Welcome to the THE WRITERS FORUM brought to you by 12ozPROPHET...
You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which only gives you limited access to view our discussions, photos and other forum features. By joining THE WRITERS FORUM community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access other member only features. Registration is fast, simple and free, so join THE WRITERS FORUM today and be a part of the largest and longest running graffiti, street arts and popular culture forum online!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.
heavy heavy stuff. phenomenal. diggin the article. I don't like how they try and seperate the two writing styles of US and theirs, because if you get all right down to where the rubber meets the road all those concepts and ideas they associated with brazil's writing exist also within the styles of aerosol art.
to even think that there's a whole other "graffiti" movement besides the aerosol writing culture we know of today. I really didn't have an idea up until now. I wonder if this movement in Brazil while it was in its baby stages was somehow influenced even by the slightest writing being done in the US.
sure seems like the lot of them do bomb and goto the super extreme and face dangers that overly exceed a yard's, billboard, or hanging off a rooftop building with a roller.
I know that i have a tendency to argue and all but hear me out. I just don't think that most people outside of Philly understand what goes into writing in Philly. Actually there is years and years and years of practice and multiple different styles of writing in Philly. It takes a really really really long time to get a descent hand in Philly. Most writers up these days in Philly including myself aren't even fully there yet. I understand that these guys in Brazil are still new to graff and that's probably why their style is alot less developed. But they deffinately know how to kill shit (and they take THAT to a whole nother level). And their whole aproach to graffiti is similar to Philly's. And they deffinately get props. I just feel like compareing them to or saying that they are equal to Philly style wise is an insult to Philly handstyles.
The 12oz Prophet article on Sao Paulo by SONIK introduced the world to pichacao and the Brazil graffiti scene. I know when I read it, it had a very sublime sobering effect on me. Thank you for that.
all stolen
Last edited by Santos L Halper : 12-29-2006 at 09:59 AM.
I know that i have a tendency to argue and all but hear me out. I just don't think that most people outside of Philly understand what goes into writing in Philly. Actually there is years and years and years of practice and multiple different styles of writing in Philly. It takes a really really really long time to get a descent hand in Philly. Most writers up these days in Philly including myself aren't even fully there yet. I understand that these guys in Brazil are still new to graff and that's probably why their style is alot less developed. But they deffinately know how to kill shit (and they take THAT to a whole nother level). And their whole aproach to graffiti is similar to Philly's. And they deffinately get props. I just feel like compareing them to or saying that they are equal to Philly style wise is an insult to Philly handstyles.
seriously dude, i know you love the fact that you live in philly, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the graffiti universe. " I understand that these guys in Brazil are still new to graff"?????? this shit isn't new fool. the style is not "less developed". just shut the fuck up and realise that there is dope shit happening outside of philidelphia, and that your universe won't implode if you acknowledge that. these fools are scaling the front of 20 story buildings and standing on fucking air conditioners to do 6 foot tall tags in spraypaint with killer style. case fucking closed.
just because some of the tags these dudes do are constructed with tall slim letters doesn't mean they have anything to do with philly styles, or are related in any way. that's like saying that american football and soccer are the same thing because they're both played on a grass rectangle with a ball.
seriously dude, i know you love the fact that you live in philly, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the graffiti universe. " I understand that these guys in Brazil are still new to graff"?????? this shit isn't new fool. the style is not "less developed". just shut the fuck up and realise that there is dope shit happening outside of philidelphia, and that your universe won't implode if you acknowledge that. these fools are scaling the front of 20 story buildings and standing on fucking air conditioners to do 6 foot tall tags in spraypaint with killer style. case fucking closed.
Did you even bother to read my post? I was responding to the people that keep compareing this shit to Philly and espescially to the guy that said it was better than Philly. Nobody said anything about Philly being some "be-all end-all". Doesn't sound like you even read what I was saying. Whatever. As I ALREADY SAID, these guys are dope for doing what they do.
Means 'pichadores: maintainance (buffing) costs of this facade keep us from giving money to the church/charity' sorta
for the record, pichação has been a part of São Paulo since around 1982 - and that had nothing to do with Beat Street or any other contact with NYC graff. It was buidling off a political graffiti tradition that began in the 1960s.
And Philly has been going since, what - 1965 or so? The new book Public Wall Writing in Philadelphia (freenewsproject.com) has a lot of that info, btw....
