By:  Benyamin Davidsons

It all started in the late 1970s, when Keith Haring made the wall on the corner of Houston and Bowery famous by painting an original mural as a gift to the community.

Since then, the iconic wall has been regarded internationally as a fresh-air gallery. The Bowery wall, as it has become known, has displayed work from some of street art’s most famous names, including JR, Banksy and Shepard Fairey.  The expansive outdoor wall, owned by the Goldman family, has become a showcase of creative, contemporary murals that change regularly.  Of late, however, the wall has changed, seemingly taken over in graffiti wars, concerned only with self-aggrandizement. As per the NY Post, since the spring of 2022, the famed wall has been taken over by numerous lesser-known painters tagging it, and writing over other works.

“It was like the streets had taken over,” recalled Olivia Flores, whose husband David Flores’ flowery, red mural of a motorcycle was the wall’s last formally commissioned piece, made in October 2021.  “It was a huge explosion,” David told The Post, remembering how the tags had slowly piled up and then suddenly totally covered his art mural.   In the beginning, David, an LA-based artist, had said he felt the unsanctioned additions to his work were “awesome, art talking to each other, a 21-gun salute,” and a normal part of creating a public mural, but after a while he realized “the graffiti got out of hand.”

The wall’s steward, Goldman Properties CEO Jessica Goldman Srebnick, also realized the graffiti was getting out of hand, and as a result of the recent ceaseless flood of sprayed names, has stopped commissioning to curate the wall.   “For decades our family has embraced, supported and celebrated the extraordinary art form of Street Art. We have considered it a privilege to own and curate one of the most important public art walls in the United States and a wall considered by artists to represent the pinnacle of talent,” she wrote in a May 2022 Instagram post showing Flores’ defaced mural. “But over the last few months the tagging has become worse than ever. Until this weekend, when in my opinion it totally crossed the line … It is beyond disappointing. It is a violation of something SACRED.”  In the posting, she promised to eventually resume curation but gave no definitive date, writing only “We will be back.”

The Bowery wall is indicative of a graffiti revival, following a period during which graffiti seemed to have disappeared in many areas of the city’s landscape.  It’s certainly made a comeback, but the motives are different now.  Per the NY Post, numerous artists believe that today’s bombers are mainly looking for social media notoriety.

“I think the younger generation of graffiti writers give more props to each other for going over murals — it’s a shortcut for getting fame. Definitely instagram has a lot to do with that,” said Chelsea native and longtime graffiti writer OPTIMONYC, explaining that the internet has profoundly shifted today’s graffiti culture in NY. “Graffiti no longer respects murals like it used to. I think that happened within the past 10 years.”

Graffiti documentarian Billy Schon agreed that younger artists seem to be fixed on getting their own name out, and neglect showing respect due to existing artists.