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Ru Pare, the name of the school, 1987, l2 - 5 m, spraycan and stencils.

D I S C O V E R Y

Published by CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS LIMITED HONG KONG , 1987

Hugo Kaagman, a 31-year old inpendent graffiti artist, recalls how it all began: "I've been doing this for about 10 years. I started scribbling my name, drawings and text everywhere. Many other people were doing the same thing. My old graffiti names were Amarillo and Bwana 5. " (Now he goes by his real name. ) "Everyone used a pseudonym. It was subversive in a way; making a joke of society. We didn't real!y care about the law or the consequences of doing graffiti."In the late 70s, not much was happening in Amsterdam in tenns of innovative youth culture. A lot of trends and ideas were borrowed from overseas. The hippie movement was tolerated, while the punk and reggae movements were starting up. So, many of the city's graffiti writers - including Kaagman - took their textual inspirations from punk rock and reggae music."During this period I saw everything as collapsing, " Kaagman continues. "I fact we were writing our own graveyard text. But in the early 1980s I left behind this apocalyptic thinking. Part of this change was because of my travelling in Africa; it gave me a different inspiration. Music is important there; it looks at the positive side. In Europe, which is rich, we're singing about misery. In Africa, where it 's so poor, they're singing about how good life can be."

Around this time, he began to see graffiti as craftsmanship. Kaagman dis-covered the Arts and Crafts Movement which flourished at the beginning of the century and this led him to think of graffiti as "wall painting" or decoration. So he decided to take it seriously and treat it as a profession.

About five years ago the American graffiti wave reached Amsterdam. It was by New York City ghetto kids who paint the subways, and it's tied in with hip-hop, rap and disco music. These kids actually went on tour and the graffiti wave made it on an international scale. Now Europeans imitate this style."Most of what you see around Amsterdam tries to copy the American style, " says Kaagman. "As for myself, I'm probably theonly person in Holland who uses the 'stencil style' if you can cal! it that. I cut out my designs first from cardboard to make stencils and spray paintover these stencils. I recently saw a book a Paris graffiti and it looks like some people there are doing stencil style, too. I don't know if they got the idea from seeing my stuff or developed it on their own. It really doesn't matter."

In the old days, Kaagman financed his illicit graffiti projects from his unemployment benefits. "You can do a lot with 200 guilders per week, " he admits. "For the unemployed, graffiti writing has a lot to do with boredom. One can be apathetic or take action. Creating graffiti certainly isn't passive."

Nowadays Kaagman is able to live off his legal graffiti. Not only is he frequently hired by private businesses to decorate the exterior or interior of their locales, but even the city's Art Council engaged him in 1985 to paint a pedestrian underpass near the Ben Viljoenstraat station. "It was one month of hard work, " Kaagman recalls, "and cost thousands of guilders in paint. But I was well paid." The results are astounding. He depicts everything from Hol!and's windmil!s and canals to anti-apartheid slogans, with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Cleopatra thrown in. The overwhelming reaction of passers-by is positive and even enthousiastic.

Is formal art training necessary to be a good graffiti-ist? Kaagman thinks not: "Graffiti is not from art schools, which brainwash students. They teach only official art, nothing unusual or revolutionary . Graffiti developed on the streets. People in art schools run after the main fashion - which now is abstract. I'm working against the fashion. Art shouldn't be in ivory towers for the few who understand it."

Kaagman is gradually becoming known to other nations. In 1985 he was invited by the Greeks to spray paint a wall in Athens during the Cultural Capital Festival. He has sprayed his work, unsolicited, in Senegal, Gambia and Norway, as .wel! as other Eurapean cities. He has also done hired graffiti on boats, on musical instruments for bands, on clothing and even for a book cover .

Future projects? "I want to go to Paris to see w hat type of graffiti they're doing," says Kaagman. "I want to develop, since graffiti is my life work. There will always be the paid and legal, or unpaid and illegal graffiti für me - the planned and the improvised." Half jokingly he says, "Who knows? Maybe someday I'll spray the Berlin Wall ........" 1987,Janet Wishnetsky Inflight Magazine Discovery of Cathay Pacific, flies twice each week between Hong Kong and Amsterdam.