Graffiti...

We went to the Oakland Museum yesterday, which has an exhibit on the Birth of the Cool.  It was really interesting seeing the juxtaposition of "cool" from different eras.  The two main eras of cool in my mind were the Jazz Era and the DJ/BBoy/Hip Hop Era.  The interesting thing I think about as I write this is the influence of the Black community on the culture of cool.  Of course during the Jazz Era there was all the greats (Miles, Charlie Parker, Coltrane, etc.) and they also showed art from that time period.  There was also furniture from the 50s with it's modern look.  The funny thing was seeing all the 50s era modern furniture and thinking how similar it looks to everything that is on sale at Ikea.  The next time you step into and Ikea think of where the design ideas for all those cool looking cheap pieces of furniture came from.  In the hip hop section of cool they had huge canvases with graffiti art on them.  It was really cool to see graffiti on display in a museum and embraced by the art community, because that does not happen enough.  However, as one of the artists said, "graffiti will always be cool, because graffiti will always be illegal.".  I couldn't agree more.  I was mesmerized looking at these pieces with all of their vibrant colors and convoluted lettering.  My imagination ran wild as I dreamt up ways to create my own pieces.  There was an artist there demoing products used by graffiti artists to create pieces on canvas and he would write down people's names on canvas for free.  After watching him I knew it would take a while, but I would have to make my own.  Another interesting thing about the art was that after seeing so much graffiti art on the walls when we went through and saw the Jazz Era art I could see influences in the graffiti from the Jazz Era.  I don't know if the influences were conscious or not or maybe it was just me reading into the pieces too much, but there was something else there that i could see.  I guess cool has always been there.