Zephyr | |
|---|---|
 Zephyr in 2006 | |
| Born | Andrew Witten |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Graffiti |
| Notable work | Wild Style logo |
ZEPHYR, born Andrew Witten, is a graffiti artist, [1] lecturer and author from New York City. He began writing graffiti in 1975 using the name "Zephyr" in 1977. He is considered a graffiti "elder", who along with Futura 2000, Blade, PHASE 2, CASH, Lady Pink and TAKI 183 invented styles and standards which are still in use. [2]
Much of Zephyr's original work was graffiti applied on New York City Subway rolling stock. Witten has commented on this period of his work:
We felt we understood the trains more than the Transit Authority. Teenagers were running the system. We decided when, where, how much we wrote. Graffiti showed that the Transit Authority was not in control. [3]
From 1977 to 1981, Zephyr was a key member of graffiti crews including The Rebels (TR) and Rolling Thunder Writers (RTW), composed largely of artists affiliated with a scene of teenagers spending time in Central Park. Witten was influenced in part by psychedelic artists and underground cartoonists such as Vaughn Bodē and Victor Moscoso.
Witten was part of the first wave of graffiti artists to make the transition to galleries, collectors and commercial work. In the early 80s, he showed at New York City galleries specializing in graffiti, such as the FUN Gallery and 51X. [4] In 1984, T-shirts bearing an original Zephyr design were exhibited at the Ronald Feldman Gallery as a part of designer Willi Smith’s WilliWear Productions debut of artist designed T-shirts. The T-shirt collaboration merged art, fashion, and the commercial production of artist designed apparel. [5] Witten's art was part of a five-man show including Fab Five Freddy, ERO (Dominique Philbert), [6] Futura 2000 [6] and Dondi White [6] that toured Japan in 1983. [7] In 2005, he was included in the "East Village USA" show held at The New Museum. [8]
His works can be seen in the hip-hop culture documentary Style Wars and he was featured as himself in the landmark hip-hop motion picture Wild Style . He is co-author of a 2001 biography of fellow graffiti artist, Dondi White: Dondi White Style Master General: The Life of Graffiti Artist Dondi White. He is interviewed in the 2005 DIY graffiti video The Art of Storytelling, where he talks about fallen graffiti artist Nace . He was featured in the documentary Bomb It.
His name was inspired by a brand of surfboards and skateboards. [9] Many of his most popular pieces have been done by simply redesigning his trademark name "Zeph" or "Zephyr". Sharp contrast in the edges of the letters are also featured throughout his artwork.
Witten's influence on New York City's self-image is exemplified in Suzanne Vega's 2007 song "Zephyr and I," which uses a conversation between Vega and Witten as a framing device to create what Vega describes as "sort of a little snapshot of what West End Avenue used to be like in the 70s." [10]
Zephyr was one of the artists represented at the L'Aérosol Graffiti Museum in Paris from 2017 to 2018 for the exhibition Maquis-art Hall of Fame.
Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Style Wars is an American 1983 documentary film on hip hop culture, directed by Tony Silver and produced in collaboration with Henry Chalfant. The film has an emphasis on graffiti, although bboying and rapping are covered to a lesser extent. The film was originally aired on the television network PBS and was subsequently shown in several film festivals to much acclaim, including the Vancouver Film Festival. It also won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
Leonard Hilton McGurr, known as Futura, and formerly known as Futura 2000, is an American graffiti artist.
Richard "Richie" Mirando, known as Seen UA is an American graffiti artist. He is one of the best known graffiti artists in the world and has been referred to as the Godfather of Graffiti.
Richard Colón, better known by his stage name Crazy Legs, is an American b-boy who was featured in the earliest stories on hip hop dancing to appear in mainstream press, and as president of the Rock Steady Crew brought the form to London and Paris in 1983. Today he is also involved in community outreach, dance instruction, and dance theater productions. He has appearanced in fiction films and documentaries. Crazy Legs is current president of the Rock Steady Crew.
Wild Style is a 1983 American hip hop film directed and produced by Charlie Ahearn. Regarded as the first hip hop motion picture, it includes appearances by seminal figures such as Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, The Rock Steady Crew, The Cold Crush Brothers, Queen Lisa Lee of Zulu Nation, Grandmaster Flash and ZEPHYR.
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
Robert "Bob" Khaleel, better known by his stage name Bronx Style Bob, is an American rapper from the Bronx, New York City.
Rammellzee was a visual artist, gothic futurist "graffiti writer", painter, performance artist, art theoretician, sculptor and a hip hop musician from New York City, who has been cited as "instrumental in introducing elements of the avant-garde into hip-hop culture".
H.I.P. H.O.P. was France's first television show and first regular nationwide weekly show in the world to be dedicated to the hip hop culture. It was broadcast each Sunday afternoon on the French national channel TF1 in 1984, from January 14, for 43 weeks, which had a certain impact on the beginnings of the French hip hop scene. The host was Sidney, who was already presenting a hip-hop radio program since 1981, along with the Paris City Breakers. They had guests such as Herbie Hancock on February 19, Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa, The Rock Steady Crew, Art of Noise and Madonna, plus graffiti artists such as Futura 2000.
Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist. She worked as a staff photographer for the New York Post during the 1970s. She is best known for documenting the New York City graffiti scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
Donald Joseph White, "DONDI" was an American graffiti artist.
Patti Astor is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instrumental contemporary art gallery, Fun Gallery.
Charlie Ahearn is an American film maker living in New York City. Although predominantly involved in film and video art production, he is also known for his work as an author, freelance writer, member of Colab, and radio host. He is married to the painter Jane Dickson and is the twin brother to the sculptor John Ahearn.
Lance Taylor, also known as Afrika Bambaataa, is an American DJ, rapper, and producer from the South Bronx, New York. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of hip hop culture. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the originators of breakbeat DJing.
Carlos Rodriguez, better known as Mare139, is a New York-based artist born in 1965 in Spanish Harlem, New York City. He was best known as the subway graffiti writer Mare 139, and has since adapted the graffiti lettering styles to metal sculpture in the fine art context, and is recognized as a media artist for his creation of graffiti-art-related websites.
Ricky Powell was an American photographer who documented popular culture including hip hop, punk rock, graffiti, and pop art. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, The Village Voice, TIME, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, among other publications. His photographs included candid portraits of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Madonna, in addition to many other popular culture artists and other common people. His photographs were included in the books The Rap Photography of Ricky Powell! (1998), The Rickford Files: Classic New York Photographs (2000), Frozade Moments: Classic Street Photography of Ricky Powell (2004), and Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs (2005) and were exhibited both domestically and internationally.
Graffiti in New York City has had a substantial local, national, and international influence.
Sophie Bramly is a French photographer, television producer/director, digital pioneer, and author. She’s best known for the hip-hop photos she shot in New York in the early Eighties, the creation of hip-hop television show Yo! MTV Raps she produced and hosted for MTV Europe in the late 80s and early 90s, and the website and online community dedicated to female pleasure she established in Paris in 2008. This career has been described as “protean” in Le Figaro. In 2017 France's Ministry of Culture named Bramly a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
The Fun Gallery was an art gallery founded by Patti Astor and Bill Stelling in 1981. The Fun Gallery had a cultural impact until it closed in 1985. As the first art gallery in Manhattan's East Village, it exposed New York to the talents of street art by showcasing graffiti artists like Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000, Lee Quiñones, Zephyr, Dondi, Lady Pink, and ERO. Contemporary artists Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring also had solo exhibitions at the Fun Gallery.
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