Adam Cost

Cost is the tag name of a graffiti artist who, from the early 1980's to mid-90's, blanketed New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area with his wheatpaste stickers, spray paint tags and paint-roller pieces. Cost, whose real name is Adam Cole, is perhaps most widely known for his collaborating with another New York graffiti artist, Revs.

Cost and Revs’ fame reached a crescendo in the early 1990s, when, on any given block in Manhattan, a passerby could spot the duo’s wheat paste tags posted on the back of the Walk/Don't Walk street-crossing signal. On these wheat pasted papers, Cost and Revs printed messages in bold, black ink; some of these messages, for example, read "Cost fucked Madonna" or "Suicide Revs" and were purposely obscure. When asked in a 1993 New York Times article what it all meant, Cost said, "If you could give me the meaning of life, I’d give you the meaning of us [Cost & Revs] ."

Although the two were loath to unveil the meaning behind their artwork, they were almost certainly trying to force the everyday person to step outside the bounds of conventionality. Recent graffiti artists, Obey Giant and Neck Face, [MARKY] operate in a similar vein.

Cost and Revs continued to vandalize New York City with impunity, even inspiring the ire of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who knew of Cost by name. In 1995, though, Cost’s luck finally ran out when police caught him tagging a mailbox. In court, the judge estimated that Cost had done over $100 million in damages but only fined him $2,126 and ordered him to do 200 days community service. That run-in with the law eventually lead to Cost’s bowing out of the graffiti scene. Revs, however, has gone on to expand on his art and even operates in a legal arena, making headlines recently for creating public, steel sculptures.