Kings of Spray.(Brief Article)

Judging from the crowd, it could have been any trendy gallery opening in New York or London. Rail-thin fashionistas clutched Gucci bags as they wobbled around on stiletto heels. Slender young men adjusted horn- rimmed glasses before cooing over a painting's "sense of color" and "emotion." The only people who seemed out of place were the artists themselves--a small clutch of bleary-eyed wanderers with hooded sweat shirts and matted hair--who go by the "tags" Mak 1, Mantis and Eeb. They work not in oils or pastels but in spray paint, producing graffiti art that has made them the talk of Cape Town. And they've always done their best work under cover of night, when nobody else is looking.

Now Cape Town's art establishment can't take its eyes off them. Impressed by the enormous murals brightening large swaths of the city-- many supporting causes like anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients or quitting smoking--gallery owners have begun inviting the graffiti artists to exhibit their work on canvases. The shows have become so popular that some of the artists can now make a living solely off their graffiti. Advertisers, corporations, political candidates--even private art collectors--are commissioning their work, sometimes for as much as 10,000 rand (about $900). Two of the country's top graffiti artists, Mak 1 and Falko, have been hired to decorate buildings for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. At home they lecture at universities and recently organized a "graffiti tour" of Mitchell's Plain, the township where they painted their first murals. Artist Tyler Murphy, 21, edits a magazine of graffiti culture, Realife; Mantis, who at 29 is one of the city's oldest and most respected taggers, runs a business making customized graffiti-style shirts and pants. And the artist known as Eeb, 23, recently directed a documentary on graffiti art, called "Overspray," for national television.

So it came as a surprise two months ago when city officials announced a crackdown on graffiti. "We were shocked," says Mantis. "One minute we're the kings of Cape Town, and the next minute everyone wants to see us disappear." Indeed, officials hoping to lure tourists and investors suddenly decided that the graffiti--which had gone largely unpoliced-- was unsightly. City councilor Jean-Pierre Smith announced a new package of laws that would regulate spray-paint sales, confiscate artists' property and initiate a 24-hour "graffiti hot line" for citizens to report unlawful painting. Offenders could be fined up to 2,000 rand (about $180) and even sent to jail. A few weeks ago police made their first graffiti arrests in years, says Smith. The offenders: a pair of academics protesting the proposed bylaws by spraying the words free art on an overpass. "We felt the new laws sounded extremist and unfair," says one of the culprits, Clinton Osbourn, a design teacher at Zonnebloom College. "There are a lot of artists who put a lot ...