GRAFFITI

Graffiti

My mama always said graffiti was like a box a chocolates, never know what you’re gonna get. Over the years, some people have viewed graffiti as a cool art form that adds life to the drab greys of a city. One of the coolest aspects of graffiti as an art form is the fact that every single piece is unique. There’s always a piece of graffiti out there that is newer and different to the last one. It’s an art form that is constantly changing. There are various well-known artists who are praised by many for their works such as Banksy and Seen. They are seen as some of the coolest and most influential graffiti artists. There have even been artists who use various other methods to create street art; one using tiles and some using knitting. Graffiti is a vast and powerful art form. Although graffiti had to start from somewhere.

Urban graffiti all started back in New York in the late 1960s with a man who called himself Taki 183. This was his tagging name that he would quickly write around the city, in a way making himself known. Tagging is the term used for a graffiti artist’s unique signature. Tags are to be done quickly with marker or spray paint and are basically saying ‘I’m here’ or ‘I was here’. Taki 183 had first begun using a marker of the sorts to put up his tag wherever he was; he even started the trend of putting up your own tag on and in subway trains. Through doing this Taki 183 became extremely well known throughout the city, although nobody knew he was. The youths of New York at the time had realized how infamous and notorious they could become by putting their own tags on subway trains and all over the city. The idea caught on like wildfire. Their goal was to go become as well known as possible and be in as many places as possible. In this image there’s still a remnant of Taki 183’s tags from the 60s. Over time you can even see that other people have put up their own tags or their own memos. It’s a cool way for these people to leave something of themselves behind. Something so tiny and simple yet so significant spread one of the coolest forms of art known today.

Permanent markers were used in the beginning but as tagging grew, people turned to using spray paint. Spray paint enabled the tag to grow in size and expand in color. It wasn’t enough for people to have their tag scrawled all over the place because now everyone was doing it. Spray paint creatively separated taggers from artists with color, size, style, and form. With this the tag became so much more and became something more artistic than the original tag. This new style was (and still is) called throw-up, where there are two primary colors in the tag made with an outline or made with bubble-liking and large letters. From this style it evolved into other more complicated and wild styles. For some artists it’s the only way get themselves out there.  

Graffiti is something people have taken and evolved into colorful works of art that represent identity. Classic artists can have the higher class and such gaze upon their works in a gallery or museum but graffiti artists want their ideas and works out in the open, ready for the common and lowly to see, for the delinquents and younger generation to admire, and ready for the oldies to judge right or wrong. Graffiti artists are literally pouring their creativity out into the open on a wall or forcing a message upon the people. Cath Crowley, the author of Graffiti Moon, wrote a passage about graffiti saying, “I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I don't want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to brick. See this, see this. See me emptied onto a wall.” It’s an interesting quote that explains the thrills of graffiti. The thrill of spray painting on a wall in the dead of night hoping you don’t get caught and the thrill of how it will turn out and what people’s opinions of it will be. The passage is explained in a cool narrative way. Graffiti is cool for this reason; it’s a thrill and it’s exhilarating.  

Graffiti hasn’t always been praised and thought of as cool, many people see it as vandalism and see it as an eyesore. Although a lot of these people are the people who hold jurisdiction of the city, such as the mayor, his office, and the police force. Graffiti spreads quickly once it’s started in an area, relative to a Domino Effect, so the police try and prevent this. The mayor is the person responsible for the image and status of the city so they see graffiti as something that mars the face of their city. People of an older generation also tend to see graffiti as an eyesore to the local neighborhood area. Although there are a few exceptions like the older generation, there are graffiti artists from the older generation as well. In truth there is graffiti that can be widely agreed upon that it is vandalism. Graffiti can be defined and pictured as just somebody spraying random words and other jargon on a wall. This kind of graffiti isn’t the kind that is cool though. The graffiti that counts as cool and that matters to people who enjoy art are the works with color, effort and time, and talent. Some artists though have taken to other styles of graffiti.

Banksy is one of the most significant artists in the graffiti scene and also one of the most influential. His graffiti works are strongly based on using stencils. With his stencils he can make a detailed work that is different than the regular graffiti that is thrown up as a name or tag in color. Banksy’s works tend to have strong political messages within them. His works tend to be humorous and satirical, often a subtle commentary on politics and society. His works are seen all over the world but the majority are in England, his home country. Banksy is definitely the coolest graffiti artist of his generation at the moment. His stenciling technique is brilliant and the images he paints are what people really like. Some people enjoy seeing graffiti pieces decorating a wall. Banksy usually spray paints with black and white, rarely using color. Another cool thing about Banksy is that his works are crude and absurd, making people think along the lines of ‘How dare he’ or ‘How could somebody just put that up’. In these examples of Banksy’s works there is a man of the Queen’s Guard taking a leak. These men are usually seen as serious and committed and this just defaces their uptight demeanor, they’re capable of being misfits like the rest of society. People see this as funny and cool, his other works to portray such childishness and brilliance as well. His work Naked Man is a depiction of the classic and comical scene of a father trying to catch the young man with his daughter. All in all Banksy has an amazing and cool stenciling technique that many are trying to imitate themselves these days. 

Don Seen UA, the Godfather of Graffiti. Seen has been stated as the Godfather of graffiti but he was not the first man to start up the movement. He’s well known globally and he has his crew United Artists (UA) that is made up of other artists like his brother Mad, Pjay, Sin, and Duster. In the 70’s Seen and his crew started with spray painting New York’s subway lines, quickly gaining them reputation as a crew and individuals while the lines moved all over the city. Not only his talent but these subway lines that carried Seen’s works and were completely covered in them are what made him one of the coolest graffiti artists out there and still is. The state of his fame was and still is vast, at one point outside of NY he even tagged the Hollywood sign in LA. He’s even had some of his art and graffiti in galleries alongside works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Basquiat. Other graffiti artists have gained fame with different use of materials though.  

Grandmothers and their knitting have suddenly become cool. Graffiti has even expanded into various other forms of street art. Graffiti artists such as Invader and women who love knitting have even used other ways and forms to make street art. Invader grew up with a love for the game Space Invaders and many other 8-bit games, from that he derived what his artworks would be and what his name would be. His works all tend to focus on 8-bit video game characters from the 80s, such as Pacman and Space Invaders.  The medium he uses for his works is small, colorful, and squared tiles that make up the image of the invaders or the ghosts from Pacman. The tiles have a very strong paste on the back that allows them to be stuck anywhere throughout a city. It’s a different way to make street art and that’s what’s cool about it, it’s innovative. Women and sometimes men all over the globe have started a genius and cool new form of street art. They cover statues, street poles and lamps, rails, and various cold and metal objects with hand-knitted sweaters, socks, full on coverings. This image of the Charging Bull near Wall Street, NYC shows that it’s been completely covered in a pink and purple knitted sock by the artist Olek. There’s even been a case where Olek has crocheted an entire Mustang convertible.  

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still tag that wall. Graffiti has been seen as vandalism or as art since it’s start in the 60s but whether it is either, it will always be cool. Graffiti evolved from simple scribbles of ones own identity all over an area and then evolved into something more creative and suddenly it became a loved and hated art form. There are artists who have become big enough to influence people with their works and messages and all with the use of cans of paint. Who knows? Maybe todays top graffiti artists will be seen hundreds of years from now the way we currently see Da Vinci or Van Gogh.