“Long before the term ‘Street Art’ was relevant and long before young people realized that there was another way to promote their ‘brand’ and their name, beyond the traditional means of writing their names on walls with Spray and Ink, Cost, along with his partner Revs changed the game.
A Graffiti writer schooled in the techniques of bombing, Cost saw an opening to use the public space in a new way. In his campaign of simple white 8 1/2² X 11″ paper postering on the backs of Walk / Don’t Walk traffic signs, he took the idea of guerilla bombing and combined it with the blatant mass appeal of advertising. The language had changed from the insider hieroglyphics of graffiti to the simple text of cold type that anyone -young and old, black and white, rich and poor, could read. As a result the city paid attention. Unlike traditional graffiti tags that became aesthetic background noise, these messages – “Cost Fucked Madonna”, “Cost Was Here” -were dead simple, and blanketed the city in a way that no one could ignore.
Though many young Street Artists take the credit for the novelty of what they do- the bad boy persona of breaking the law, mixed with the brilliant creativeness and inventiveness of a marketing agency- they seem to have forgotten rule number one in Graffiti, and in Street art – originality is King. Cost did it first.”
(Via Supreme)
FOr those of you that don't know COST is a a graffiti artist , he got up big and bad. He was the man .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gOp2hslDd4
