Graffiti

Graffiti is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and where people can see it. For other meanings, see Graffiti (disambiguation). Graffiti can be as simple as a written "monikers" (a name or signature) or as elaborate as a large wall painting. It has existed since ancient times, and examples date back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.

Modern graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered vandalism. Modern graffiti began in the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s. It later spread across the rest of the United States and around the world.

Graffiti is different from murals, which are often legally permitted and are a form of street art.

Etymology

The word "graffiti" (used for both one and many) comes from the Italian word graffiato, which means "scratched." The rare singular form is "graffito." In ancient times, people carved graffiti into walls with sharp tools, though chalk or coal were sometimes used. The word comes from the Greek graphein, which means "to write."

History

See also: Megalithic graffiti symbols

See also: Roman graffiti

Graffiti is very old. Most petroglyphs and geoglyphs are between 40,000 and 10,000 years old, and the oldest are cave paintings in Australia. Early artists also made stencil graffiti of their hands, which may have worked like a modern tag. The oldest known written graffiti was found on the Greek island of Astypalaia and dates to around 500 BC. Much of the graffiti from that time was bragging, along with word games like the Sator Square, "I was here" messages, and comments on gladiators. In Ancient Rome, graffiti was a way to communicate and was generally not seen as vandalism. The Alexamenos graffito was later seen as disrespectful to religion and was removed. It may contain one of the earliest depictions of Jesus. Graffiti also preserves history. The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, comes from inscriptions on rocks in the deserts of southern Syria, eastern Jordan, and northern Saudi Arabia. Visitors to the citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka wrote their names over a "mirror wall" between the 6th and 18th centuries. The Umayyad Arab and Persian poet Yazid al-Himyari wrote political poems on walls between Sajistan and Basra, and people read and shared them widely. Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, and Filippino Lippi carved their names in the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea.

In the 1790s, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt. The oldest known graffiti monikers were found on traincars made by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s, and filmmaker Bill Daniel documented the Bozo Texino monikers in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?. During World War II, the phrase "Kilroy was here" spread widely around the world. Modern graffiti style was heavily influenced by hip-hop culture, starting with young people in the 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. The early tags were followed by bigger works called pieces on the sides of subway trains. Many people admired the art, while others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, saw it as damage to public property. The 1974 essay The Faith of Graffiti helped the word "graffiti" stick. In 2001, computer company IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco for damages and clean-up after a spray-painted advertising campaign, and in 2005 Sony used a similar campaign to promote its PlayStation Portable, paying building owners for the rights to paint their walls.

Main article: Commercial graffiti

Global movements

When graffiti is made as art, it often uses the Latin script, even in countries where it is not the main writing system. In Africa, Amadou Lamine Ngom, known as Docta, worked in the early 1990s to publicize graffiti and street art. Graffiti became a way for artists to raise awareness about social, political, and environmental issues, and festivals such as FESTIGRAFF in Dakar, Senegal, now promote artists. In South Africa, graffiti became an important part of culture after apartheid, and some local by-laws allow it in public spaces. American graffiti and hiphop spread through Europe in the 1980s, and by the late 1990s all European countries had graffiti scenes. In the early 1980s, Blek le Rat began making stencil art on the streets of Paris, and Banksy later adopted and refined this technique. Some of the earliest graffiti exhibitions outside the USA were held in Amsterdam. In Munich, Germany, tags and pieces began appearing in 1983, and the European Graffiti Union was created in 1986 to help build legal spaces for graffiti. Today, the Bahnwärter Thiel club has spaces for graffiti artists on the grounds of the former "Slaughterhouse", and the Berlin-based crew 1UP has gained wide visibility.

