The Fondation Cartier, the contemporary art museum renowned for its impressive building designed by Jean Nouvel, has undergone a make-under to look a bit more like a subway. “Born in the Street Graffiti” (currently on view through November 29, 2009) will bring light to the extraordinary expansion of an artistic movement that developed in the streets of New York in the early seventies and later became worldwide phenomenon. We got a chance to speak to Hervé Chandès, the Chief Curator and General Director of the Fondation Cartier about the exhibition.
WHITEWALL: This exhibition traces the historical and artistic development of the urban art movement, graffiti. How has graffiti evolved over the years? What is different about graffiti artists of the seventies and eighties as compared to graffiti artists of today?
Hervé Chandès: Graffiti writing was first developed in New York City during the seventies. The major difference with today’s worldwide phenomenon is, what we call, the innocence of the beginnings. The first generation of New York writers launched this new form of aesthetics without knowing it would become this huge culture. The first development of the movement were strongly related with the city of New York and its major crisis. However, graffiti writing has encouraged many artists throughout the world to create in the urban landscapes. Today, this phenomenon has led to a large art movement called street art; the styles and techniques have developed in various directions, from stencils to posters and stickers.
WHITEWALL: Street art in its purest form is found on the street and on public property. In recent years, many street artists have moved to the studio. In your opinion, how does art remain tied to the street and graffiti movement if it’s no longer being made out in the open?
HC: It all depends on the kind of proposal you make to the artists that you invite to work with. We had the idea that the most significant characteristic of these artists is their relationship with the environment and the large format of their creations in the urban context. So we decided to invite the artists to work directly on-site in relation to each other and to the building towards the creation of large-scale installations.
WHITEWALL: How was the Cartier Foundation transformed in order to house this exhibition to best display street and graffiti art?
HC: The Cartier Foundation was not transformed in order to house this project; on the contrary, our idea was to keep the exhibition spaces as they were set up for the previous exhibition and to ask the artists to work directly on the walls and the facades. They were invited to create ephemeral site-specific installations that will be removed at the end of the exhibition.
WHITEWALL: How did you choose the artists for this show?
HC: With our selection of artists, we intended to represent the actual diversity of graffiti writing worldwide: a diversity that is as aesthetic as geographical. For example, Graffiti writing and mural expression is very different in São Paulo (Brazil) than in Amsterdam (Netherlands). In each area of the world, the movement developed new specificities in terms of styles and techniques. So we invited artists from North America, South America and Europe to highlight this profusion.
WHITEWALL: Where are the graffiti capitals of the world, today?
HC: The urban art movement of graffiti writing first took place in New York City at the turn of the sixties and seventies, which was the beginning of a major urban crisis that led to New York’s financial bankruptcy in 1974. The styles and techniques of graffiti writing developed in New York throughout the whole decade of the seventies. At the beginning of the eighties, the movement began to travel to Europe and later to South America and Asia in the nineties. Today, graffiti has become a worldwide phenomenon. It is particularly dynamic in some of the major cities of the world, such as São Paulo, Santiago (Chile), Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Los Angeles.
