written word. 
There is the spoken word of rap music... 
and then there's the acrobatic body language of dances like ''breaking.'' 

The movie portrayed the young artists as a misunderstood group, who kept themselves out of trouble in their own way. A 17-year-old writer's mother is interviewed saying that she is disappointed in him and that what he is doing is pointless.

But his contention is that he's immortal, I guess, like most 17 year olds are immortal, right? 

The boy replies with something very interestingly poignant:

It's a matter of bombing, knowing that I can do it. Every time I get into a train, almost every day I see my name. I say, ''Yeah, you know it. I was there, I bombed it.'' It's for me. It's not for nobody else to see. l don't care-- l don't care about nobody else seeing it, or the fact if they can read it or not. It's for me and other graffiti writers, that we can read it. It's for us.

Another antagonist to these writers is the Mayor of New York at the time, Ed Koch. He is disgusted by the graffiti and takes ridiculous measures to keep the teenagers out of the train stations and the train yards. The absurd reasoning that the antagonists use in this film is both entertaining and thought-provoking. He says:

lf the kids have energy and want to do something, we'll give them all brooms, we'll give them all sponges, and they can do something that is publicly productive, useful and that would earn for them the respect and approbation of their fellow citizens. It isn't the energy that is misplaced, it's the value system that is misplaced. 

All in all, this movie was very inspiring and fun to watch. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an enjoyable and thoughtful way to spend their Saturday night.

Beautiful Losers by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard

Beautiful Losers is a documentary about a group of artists, based in the San Francisco Bay Area and formally called the Mission School Art Movement, who started from modest backgrounds and ended up changing the art world in a very big way in the 1990's.

I originally saw this movie about a year ago after my friend suggested it to me. I loved it and found so much inspiration in the artists' attitudes about what it's like to be a present-day, working artist. They are so refreshingly honest, open, and optimistic. 

I recently took a trip to San Francisco to visit the San Francisco Art Institute, since I am thinking of applying to study art there. The first gallery I walked into on the campus was full of work from these artists' hands. I felt inspired all over again by their stories, and by the overwhelming difference there is between seeing art on a screen (or in a movie) and actually being in its physical presence. This wonderful surprise prompted me to watch Beautiful Losers again this past weekend, and it was just as good as I remembered. Their stories are just as interesting as their artistic ideas, which are plentiful. These are very prolific artists. They all seem to share a do-it-yourself mentality, using whatever they have to express themselves in whatever way they deem necessary. 

One of my favorites of those featured is Margaret Kilgallen. During the process of filming this movie, she became pregnant and, at the same time, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died just after she gave birth to her child, and just before the movie was completed. She left behind a beautiful body of work, and a kind heart that everyone who was around her remembers. 

Her artwork was very graphic and detail oriented. The flatness of her artwork is something different than I have ever seen before in art. There is no shading or contour to her figures. They are simply shapes, filled in with a single color. I think that has something very important to say about feminism, urban life, and about human nature in general. She was very influenced by hand-painted signs and typography. I love that she used so much text, so many of the same symbols (the woman, the tree...) and that she also used unique surfaces to paint on.

"On any day in the Mission in San Francisco, you can see a hand-painted sign that is kind of funky, and maybe that person, if they had money, would prefer to have had a neon sign. But I don't prefer that. I think it's beautiful, what they did and that they did it themselves. That's what I find beautiful." ~Margaret Kilgallen

While she was still alive, she painted many community-oriented murals and signs, saying that she wanted to give back to the community and that art had a way of connecting people. I admire her a lot.

Beautiful Losers remains to be one of my favorite documentaries. I'm sure when I watch it again in the future, I'll continue to be inspired by it.