CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/1/2024

A new book on NYC graffiti art legend Lee Quiñones

Featured spreads are from new release Lee Quiñones: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond, published by Damiani and launching this weekend at Artbook @ MoMA PS1. The first major monograph on Quiñones—considered by many to be the single most influential artist to emerge from the NYC subway art movement—this book features 180 color images and essays by a dozen leading lights including Franklin Sirmans, Isolde Brielmaier, Bisa Butler, Futura, Debbie Harry and Barry McGee, to name a few. Sirmans writes, “Dig if you will, a picture of early 1970s New York City when digital images were hard to come by except in Times Square, no one had a personal phone or even a beeper, unless you were a cop or a doctor. Drawing on walls may have originated more than 70,000 years ago and the tradition of muralism as a support for mark making is also long but, in the universe of 1970s New York City there was no greater canvas than the moving subway car, seen by millions every day. This is where Lee Quiñones got his start as a precocious, mercurial kid who loved to paint. As a teen¬ager, Lee was struck by the paintings he saw on this most readily available canvas, that of the public transportation system, where no one had to pay to see paintings, a free museum. After painting a car, the young artist would ride the train to watch and listen to people’s responses, a built-in critical apparatus to glean the public’s opinion. The newspaper critics would come later.…”