The tsssss book is nice, I have it - there is cool super rookie card blackbook stuff of the gemeos, herbert, vitche, etc. Wish it were even longer and had more info!
before the next neighbourhood king once again calls bullshit on this style, let me emphasize this from the EYE article
The pichadores have developed a ductus or sequence of strokes which is concerned with structure rather than outline. The method is the same whether they use a roller or a spray can.
The form is conceived instinctively based on structural and proportional criteria above all else, like a segmented line that has been integrated into a frame. It exploits the potential of a given space to the maximum.
If I understand this correctly, Pixação is nearer typography than tags are.
If you look at some of those writings you can see that the pixação writers fill a whole width of a wall with text, they don't start writing half-assedly from the middle of the wall and finish where the word ends. I cant read or follow half of this shit myself or really see the finest aesthetics of the style, but I acknowledge this and don't approach it like some sandy vag grandma approaches ink tags and silver fill-ins that don't look nice in the context of textile craft and knitting. Most you guys do exactly that while not even attempting to read what it says or make out half of the letters.
^ whole width from left to right.
To some extent these pixação guys seem to follow certain basic typography, like straight baseline, kerning and tracking. They seem to play around with the way a person usually reads words as pictures, not individual letters: they construct entire sentences that consist of highly decorational and "far-fetched" letters. Some also seem to pay a fair amount of attentiont to the negative space created between and in middle of strokes of the letters, to make the words visually balanced.
For random trivia I remember reading from the article that 80's heavy metal band logos influenced the styles and people die from falling off the roofs and windows while doing this shit. You just cant imagine the environment that makes someone want to write something with all those risks. it sure aint hip hop or random pussy
^some certain tag influence there
^coundnt write any legible letters myself that way
TTSSS… pixação, the vastest art. São Paulo, Brazil
Interview with the author Boleta
- Ttsss book seems to be divided in 2 different sections: a first one with articles signed by different authors, a selection of drawings and amazing photos and a second section with 12 different alphabets in the typical Brazilian pixos style. How did you work on this project and how much time did you spend on it?
This book started when the Editora do Bispo saw my agenda. I have had this agenda (and maintained it) for more than ten years. Is where I collect the signatures of various pixadores. The original idea was to make this book solely about the agenda. But one thing leads to another and the project has grown. Joao Wainer already had photos from pixos through out the city and we got together to take some pictures “ in action”. Then the book became more interesting with the agenda and the photos, and the alphabet was a consequence. Nevertheless this alphabet is not definitive since every day there is someone else doing pixo with new forms of writing.
- The study of letters is probably the main focus of this book. In the graffiti world those letters became pretty famous with the OsGemeos and soon several people in the Europe, too, began to follow this style. Could you give us a short history about that maybe explaining the difference between graffiti stuff and street gang stuff?
Pixo is something you do very fast and the stile is always vertical. On the other hand grafiti spreads out the letters and drawings.
Pixo is hell and most people hate it and is considered pure garbage to make some durtiness. But grafiti is not considered that way because has colors and forms, even though both being illegal.
- Ttsss, the name of the book, represents the sound of the spray paint. But most of the pixos words that I could see until today were done with latex paint. Is there any evolution in the type of tools used for that?
It is not really an evolution. Spray is expensive and latex you can find in the garbage.
- How much the city background (in this case Sao Paulo) is important for the develop of a typical style in lettering? And what about in lifestyle in general?
The city background is every thing. The letters are vertical and full of edges by influence of the buildings and the city skyline.
If you want a window in to try reading some of this stuff, look at the photos that Santos L Halper just posted - TUMULOS - meaning 'tombs' - is up in each one.
And in the white tags on black paper image above where there was the comment that there was tag influence... well, maybe. When you go to Rio de Janeiro the tags look loopy and tiny - as different from Sao Paulo's as Philly's are from NYC. Rio's are always in spray paint, and to me are genetically closer to the Philly hands than the Sao Paulo tags are.
these hands are vicious. somebody just put me on to it, and its fresh. the spacing, the height, the pride and tradition in purely the letter forms, not tosses, burners, just letters, it is related to philly style, long lost cousins.... im not saying that one has anything on the other, but it would be dope to have a philly writer and a sao paulo writer go on a mission, write eachothers names and go tag for tag. philly style is older check www.nightcrawla.com like early 70s.... but ive known about it my whole life, and never knew anything about this, so this shit is exciting to me
Re: PICHAÇÃO -
12-29-2006, 04:30 AM
