“The Art Was My Escape”: Lee Quiñones, Subway Graffiti Pioneer, Gets the Mega-Monograph Treatment

DEEP CURRENTS A new book offers a full-color celebration of a five-decade career that exploded out of the underground to encompass gallery shows with Fab 5 Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a starring role in the cult film Wild Style, and more. By Brett Berk April 30, 2024 by Stanley Lumax. Save this storySave Save this storySave All featured products are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Vanity Fair may earn an affiliate commission. Lee Quiñones always wanted to be an artist. Growing up in the Alfred E. Smith projects in New York City’s Lower East Side in the 1960s and early 1970s, he was surrounded by inspiring art—bold, colorful graffiti emblazoned on walls, storefronts, and subway cars—but he never saw anyone creating it. “This particular inscribing…was done in secret, covertly,” Quiñones says. Such stealth was necessary, since spray-painting public property was not only seen as a misdemeanor but as a sign of the municipal apocalypse. In a tumultuous era when New York City nearly declared bankruptcy, graffiti was frequently scapegoated as a social ill that was destroying the city. Quiñones knew better. He saw a coded conversation among young people, most of...