An Identity Thing

There was a time when graffiti were funny ("Nietzsche is dead --God"), or perceptive ("Even paranoiacs have real enemies"). Nowadays wild splashes of spray paint are in vogue, along with endless repetitions of names and street numbers. A New York adolescent who signs himself Taki 183 is said to be the champion, having defaced hundreds of walls, posters, street signs and subway seats. The New York subway system alone spends $500,000 a year to clean up after Taki and his myriad little friends, and there is no end in sight.

In Philadelphia, where the annual cost of graffiti pollution is now estimated at $4,000,000, the police have organized a 25-man "graffiti squad." Aided by handwriting experts, it has caught and prosecuted 330 offenders, nearly all teenagers. A standard punishment: several hours at hard labor, scouring walls.

Prolific. There are still an estimated 10,000 graffitists on the loose in the City of Brotherly Love, and some people profess to see an aesthetic value in their obsession. "We sense that there is a lot of creativity in these graffiti." says the Philadelphia Art Museum's David Katzive. "Most interesting, the trend is away from profanity and toward simple signatures --a kind of identity thing."

The museum has joined forces with the University of Pennsylvania art department in backing a Graffiti Alternative Workshop. After "recruiting" some prolific vandals, who had been caught in the act, the workshop commissioned several at $2 an hour to candy-stripe a dilapidated transit-authority bus. The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co. hired yet another group to decorate the plywood fence surrounding its new Philadelphia office. One graffitist was even paid to paint a mural on the wall of Art Patron Ben Bernstein's town house.

Still, Pop art is never without its detractors. Isadore Bellis, a member of Philadelphia's city council, went so far as to propose an ordinance that would solve the problem by banning the sale of spray paint. Says he of the graffiti workshop: "Unbelievable."

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