I had another great opportunity to interview a curator at the prestigious Phillips Auction House. Phillips has handle some of the masters of paintings since it’s founding in London in 1796. Now there putting there marked on graffiti and street art. This is there 2nd auction in a little over a year. Phillips 1970s Graffiti Today was held in January 2022 at there new Park Avenue location. See my story on Phillips 1970’s Graffiti Today dated February 7, 2022 in UP Magazine Archive.
In the New York City gallery and online Phillips X presented a second exhibition, that run from March 8 – 24 “Phillips Never Above 14th Street” as a private sale. Curator Scott Nussbaum gave me a walking tour of the gallery and explain the exhibition to me. He even gave me a few inside tips about the auction market and how the exhibition came about.
The private sale presented original works of art mostly from 1980’s but a few from 1990’s by artists Lady Pink, Seen, Crash, Futura 2000, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mike Bidlo, Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong, David McDermott and Peter McGough, Dondi White and Linus Coraggio. I was most impress with the works of Dondi White a legendary subway writer. His architecture like drawings mixed with graffiti lettering show the true worked of a master artist. Linus Coraggio street style of mixed media art with found metal put him in a class of his own. Futura 2000 large scale canvas of early graffiti tags from the 1982 1st international Hip Hop show in London was breathtaking, but not only that the art worked symbolizes the birth of graffiti arts as a global art form and culture. A great worked in my eyes that is price less and should be preserve in a major museum somewhere in the world. In all a great exhibition of artists that pushes graffiti and street art forward. See photos of the some of the art feature in exhibition in the gallery.
