MY ARTICLE:- Graffiti Culture.
Graffiti. A scribble on the wall? From the‘Jazz woz ere’ scrawled on the bus window with a cheap permanent marker to multicoloured murals with more than just a hard hitting message.
Graffiti has been described as a stain that plagues our urban environment, another social evil added to the ever growing list. Why are the views on graffiti so negative?Why is not regarded as the art form that some people believe it should be? To answer these questions we must really come to understand not just the mentality that a graffiti writer has, but also the culture that fuels such controversial activity.
Modern Graffiti has been disapproved and disregarded as an art since the "pioneering era" between the years 1969 – 1974.When writer ‘TAKI 183’ began to scrawl his tag name whilst on his travels as a foot messenger this sparked up media attention from the ‘New York Times’ in the form of an article called ‘TAKI 183' Spawns Pen Pals’ from this graffiti worked its way into the media and also onto the walls. By the time of the early 70’s to the early 80’s Graffiti had evolved from ‘TAKI 183’ commuting scribbles to a so called ‘epidemic’in
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New York city, or in other words the culture of graffiti was expanding and developing very quickly. With figures such as ‘Friendly Freddie’ who has been often credited for expanding graffiti and hip-hop music far past its Bronx roots, graffiti was finding new homes across the world. Cities seemed to be the hotspots for graffiti and by the time of the early 90’s almost every major city had many graffiti artist roaming the urban jungle and painting without rest, with the rising spread of graffiti it wasn’t long before the media again started to deem it in a negative way and so, naturally the general public adopted this negative view and so the variousstereotypes emerged about graffiti, it seemed as though the media was focusing on the petty vandalism that was labelled graffiti but in actual fact was nothing more than a thirteen year olds depiction of Sally down the road.
Many graffiti artists or writers feel that this is a unjust way in which they and their art work is viewed, I spoke to graffiti writer ‘Alpha’ who has been painting the London streets for 10 years, since the young age of fourteen. He told me ‘Graffiti has always been there for me, through the good times and the bad times, when I was young I found it hard to express myself, I was dyslexic and found myself finding it hard to put my feelings on to paper, the only way I seemed to be able to really show my true emotions was through art, but the sketches in my note pad weren’t enough, I wanted the world to know how I felt. It seemed as though if you wanted your message to be portrayed you needed to pay for it either with money or a court case, just because a message has been legally paid for and has been given permission to be placed there, doesn’t nessercerly mean that its giving out a good message, I remember reading a quote when I was around sixteen years old, it read "People with money can put up signs ... if you don't have money you're marginalized...you're not allowed to express yourself or to put up words or messages that you think other people should see. Camel (cigarettes), they're up all over the country and look at the message Camel is sending...they're just trying to keep the masses paralyzed so they can go about their business with little resistance." – Eskae’ this really gave me a insight into the deeper side of graffiti, the side that wasn’t just about ‘tagging’ and getting your name everywhere, it showed me the side that really wanted to portray a message, something meaning, something that when a person walks by it makes them think about the issue or topic displayed. I discovered I can have an effect on which the way people view and treat the world they live in’
Alpha was keen to explain to me the thin line in which people judge what is vandalism and what is graffiti, he told me that”people assume that because something is written without permission on a wall it is vandalism, but if it is done in the more ‘legal’ approach e.g. in gallery’s or legal wall’s people tend to appreciate the art of the graffiti, rather than the society’s concept on what is right or wrong”. It seems evident that graffiti is more than just writing on walls and more than just ‘vandalism’ it is a art form, a channel of unique expression understandable only by those that posses the ability think for themselves and have their own views of events of the world and are notcontrary to believe anything the media spews out of its perverted mouth. It seems as though the fact is that many believe it is wrong but to what extent are they willing to try and understand the concept behind graffiti, and really take in the message rather than reject it without any real attempt of understanding the hard work and thought that went into the graffiti displayed in front of their eye’s.
To help overcome this ignorant view, artists such as Banksy have emerged, they strive to help challenge people’s views of graffiti, his art has been portrayed as thought provoking and questions the lifestyles that people (especially in urban environments) live. His style is unique when compared to other graffiti artists, instead of painting ‘murals’ and spraying ‘pieces’ he produces stencils. These are in a sense frames of pictures that when sprayed leave a image (often very realistic looking) on the wall, he has manipulated these stencils to create his art and it makes them very unique in terms when in comparison to other ‘graffiti’ that is in London. One of his ‘pieces’ is of rats with humanistic characteristics, displaying the idea of the ‘Rat Race’, this and countless other examples of his work have created a kind of cult following and has managed to capture peoples inner feelings though his art. Banksy has also used his art to display his political opinion, which is not uncommon as this is what graffiti is often used for even if it’s not 100 colours and took countless hours of hard work.
Graffiti has had close links with music since the ‘pioneering era’ and beyond, just as music is a way of self-expression so is graffiti and so the two grew together becoming closely interlinked and having great influence on each other. UK hip-hip group ‘Task Force’ are closely linked with Graffiti and have made various songs about graffiti such as ‘Graf Da Bus Up’ and ‘Graforiginnes’ and are constantly making references to graffiti culture in their music, helping to positively reinforce the media stereotype of Graffiti and people’s attitudes towards it.
Graffiti is clearly about communication very human activity, and believe it or not has been vital in our understanding of history and also in the understanding of people’s ideas and political views. The first person living in the cave wrote on the walls to express him or herself, the Egyptians drew many pictures on their walls and thanks to this we know what we know today, without this ‘Graffiti’ our knowledge in such areas wouldn’t have been so complex and accurate. More importantly the idea of graffiti is still thriving today, this idea of self expression with no limits, no political correctness, just using the world as your notepad, displaying ideas and opinions that’s have not been perverted by power and by money but instead messages that come from the writers heart, a real depiction of human lifestyle in the era that the graffiti has been written in. The fact remains that for as long as man has a surface to write on, no matter how many cameras are put up, no matter how hefty the prison sentences or fines may be, there will always be the writing on the wall.
Written by Tom Gale
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