R.I.P: Memorial Wall Art

by Joseph Sciorra, Martha Cooper

Once, the spraycan kings of New York's subways astounded the world with their exuberant graffiti images. Now a new generation of artists has hit the streets and is decorating neighbourhood walls with memorials to the tragic and untimely deaths of friends and loved ones. R.I.P. - assembling the very best of a vibrant street art wave - contains colour photographs of memorials from Harlem and the Lower East Side, the South Bronx and Brooklyn, as well as the moving stories behind them. The victims of shootings, accidents, arguments, police killings and drug-related turf wars may be gone, but thanks to these paintings they are not forgotten: for a violent and indifferent city has also spawned a rich urban art form.

Genres: Art

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memorial wall art from Harlem, the Lower East Side, the South Bronx and Brooklyn. Tragic reminder of the violence many (mostly young) people face in the inner city. Back stories are provided...makes you wonder if we will ever learn that violence only breeds violence. A lesson I hope we all learn one day.

[Loren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book beautifully reproduces the full-color murals that commemorated the dead of East Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx in the 1990s. The murals probably sprang out of the tradition of roadside crosses and spontaneous shrines built at the sites of accidents in Catholic countries.

Originally created by graffiti artists to remember their friends, memorial murals became a lucrative business. Some of the artists grew out of the graffiti underground; others had degrees. I wish more attention had been given to the painters. In several cases, “rival dealers” have defaced the murals. It would seem to me that the artists take their lives in their hands to commemorate victims of drug or gang violence at the scene of the crime. This isn’t recognized in the text.

Mural imagery runs a wide spectrum. My favorite is a collection of similar gravestones, each inscribed with a nickname: Scarface Gee, Lil Jakwan. I like the can of spray paint rising on wings and the devotional candle burning atop a bottle of Bacardi Breezer. A series of scary paintings show baby-faced figures toting automatic weapons. Among the traditional religious imagery is a bulked out Christ bench-pressing a plain wooden cross. Another mural depicts a pink-faced god in dark glasses and gold rope casting lightning bolts from his hands. In contrast, a memorial to members of the Ching-a-ling Nomads sports headstones licked by the flames of Hell.

The major disappointment of this book is the number of photos that sink into the gutter as they cross pages. In some cases, memorial poetry becomes unreadable because of the fold. Whoever designed this book is an idiot.

One of the best things is the amount of effort the author put into tracking down families and friends responsible for funding the murals. The slightest information, sometimes little more than the cause of death, humanizes people who would otherwise only be names on walls. The dead were victims of AIDS, asthma, blood clots, runaway cars, firework accidents, and falling masonry, in addition to gunshots, drive-bys, and knife fights. Several women were killed by their boyfriends. By putting the murals in this context, they speak to an audience larger than their neighbors.


This review originally appeared in Morbid Curiosity #2.

[Kyrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting look at what I considered to be "good graffiti". I like the spray painted murals that look like someone or something, as opposed to random words or gang signs.
The accompanying text was really sad - everyone died so young.
I confess, I also liked the glimpses of life going on around the murals - the people, the businesses, and I couldn't get over how much garbage was all around.
I really have no clue what it's like in the inner city.

[Robert Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting survey of mostly vernacular memorial wall painting in New York City during the early 1990s. I was particularly impressed by the authors' explorations of the roots and iconography of the artworks considered, and their emphasis on the chronic social problems that created the necessity for all these memorials in the first place. I did find myself wanting the discussions to broaden out beyond the limited geographical context of one city though, and think this would have made a strong basis for a much longer book.

[Joana Diniz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The description of the images and their texts are very good contextualized.