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries, Israel, and Iran. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, similar in this way to the Berlin Wall. Graffiti has played an important role in the street art scene in the MENA region, especially after the Arab Spring of 2011 and the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19, as a way for people to raise their political and social voices. Banksy has had an important effect in the MENA area, especially in Palestine and Bethlehem. In South America, graffiti is very common in Brazilian cities. Pichação uses tall characters and is usually a form of protest, while prominent Brazilian artists include Os Gêmeos and Nunca. Southeast Asian countries have many graffiti influences that mostly come from modern Western culture, and graffiti has long been a common sight in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Types

See also: Graffiti terminology

Artists mainly use spray paint and markers for tagging, throw ups, and pieces. Paint markers, paint dabbers, and scratching tools are also used. Some art companies, such as Montana Colors, make supplies for graffiti and street art, and many major cities have graffiti art stores. Stencil graffiti is made by cutting shapes into a stiff material, such as cardboard or folders, and then spraying paint through the cutout. Some of the first stencils were made in 1981 by Blek le Rat in Paris and in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours, France. By 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities, including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne.

Stickers, also called slaps, are drawn on before they are put up in public. Widely used stickers include the United States Postal Service's Label 228 and name tags. Name tag stickers were first introduced by C-Line Products in 1959 and became popular in both graffiti and sticker art. Eggshell stickers break into tiny pieces when someone tries to remove them, and stickers let artists put up their work quickly and discreetly. Tagging is writing one's "name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer, and tags were the first form of modern graffiti. Some recent graffiti uses hashtags. Throw ups are large, bubble-style writings meant to be put up as widely and quickly as possible. Pieces are large, elaborate, letter-based works, often with multi-coloured fills and outlines, and sometimes characters. Wildstyle is the most complex form of modern graffiti and can be hard to read for those unfamiliar with it. It draws inspiration from calligraphy, and the term was popularized by the Wild Style graffiti crew formed by Tracy 168 of the Bronx, New York in 1974. Modern graffiti also uses other arts and technologies. Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media, and Yarnbombing is another recent form.

Purpose

Ideas about using graffiti as art go back at least to avant-garde artist Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painted "the avant-garde won't give up" in a graffiti-like gesture. Many people who enjoy graffiti believe it should be displayed in public spaces for everyone, not hidden away in a museum or gallery. Graffiti is a way of communicating and expressing oneself, and it can also warn or inform people. Some people see it as art, while others see it as vandalism, so many graffitists stay anonymous to avoid prosecution. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip-hop elements that is not considered "performance art," and many graffitists fit the introverted archetypal artist type. Banksy is one of the world's best-known street artists and remains faceless to avoid arrest. He is known for political, anti-war stencil art, mainly in Bristol, England, but his work can be seen from Los Angeles to Palestine. He painted satirical images on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier. A number of exhibitions have taken place since 2000, and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected his work, while others have removed it as vandalism. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke objected when the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat published a photo of a Peugeot 208 with his graffiti in the background in an article about new cars, saying he does not want his art used commercially, even for payment.

Graffiti also marks territory. Territorial graffiti uses tags and logos to show outsiders whose neighborhood is whose, and gang graffiti uses cryptic symbols, initials, and unique calligraphies to show membership, rivals, and borders. Many analysts see artistic value in some graffiti as public art, and some researchers say it can be a tool for social emancipation or political goals. During conflicts it has offered a way to communicate, and the Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti reflecting pressures under Soviet rule over the GDR. Graffiti is often linked with rebelling against authority. The anarcho-punk band Crass stenciled anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages across the London Underground in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and graffiti was a major part of the punk scene in Amsterdam. Slogans covered Paris during the protests of May 1968. Later, in the 1990s, subvertising, culture jamming, and the rise of Street Art brought more politicized forms, and some artists began using non-permanent paints. Australia's BUGA UP group painted over tobacco and alcohol billboards from 1978 to 1994, and Berlin activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm spent 35 years removing neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist graffiti across Germany. In Belgrade, a graffiti mural shows Ratko Mladić, a former general of the Serb army convicted by the ICTY as a War Criminal for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War. Critics say this reflects Bosnian genocide denial, and that Serbia's Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin, has not acted against such cases. On 9 November 2021, police blocked access to the mural to stop activists from painting over it on the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism, and two activists were arrested after throwing eggs at it. Some offensive graffiti is subtle, using heteroglossia so that only people who know the local context understand it as racist. Activists in Russia have painted caricatures of local officials with mouths shaped as potholes to show anger about poor roads, and in Manchester, England, a graffitist painted images around potholes, which were often repaired within 48 hours.

