Subject: Graffiti, Heiko Sender: jya@pipeline.com (John Young) The Washington Post, September 4, 1996, p. A3. The Pilgrimage of Paint: New York Draws Foreign Graffiti Artists By Gary Younge New York -- For Mathias Kohler, a graffiti artist from Germany, a summer trip to New York ranks somewhere between a pilgrimage and a working holiday. It gives him an opportunity to have a photo taken that will show the folks back home that he has been there, done that and legally left his "tag" on a wall in the city "where it all started." "We have a lot of graffiti art all over Germany, but New York is the roots of it all. So Germans want to come here to see it and, if they can, to try it out," Kohler, 28, said during his "working" holiday in New York. The Germans are not alone. In the past few years graffiti artists from Italy, Australia, Japan and Scandinavia have been coming to New York, which is widely acknowledged as the Mecca of graffiti art, to view what local maestros can do with a can of paint and creative flair and to make their own contribution. Some, like Kohler, do it legally in areas where they have been granted permission to paint. Others do it illegally, under cover of darkness in subway depots and on other public and private property. They establish contacts with their American counterparts through a myriad of underground magazines distributed in record shops in Europe, Australia and Japan as well as on the Internet. They arrive in their very own international uniform: excessively baggy pants, sneakers, and T-shirts and caps with some kind of graffiti-related motif, like a can of spray paint or a painted wall. If they are old enough, they often have small goatee beards. If it is cold enough, they will wear black or gray quilted jackets. The Germans even bring their own spray paints, which are said be far smoother, to create with than their American equivalents. Those without American contacts go to meeting places that local graffiti artists say are well-known in their tight-knit circle, such as Soho Down and Under, a shop in Chinatown that sells graffiti magazines from all over the world, videos and fashion accessories, or the Phun Factory, in Long Island City, a graffiti support center that is trying to find more legal spaces for graffiti murals. For many graffiti artists -- as for law enforcement officials -- the distinction is important. Legal graffiti is done with the permission of whoever owns the wall or surface -- almost always privately owned commercial or residential property. Illegal graffiti -- most of what appears in New York -- is anything that is done without permission and is a crime. "Illegal graffiti is vandalism. Sometimes it's beautiful vandalism but it's still vandalism," said Pat DeLillo, who runs the Phun Factory. DeLillo said New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been particularly tough on graffiti artists, who can expect steep fines from the courts, community service orders and restitution if caught. Those involved in graffiti art are also eager to distinguish between the graffiti that has been defacing walls and subways for generations -- be it political slogans or idle scrawls -- and graffiti art, which came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s along with rap music and the other elements of "hip hop culture." Graffiti art -- defined in part by the use of spray-can paint -- may include anything from elaborate lettering to intricate scenery and cartoon-like figures. Recently, the medium has specifically been used to protest urban violence and commemorate those who have died as a result of it. Mark Awfe, who runs Soho Down and Under, said there has been a marked increase in the number of foreigners coming to his small shop over the past few years. Graffiti tourists tend to shun the traditional sights, like the Empire State Building or Broadway, preferring instead to go from painted wall to painted wall, usually near subway stations or parking areas, where they are usually illegal. Others congregate at train depots in the middle of the night to illegally spray subway trains that police anti-graffiti patrols will rub off within in a day or so. "They usually just want to hook up with some people on the New York scene," said John Edwards, editor of the New York-based graffiti magazine Flashbacks. "Maybe paint a subway train, get their picture taken next to their work and then get out before they get caught. Just so they can say they've done it." Some don't get out fast enough. In July, four graffiti "writers" from Berlin were arrested in the Bronx while allegedly trying to paint a subway tunnel during the early morning. Sgt. Robert Galvin, who heads an anti-graffiti unit of the New York Police Department, said at least 11 Europeans have been arrested in New York in the past 18 months -- from Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. With the growing number of illegal graffiti artists parading their artistic prowess on the international scene has come greater collaboration between national police forces. "It's been an ongoing situation for the past four or five years, but we have developed a good working relationship with authorities abroad so we try to find out who is coming over, and when, then see if we can catch them," said New York Police Detective Tom Dasarro. Berlin once played host to the most famous graffiti canvas in the world -- the wall that divided the communist east of the city from its capitalist west was covered with slogans and designs. The wall is gone now, and since 1994 an ant-graffiti police task force has operated in Berlin, with police in Cologne and Hamburg recently following suit. But none has anything on the size or scale of the NYPD, which began its anti-graffiti campaign in earnest during the early 1980s when both the inside and outside of the subway trains were often completely obliterated with graffiti. The speed and severity with which the New York authorities deal with illegal graffiti and its perpetrators has forced many American artists to go abroad to paint illegally. "If you do a train here, it's rubbed off within a day, and if you get caught you're in real trouble," said Edwards, who has painted both legally and illegally in several places in both Germany and Switzerland. "But in Germany you can do a few trains and then see them run for a couple of days or even a week." Alfredo Carlo, a graffiti artist from Rome who was in New York last month visiting friends, said he hopes to do some pictures before he returns to Italy but would not say whether they would be legal or illegal. In perusing the city's graffiti, he said he noticed that American wall paintings look and feel very different than the Italian variety -- probably because police here are so much more aggressive in fighting graffiti. "The American style is much more about letters and only a few colors, while in Italy it is far more detailed," he said. "I suppose we can take more time in Rome because we don't have a 24-hour unit of police against us." DeLillo, at the Phun Factory, said it is not only the style of graffiti that is different but the whole graffiti ethos. "The European kids are nicer than the American writers," he said. "The Americans are kind of arrogant and they like their labels -- their Nike Air Jordans. But the Germans will turn up in holey sneakers and do stuff that's just as good." Much of the stigma has been removed from graffiti art in Europe. For a handful on the continent, the medium has developed from an underground, criminal activity to a lucrative and respectable career. Municipal authorities and commercial businesses often fund graffiti projects in the hope of preventing vandalism. Kohler, who first came to New York in 1987 makes a living painting legal murals, designs for comic books and the occasional tattoo. He even did a design for the mayor of Munich's bathroom, he said. [Photo] Graffiti artist John Edwards shows his work in New York City. Foreigners "usually just want to hook up with some people on the New York scene," he says. [End] To see b/w photo: http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/graffiti.jpg