There were graffiti writers who wrote for a short period of time, a few years, made their point, contributed new style, and left it behind. That wasn’t IZ THE WIZ. He kept at it, going as hard as anyone, for over a decade. IZ may very well have put more paint on the New York City subways than anyone, ever. ‘Who painted the most?’ is an endless argument when talking about the New York City subway graffiti movement, and IZ is in every discussion. A top-to-bottom of his appears in the otherwise corporate-sterile 1976 MTA annual report: he was that hard to avoid. He’s all over the 1984 movie Style Wars and book Subway Art, which spread the movement worldwide. IZ did it all: every subway line and every kind of graffiti, from tags to throwups to Technicolor whole car murals.
One of the wonderful, special things about graffiti is that it is an art form in which artistic talent is not a prerequisite to greatness, and where quantity has a quality all its own. IZ THE WIZ wasn’t a naturally gifted technical draftsman like a few of his contemporaries, but he did so much work on the trains that he established his own playful internal logic. While other writers were adding detail and nuance, IZ went big and playful and big again. Even as it set an unmatchable standard of proliferation, his art, to generations of wide-eyed graffiti writers, said ‘yes, you can.’
By noon the day after Mike passed away, two friends from Finland had emailed me a memorial piece that they had done for him. Memorial pieces have been rolling in since from around the world: Boston, Albuquerque, London, Sydney, and on and on. It’s testament to the influence of IZ THE WIZ’s work that the first tribute to him should come not from a longtime friend, but from two strangers from five thousand miles away, whose lives were forever changed 25 years ago when they saw his work in a film.
IZ THE WIZ won't be back, but he's still here. Just look around. — Caleb Neelon/Against The Grain
