TRANSPORTATION
Graffiti on Subway Surges as World Visits NYC for ‘Risky Game’
The deaths of two French artists last month highlight a recent spike in the number of subway graffiti reports as well as the enduring allure of tagging New York trains.
BY JOSE MARTINEZ MAY 5, 2022, 6:48PM EDT

On April 18, the French graffiti artist Julien Blanc posted photos to Instagram of his signature “JiBEONE” tag on a Manhattan rooftop where he was, he wrote, “waiting for the sunrise.”

Days later, Blanc and graffiti partner Pierre Audebert were both struck and killed by a train at an elevated station along the No. 3 line in Brooklyn, in what sources described as the pursuit of a prized canvas sought by spray-paint Picassos around the world.

The deaths of Blanc, 34, and Audebert, 28, highlight the enduring — and growing — allure of tagging New York trains decades after the heyday of graffiti in the transit system. The MTA has documented a recent surge in the number of subway cars tagged, nearly double so far this year from the same time period in 2019.

“For the newer generation who are interested in the subway, it’s still a draw,” said Eric Felisbret, a graffiti historian who painted trains as ‘DEAL CIA’ in the late 1970s and early 80s. “It’s the Mecca, where they want to sort of get that feather in their cap that they’ve painted on a train in the birthplace of subway graffiti.”

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