Decorative and high art

Main article: Street art

In the early 1980s, some of the first art galleries to show graffiti artists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan. In 2006, the Brooklyn Museum held an exhibition that showed graffiti as an art form. It began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s through artists such as Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The show included 22 works by New York graffiti artists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. The curator hoped visitors would rethink what they assumed about graffiti.

Starting in the 1970s, Burhan Doğançay photographed city walls around the world and kept the pictures to inspire his own paintings. This project, now called "Walls of the World," grew to about 30,000 images taken over 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, some of these photographs were shown in a solo exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In Australia, art historians have said that some local graffiti is creative enough to be considered art.

Environmental effects

Spray paint can harm the environment. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) lead to the formation of ground level ozone. Most of the emissions from graffiti are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates that 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

Government responses

Governments in many places have responded to graffiti in different ways. In Asia, Mao Zedong used slogans and paintings in the 1920s to support China's communist movement. A film by Lance Crayon found that graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, though political and religious graffiti is not allowed. In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti, and some of his work is now preserved officially. Taiwan has allowed graffiti in designated "Graffiti Zones" since 2005, and a graffiti contest was held in Ximending. Artists who work outside these areas can still face fines up to NT$6,000. In Singapore in 1993, a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, was charged with vandalism under the Vandalism Act of Singapore, a law first passed to stop communist graffiti. He was sentenced to four months in jail, a fine, and a caning. The New York Times criticized the punishment, and many people asked for clemency. The president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, reduced the caning from six strokes to four. In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit. Park said the letter in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but prosecutors said it was an insult to the president, Lee Myung-bak, who was hosting the summit.

In Europe, a Scout group in France tried to remove modern graffiti in 1992 but damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne. This earned them the Ig Nobel Prize in archaeology. In 2006, the European Parliament asked the European Commission to create city policies to reduce litter, graffiti, and other problems in European cities. In Budapest, Hungary, a city movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division both work on the problem. In the United Kingdom, the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became the latest anti-graffiti law. The Keep Britain Tidy campaign called for zero tolerance of graffiti, and 123 Members of Parliament, including Tony Blair, signed a charter stating, "Graffiti is not art, it's crime." In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffiti artists for the first time, and nine members of the DPM crew were found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal damage. In Australia, many cities have set aside walls for legal graffiti to reduce vandalism. The "Graffiti Tunnel" at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney is one example. Many state governments have banned selling spray paint to people under 18, the age of majority. Melbourne is known for its graffiti, and Hosier Lane is a popular place for visitors, with the Lonely Planet travel guide listing it as a major attraction. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced a crackdown on graffiti in 2008, calling it a destructive crime. In Auckland that year, a property owner was convicted of manslaughter after a fatal confrontation with two teenage taggers.

In media

Many documentaries have explored graffiti and street art. 80 Blocks from Tiffany's (1979) shows many parts of the South Bronx's community in New York City toward the end of the notorious South Bronx gangs. Stations of the Elevated (1980) is the earliest documentary about subway graffiti in New York City. Style Wars (1983) is an early documentary on hip-hop culture. Piece by Piece (2005) tells the history of San Francisco graffiti from the early 1980s, and NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting (2005) looks at global graffiti culture. RASH (2005) is about Melbourne, Australia, and the artists who make it a living host for street art. Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) was produced by Banksy. It tells the story of Thierry Guetta, whose obsession with street art is shown alongside Shepard Fairey and Invader, whom Guetta discovers is his cousin. Graffiti Wars (2011) details King Robbo's feud with Banksy and the authorities' differing attitudes toward graffiti and street art. Spiritual Letters (2021), a German documentary by Mr. Paradox Paradise, is about urban art in public spaces.

Several films also show graffiti culture in dramatic stories. Wild Style (1983) is about hip-hop and graffiti culture in New York City. Turk 182 (1985) is about graffiti as political activism, and Bomb the System (2002) follows a crew of graffitists in modern-day New York City. Quality of Life (2004) was shot in the Mission District of San Francisco, and Wholetrain (2006) is a German film.