{"id":29973,"date":"2013-03-31T20:13:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T20:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=29973"},"modified":"2016-06-06T17:05:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T17:05:57","slug":"the-graffitist-who-moved-indoors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=29973","title":{"rendered":"The Graffitist Who Moved Indoors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/31\/arts\/design\/barry-mcgee-show-at-institute-of-contemporary-art-in-boston.html?pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">The Graffitist Who Moved Indoors<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2013-03-28<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carolkino.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Carol Kino<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 \u201cThis is one of my favorite things to do,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barry_McGee\" target=\"_blank\">Barry McGee<\/a> said as he drove along the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bayshore_Freeway\" target=\"_blank\">Bayshore Freeway<\/a> on a glowering winter day, pointing out random patches of new graffiti. He was supposed to be talking about his traveling midcareer retrospective, which opens Saturday at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Instead, he was revisiting some of the places where he\u2019d spent time in the late 1980s and early \u201990s, as he rose to prominence as the graffiti artist known as Twist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the key, to have every rooftop in San Francisco,\u201d Mr. McGee reminisced as he took an off-ramp down toward the industrial reaches of the Mission District, one of many places where he and his crew once tagged the road, safety barriers and every visible roof below. \u201cIt seems completely ridiculous now,\u201d he said, laughing, \u201cbut then it was the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since those days, the whole South of Market area, once known for its seediness, has been redeveloped, gentrified. Mr. McGee had to drive past several blocks of trendy loft buildings before finding a slice of ruined waterfront that resembled the streets he once roamed. He finally stopped at a crumbling warehouse by the bay&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;But perhaps the person with the biggest expectations is Mr. McGee himself.<\/p>\n<p>He grew up in South San Francisco, the child of a Chinese-American secretary and an Irish-American father who worked in auto body shops and collected junked hot rods. As a teenager, he was fascinated by the anarchic tactics of the Bay Area\u2019s activist groups, some of which were spray-painting anti-government slogans on banks and underpasses. (Unsurprisingly, one of his favorite words is \u201cradical.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>A friend introduced him to graffiti and Mr. McGee, who had \u201calways drawn,\u201d said his creative life took off. \u201cIt was really empowering,\u201d he said. \u201cI really thought I was doing art on the street.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/31\/arts\/design\/barry-mcgee-show-at-institute-of-contemporary-art-in-boston.html?pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. View the slide show <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/slideshow\/2013\/03\/31\/arts\/design\/20130331_MCGEE.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Graffitist Who Moved Indoors The New York Times 2013-03-28 Carol Kino SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 \u201cThis is one of my favorite things to do,\u201d Barry McGee said as he drove along the Bayshore Freeway on a glowering winter day, pointing out random patches of new graffiti. He was supposed to be talking about his traveling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,16,8,20],"tags":[14237,14236,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-29973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-barry-mcgee","tag-carol-kino","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47361,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29973\/revisions\/47361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}