36 pages Edited by Wim Van Dooren, Huib Emmer, Michael Scrivener Text(s) by Wim Van Dooren, Huib Emmer, Michael Scrivener, Steve Davidson, Ingrid van Santen, Machteld Bakker, Jan Vis 20,5 x 14,5 cm Language: Néerlandais Paperback Publisher: De As 63 1983
De AS 63, "Anarchie en avant-garde," is a 1983 themed issue of the Dutch anarcho-socialist journal, asking what becomes of avant-garde movements once their first spontaneity has passed. For graffiti history its centrepiece is Machteld Bakker's Graffiti: van straatkunst naar kunstcircuit, an unusually early European account of New York subway writing — the move from tags to whole cars, the toy-master-king hierarchy, and the writers' migration into galleries. She names LEE Quiñones, "King of the City," and his Dutch commissions, alongside Quik, Zephyr and Keith Haring, with a section on Haring's Documenta 7 work. The issue carries a full-page Haring drawing.
The other essays set this in a longer line: Steef Davidson traces Cobra through the Situationists, Provo and May 1968; Michael Scrivener contributes An Introduction to an Anarchist Aesthetic (first published in Freedom, 1979). A document of the moment graffiti entered European critical discourse — read not as vandalism but as the latest avant-garde.
