This work is a rare example of street artists tagging Plexiglas instead of a wall or train car. You can hover over the red spots above to see the name of each artist who participated. Fab Five Freddy (Fred Brathwaite) invited who he considered to be some of the best graffiti artists as well as Haring and Basquiat to tag the tiles in white marker. He envisioned hanging all of the Plexiglas tiles on a white wall so that the distinction between the lines and the wall would be faint, a radical departure from the robust color and graphic punch of graffiti on the street. In many ways, this white on white optical consideration nodded to the Monochromatic abstraction of Kazimir Malevich and Ad Reinhardt as well as to the central tenets of Minimalism, drawing attention to the art as an object in relationship to its site of exhibition. While these works were never exhibited together as intended, the grouping perfectly encapsulates the free flow of ideas between Downtown and Uptown artists.

Fab Five Freddy is a seminal cultural figure, not only for his artistic accomplishments, but for his ability to bring together the Uptown Manhattan and Bronx graffiti and Hip Hop scene with the Downtown world of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others. The interactions of these collectives in Downtown venues such as Club 57, Fun Gallery, Mudd Club, etc. had countless effects on the artworld and popular culture at large throughout the 1980s and beyond.

Haring and Basquiat had immense respect for Fab Five Freddy and other graffiti writers and street artists such as Lee Quinones, Haze, Futura, Rammellzee, Zephyr, LAII and others. Their immediate calligraphic style had a very clear impact on Haring’s own linework. Furthermore, while Haring’s drawings on the walls of subway stations with chalk were playfully illicit, he honored that these Uptown artists were putting themselves in much greater danger by sneaking into train parks late at night, braving arrest and the dreaded third-rail, to tag trains which would carry their monikers throughout all boroughs of the city. Beyond the tagging of trains, many of these artists also created intricate murals on city walls. Out of respect, Haring famously asked Lee Quinones if he could paint a mural on the derelict wall at Bowery and Houston, understanding that a code existed among this band of talented artists who made the city their canvas. This would become the famed Bowery wall, which remains a major site for public exhibitions today.