Graffiti artist SEEN: The Godfather of Graffiti

Known as the ‘Godfather of Graffiti’, SEEN began spray-painting trains on the New York Subway at the age of 11.

Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, SEEN built up a name for himself by painting New York Subway with bright lettering and cartoon characters, earning a reputation as one of the best known graffiti artists in the world.But after spending 16 years spray-painting underground, SEEN, real name Richard Mirando, became disillusioned with the graffiti scene and set up his own tattoo parlour as a way to continue making art.

Now more likely to be seen exhibiting canvas workin a commercial gallery than painting illegally outsideatnight,Mirando still thinks the street art scene is not what it used to be.

OBEY: “Andre the Giant has a Posse”

OBEY is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene.

He first became known for his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” (…OBEY…) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News.He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama “Hope” poster.The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today’s best known and most influential street artists.

His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the LosAngeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Banksy: The Man behind the Bag

Banksy is a graffiti master, painter,activist, filmmaker and all-purpose provocateur.

When Time magazine selected the British artist Banksy for its list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2010, he found himself in the company of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Lady Gaga. He supplied a picture of himself with a paper bag (recyclable, naturally) over his head.

 Most of his fans don’t really want to know who he is (and have loudly protested Fleet Street attempts to unmask him).But they do want to follow his upward tra­jectory from the outlaw spraying—or, as the argot has it, “bombing”—walls in Bristol, England, during the 1990s to the artist whose work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars in the auction houses of Britain and America. Today, he has bombed cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. And he has moved from graffiti on gritty urban walls to paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture and even film, with the guileful documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Pest Control, the tongue-in-cheek-titled organization set up by the artist to authenticate the real Banksy artwork, also protects him from prying outsiders. Hiding behind a paper bag, or, more commonly, e-mail, Banksy relentlessly controls his own narrative. His last face-to-face interview took place in 2003.

While he may shelter behind a concealed identity, he advocates a direct connection between an artist and his constituency. “There’s a whole new audience out there, and it’s never been easier to sell [one’s art],” Banksy has maintained. “You don’t have to go to college, drag ’round a portfolio, mail off transparencies to snooty galleries or sleep with someone powerful, all you need now is a few ideas and a broadband connection. This is the first time the essentially bourgeois world of art has belonged to the people. We need to make it count.”