GRAFFITI

Graffiti

Graffiti

Introduction

Public properties have always carried unauthorized messages and images—famously, graffiti has been found among the ruins of ancient Pompeii. These graffiti messages and images have taken all sorts of forms. Some are political, some are humorous and witty, some are expressions of individual or collective identity, some are claims of territorial ownership, and others are elaborate forms of artistic expression (Phillips, 2009, 63). The emergence of new graffiti styles and techniques in recent decades has provoked sustained debate among policymakers and scholars.

Historical Evolution

Graffiti is certainly not a new phenomenon, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new forms of graffiti began appearing on the streets and public transportation systems of Philadelphia, Sydney in Australia, and New York City in the United States. Young people in these cities started writing their tag names with ink markers and aerosol paint. Gradually, as these graffiti writers sought to maximize the exposure of their tag identities, both the quantity and the quality of their productions increased. By the late 1970s, elaborate artistic productions (or “pieces”) by writers like Ferrell (2003, 93), and others covered whole subway cars in Sydney and New York.

These new graffiti styles gradually gained wider exposure through books like 1984's Subway Art by photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, and through early films such as the Public Broadcasting Service documentary Style Wars and the film Wild Style (Mailer, 2004, 512). This media circulation of graffiti subsequently helped facilitate its global diffusion and proliferation. Thriving graffiti scenes exist in hundreds of cities around the world, with every populated continent boasting its own hot spots and styles. These scenes and styles are by now exhaustively documented in glossy books published by major commercial publishing houses and in graffiti-related magazines and websites (Ferrell, 2003, 93). Graffiti might be viewed as an example par excellence of Michel de Certeau's tactics—an appropriation of space that insinuates into and against the dominant normative values inscribed in the environment. Graffiti writers see urban surfaces not as sanctified private property but as a medium for circulating their identities, artistic ambitions, and messages for each other and the wider public.

Graffiti as Art

Efforts to curb graffiti are limited in their success by the capacity of graffiti writers to evade them. In addition, certain styles of graffiti have been embraced in both the marketplace and the art world. Established graffiti writers are often commissioned to do work to lend street credibility to advertising campaigns or to lend an Public edginess to film and television sets. Contemporary art galleries in many cities have sponsored exhibitions of work by graffiti writers. And, of course, paint manufacturers stand to gain from the ongoing proliferation of graffiti, and many have developed products specifically designed for graffiti writing (Abel, 2007, 12). Furthermore, there has been substantial (if uneven) support for the provision of legal graffiti spaces in many cities, and often, this support comes from state or state-funded agencies who work closely with young people. Here, however, there is an important distinction to be ...