Words matter. These are the best Barry McGee Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still – it’s not something that a museum would really embrace.
Drawings, paintings, and sculptures. That’s the three pillars of art academia.
I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn’t be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.
As soon as I start reading, drawing comes to me more easily. I find I work in my sketchbooks more. But if I’m working on a new show, my reading completely stops except when I’m on a plane. I take a stack of New Yorkers with me. I feel awful about those stacks of New Yorkers.
I’m really into California art from the ’60s.
I just try to get away with as much as I can. I don’t think that’s very radical in the art world.
Most inspiration still comes from bicycling around San Francisco. This city never fails to inspire me. It is one of the most vibrant cities – especially visually – with a constant influx of young energy arriving daily. I love it.
Work done illegally outdoors or without permission feels like pure freedom to me. I understand how it can upset many in our society, but in the bigger picture, it is ultimately about freedom. We are living in a time where public space has become a commodity for corporations to control and dictate what is seen and heard.
If I could get the respect of 14-year-olds, I’m happy. They’re the toughest audience.
I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It’s the most radical thing.
I see a really good tag on a building, a man passed out in the middle of the street, a couple hugging, a cop arresting a panhandler. I’m interested in how all these things are happening in one block.
My artwork gets stolen all the time; it’s ridiculous.
Galleries are easier to steal from than the Apple Store, maybe.
For me, graffiti means making marks on surfaces using just about anything, be it markers, spray, paint, chalk, lipstick, varnish, ink. Or it can be the result of scratches and incisions. The aim is to maintain the energy created by disturbance or excitement in the street.
It’s very intense to go back to the past and revive work that I’ve already experienced and moved forward from. It’s like seeing an old girlfriend – awkward at times, nostalgic at times and downright maddening and embarrassing.
