January 15, 2004
Anarchic Manifestation of Social Freedom
Graffiti at Costa do Castelo, Lisbon.
"Graffito means "scratch" in Italian, and graffiti (the plural form) are drawings or images scratched into the surfaces of walls. Illicit graffiti (of the "Kilroy was here" variety) dates back to ancient Egypt. Graffiti slipped into the studio as a subject after World War II. Artists such as Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock were interested in the way it looked, the Frenchman Jean Dubuffet was interested in what it meant as a kind of outsider art, and the Spaniard Antoni Tapies was interested in the ways it could be incorporated into his imagery of urban walls.
During the early 1970s, soon after aerosol spray paint in cans became readily available, New York subway trains were subjected to an onslaught of exuberantly colored graffiti. The words and "tags" (graffiti writers' names) were soon augmented with elaborate cartoon-inspired images. Most Graffitists were neither professional artists nor art students but streetwise teenagers from the Bronx and Brooklyn.
The popularization of Graffiti raised questions of unusual aesthetic and sociological import. Was graffiti vandalism? Or urban folk art? The writer Norman Mailer romanticized it as the anarchic manifestation of social freedom, while critics such as Suzi Gablik charged that ghetto youths were being exploited by a novelty-crazed art market." in e-fineart
Maybe they don't like the one straight tone of the walls and thought that, if these are going to be so apathic and dead, let's make them more appealing and provocative.
To some degree, I kinda like it, despite the vandalism issue. There used to be attempts to have a legalized place where these streetwise artists could perform, but it isn't the same, given that they refuse something "official" and predictable.
I suppose Graffiti is both vandalism and urban folk art depending on your perspective! From the point of view of the authorities, defacing property which doesn't belong to the Graffitists is vandalism.
It may be an effect of indoctrination by the media, but the spraypaint graffiti that I see in cities brings to my mind an image of poverty and crime. I appreciate that this may not always be the case, but the stereotype of graffiti is there and it's a difficult one to shake.
Posted by: alkam on January 15, 2004 02:05 PM