“Art in the Streets” is currently running at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and will be on through August 8, 2011. This museum exhibition is international in scope, and ranges from the golden age of graffiti to present-day street art.

The show contains a small sample of Basquiat’s work, along with his New York City contemporaries Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Futura who were more classically graffiti artists. The show displays a large selection of Basquait’s friend Keith Haring’s very different works, including several graffiti taggings and a hand-painted car, and a "cosmic cavern" by Kenny Scharf reminiscent of his day-glo environments of the 1980s. There is also a memorial presentation of the futuristic Battle Station, a rarely seen work by legendary RAMMELLZEE.

Basquiat appears not as the graffiti poet SAMO, but in the context of a special section dedicated to the Patti Astor’s early 1980s East Village Fun Gallery, featuring a Basquiat painting and decorated ceramic along with Haring and the graffiti artists who "shaped the gallery’s history."

On April 19th there was an associated showing of the ART/NEW YORK 10-minute short Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Fun Gallery (1982) and the related 30-minute early interview of Basquiat by Marc Miller, by turns embarrassing and revealing. The photographs of Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, and Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 Wild Style movie help give an archival picture of New York’s late 70s-early 80s graffiti when it was better known from subways than from walls and reproductions.

More contemporary figures listed as being in the show include Margaret Kilgallen from San Francisco, Os Gemeos (São Paulo), JR & Space Invader (Paris), Mister Cartoon (known in LA for his lowrider auto painting and tattoos), the well known Swoon, and the presently ubiquitous Shepard Fairey--already hyped by MOCA curator Jeffrey Deitch in his previous position at Deitch projects New York. England’s Banksy contributed a tall graffiti-covered stain-glass window built for the museum in a faux-reverential manner.

Apparently, the show also emphasizes Los Angeles's role, showcasing Mr. Cartoon, Chaz Bojórquez, REVOK, SABER, and others, including a quick look at the city’s skate board culture. Saturday, May 14th will be “teen night” at the MOCA.

Art in the Streets  bills itself as the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art, although it was scooped by the Tate Modern’s survey in London a few year’s ago. The show is curated by Jeffrey Deitch, along with Associate Curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose. Deitch was one of the early art world figures to recognize Jean-Michel Basquiat, at the time of the Time Square Show, and an early collector of his work. He gave the memorial at Basquiat’s funeral, while an art consultant for Citi Bank.

I can’t say much about this show, as I’m waiting till it hits the Brooklyn Museum next year--to the great displeasure of the Daily News.  [New Yorkers only got a small taste with "Pantheon: A History of Art from the Streets of NYC," in the windows of the ex-Donell Public Library across from MOMA.]

But it will be interesting to see how the exhibit negotiates the treacherous ground of moving street art into the museum. Some of the compromises involved in any such attempt are already apparent in news from MOCA since the show opened on April 17. Following the façade altering of the Tate Modern for its street art show, Italian street artist Blu was commissioned to paint a huge mural on the side of the Geffen ahead of the show's opening, but it was then obliterated almost as soon as it had dried. According to the AP, MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch ordered it removed because of fears that the mural's anti-war sentiments (it showed coffins draped in dollar bills) might be offensive to people visiting a nearby memorial honoring Japanese-Americans who fought in World War II. In the mean time US bombs and troops are active in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, and Shepherd Fairey’s outmoded bandwagon Hope poster of Obama continues to sit inside the exhibition.

Also according to the AP, “The Phantom Street Artist, whose well known Rage Against the Machine album cover isn't represented, said the museum practiced the equivalent of post-Colonial hegemony in going with more mainstream artists like Shepherd Fairey…” 

Deitch, of course, had to get rid of his Deitch Projects gallery before taking a job at MOCA. The Los Angeles Times has now run an article on a new twist to the controversial of a nonprofit art museum forging ties with a profit-seeking art entrepreneur. Roger Gastman, hired as the show's associate curator and the author of the famous Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents, as well as Los Angeles Graffiti, and the upcoming The History of American Graffiti,  also has “a clear commercial interest in it via R. Rock Enterprises, a marketing company he has run for years.”

Adding to the controversy has been reported a rise in graffiti-related arrests in the area since the opening of the museum opening.

In addition to these squabbles over vandalism, commercialization and the politics of inclusion, there is a basic problem in that the best street art is site specific, and works (or annoys) because of its graffiti-like nature. Put on museum walls much of it (but not all) suffers by comparison to more gallery based art. Often what looks best on the walls was not really of the street art tradition, but gallery art put on the street go gain exposure, and an "edge." Yet with all the interesting, but temporary artistic activity being done on the street, one can not be against any attempt to create exposure and critical reckoning with the works. While on-line forums have been more successful at this so far than traditional galleries and museums, these are still the spaces where the works themselves can be seen, not their reproductions. However, for some time the movement in museum exhibitions of contemporary art has been away from any critical sense and more and more towards blockbusters and boosterism. It will be interesting but hard to avoid this in looking at "street art". 

Left: the GRAFFITI AND STREET ART diagram by Daniel Feral spoofs the musemization of graffiti, and pays homage to Alfred H. Barr's mapping of Cubism and Abstract Art 75 years ago (not from this exhibit).  

Official list of artists in the show:

ALEXIS ROSS, ANDRE, A-ONE, BARRY MCGEE, BEAR 167, BILL DANIEL, BILL RAY, BLADE, CHARLIE AHEARN, CHAZ BOJORQUEZ, COCO144, COST, CRAIG COSTELLO, CRAIG R. STECYK III, CRASH, DAN MURPHY, DASH SNOW, DAZE, DELTA, DEVIN FLYNN, DON LEICHT, DONDI, DRUGS, ED TEMPLETON, EINE, ERIK BRUNETTI, ESTEVAN ORIOL, FAB 5 FREDDY, FREEDOM, FUTURA, GORDON MATTA-CLARK, GUSMANO CESARETTI, HAZE, HENRY CHALFANT, HOWARD GRIBBLE, HUGH HOLLAND, INVADER, IRAK, IZ THE WIZ, JAMIE REID, JAMES PRIGOFF, JANE DICKSON, JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, JOHN AHEARN, JOHN FEKNER, JON NAAR, JOSH LAZCANO, JR, KAWS, KEITH HARING, KENNY SCHARF, KIELY JENKINS, KOOR, LADY PINK, LARRY CLARK, LEE QUINONES, LOOMIT, MALCOLM MCLAREN, MARE 139, MARGARET KILGALLEN, MARK GONZALES, MARTHA COOPER, MISS VAN, MISTER CARTOON, MODE 2, NECKFACE, NOC, OS GEMEOS, PATTI ASTOR, PHASE 2, RAMMELLZEE, RETNA, REVOK, REVOLT, REVS, RISK, ROA, ROBBIE CONAL, RON ENGLISH, SABER, SHARP, SHEPARD FAIREY, SJK161, SNAKE 1, SPIKE JONZE, STELIOS, STEPHEN POWERS, STEVE GRODY, SWOON, TAKI 183, TEEN WITCH, TERRY RICHARDSON, TODD JAMES, TOXIC, TRACY 168, ZEPHYR.

For more information, see the MOCA website, http://www.moca.org, and the positive review by our friends Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo of Brooklyn Street Art, at the Huffington Post.