A brief history of Graffiti

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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SO WHAT IS GRAFFITI ?

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1960s

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1970s

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1980s

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PRESENT DAY

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INTRODUCTION Most people would define graffiti as an act of vandalism, others see it as a form of art and a way of communication. Throughout the last years graffiti has become more accepted by society and has been given names such as street art. The following content will demonstrate through images and text how graffiti has developed since its origins and how society and technology influenced this.

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SO WHAT IS GRAFFITI ?

The term graffiti derives from the Greek verb graphein which means “to write�. A basic definition of graffiti is writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place.

But is that all graffiti is? A drawing on a wall? Is there no concept or idea? Are they just meaningless scribbles of paint dashed on the side of a subway train?

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Early examples of graffiti can be seen in Lascaux Caves in France where cave men had drawing on the walls of the cave. Other early graffiti can be found in ancient Greece.

This included election slogans and other drawings. The Romans were also known to have had graffiti as they would draw on the walls of the buildings they conquered.

However it wasn’t until the late 60’s that graffiti as we know it today started to emerge in American cities like Philadelphia and New York.

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1960s In 1967 Darryl McCray aka. Cornbread started to tag his name around the streets of Philadelphia with another guy who went by the name of Cool Earl. These two are said to be the founders of modern graffiti in the united states. Cornbread is also know for writing his name on an elephant in the Philadelphia Zoo. At the same time in England a famous piece of graffiti was spray-painted near Islington underground station sometime in 1967 by an avid fan of Eric Clapton’s. The graffiti captured a dog urinating on a wall that read the message “Clapton is a god”.

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Cornbread’s initial graffiti acts were based upon his love for a girl called Cynthia. He first started writing graffiti in the halls of a juvenile institution when he was 10 years old. It wasn’t until 1967 that Cornbread started writing on the streets . In the following years Cornbread started to receive a lot of media attention, appearing in newspapers, magazines and on the radio.

By the age of 17 Cornbread had stopped writing but little did he know that what he had started would become a cultural phenomenon and spread to every corner of the world.

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1970s In the late 60s early 70s graffiti had spread it’s way across to New York City. Tags started to appear on street signs, telephone boxes, on the subway and many other pieces of public property. The main function of these tags was to get recognized, to spread your name, your identity even mark territory.

Earlier graffiti artists from New York were Taki 183, Julio 204, Frank 207 and Joe 136.

It was these few artists that popularized graffiti in New York City in the early 70s.

Although all these artists influenced the graffiti movement it was Taki 183 that became one of the most influential in modern day graffiti.

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TAKI 183 Taki 183 was a foot messenger in New York City and would write is name around the streets he visited. He got his name from a short Greek alternative to his name , and the number from his address 183rd Street in Washington Heights.

Although many believe that Taki 183 was one of the first graffiti artists of New York it was in fact Julio 204 who had been tagging for a few years earlier.

Julio 204 was one of the first but only tagging in his neighbourhood didn’t get him much popularity whilst Taki 183 was tagging everywhere in New York.

On Friday the 21st of July 1971 The New York Times published and article about Taki 183. This was sparked from his tag been seen everywhere and causing public curiosity.

After this article had been published hundreds of youths took to the streets and began to mimic Taki 183. Graffiti how now become a way to get attention and the subway had become a line of communication between different boroughs.

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Now that graffiti had become more seen in the public eye it started moving to the subway. Writers became competitive and at this point to be a writer consisted on having as many tags as possible.

Writers would ride the subway tagging as many trains as possible. Eventually they found that in train yards they could tag more trains in less time and with less chance of getting caught. It was at this point when the method of bombing had been established.

Bombing was a graffiti style that consisted of simple tags and throw ups that took less time and effort to produce creating an effective way to get your name up.

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Between 1971 and 1974 there were so many writers that tags became more unique and started to have there own style. At this time a lot of calligraphic and script styles were being developed. Other elements were added to tags such as stars and crowns.

After writers had developed there own style they began to develop the scale of there tags.

Larger tags would attract more attention as they had a bigger visual weight than smaller ones.

They began by increasing the width and thickness of letters and making an outline in a different colour. This started to be named the masterpiece or piece, with this writers could change even more there tags by adding dots, stars, checkboards to the inside of letters.

It is difficult to say who produced the first piece but it is believed to have been Super Kool 223 from the Bronx to have been one of the first.

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Whilst writers kept on developing different styles the masterpieces became more developed, starting to cover the subway trains from top to bottom. These new forms of tagging began to cover the whole subway making it nearly impossible to see out of the windows.

At this point of time some of the biggest writers were Tracy 168, Stay High 149, Barbara 62, Junior 161 and Phase 2.

The MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authorities) had to spend about 300.000 dollars at this time to remove the graffiti from the subway trains. In 1972 Mayor John Lindsay declared the first war on graffiti but it would be a long time before the city started to see the impact.

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In 1974 writers such as Tracy 168 and Blade One started to add characters, backgrounds and other elements to there pieces.

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Around 1975 there were so many writers developing different styles, creating new ways of tagging there name around New York that this period came to be known as the Golden Age of graffiti in New York City.

It was when the best writers would declare themselves kings by writing in all of the five boroughs. This was called going all city.

Between 1975 and 1977 New York witnessed the biggest amount of graffiti bombing the city would ever see. At this point the MTA were spending millions on removing graffiti and adding more security.

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Writers started to form Crews, groups of writers that would tag the crew initials next to there own tag. Most crews were made up of three letters.

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Coming to the late 70s a new system to remove paint from the train, it was called “buff�. At the same time as getting the trains clean this created a new challenge for writers.

Buffed trains became a new target for writers.

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1980s In the early 80s the war on graffiti was hitting harder and the writing culture deteriorated. Pieces on subway trains would run for less time, access to the train yards became more difficult as fences were being repaired more often, dogs were patrolling the yards. At this moment of time many artists started to quit and begin to consider other creative careers.

As the subway got harder to paint more writers started to paint the streets and other trains rather than the subway.

Also New York was suffering from a crack epidemic making the streets more dangerous.

More gangs appeared, paint became harder to get hold of. Laws changed and penalties for graffiti were becoming more severe.

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The increase in the MTA anti graffiti budget also affected the graffiti culture. With many popular areas being inaccessible, this led many writers to quit. Others kept on writing challenging the MTA and not to be defeated.

But as getting paint was harder a lot of writers became more aggressive, claiming ownership of different train yards. This was nothing new but now the threat of getting beaten or robbed if seen in another territory was increased.

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At the same time as the war on graffiti was getting bigger the art world started to become more receptive to it and numerous writers started to work at studios and gallerias. This would prove to play an important factor in expanding graffiti overseas to Europe.

Many art dealers started to become aware of the graffiti movement and started to put up shows featuring work from artists such as Dondi and Futura 2000. These shows began to expose to the world the scene of New Yorks youth.

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With graffiti art starting to be shown in galleries and exhibitions it started to become more popular outside of America.

Hip Hop culture was expanding and at the same time was promoting the graffiti movement.

As documentaries were being made of the subculture, hip hop music was being used in them.

Artists Fab 5 Freddy and Futura started to bring hip hop and graffiti to European cities such as Paris and London.

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At the same time as graffiti was becoming more popular in other cities and cultures the city of New York began a five year program to eradicate graffiti.

This period of time between 1985 and 1989 became known as the Die Hard era.

Subway trains that were on the way to the scrap yards were writers only chance to get there name up on the subway. Because of the increase of security and cleaning the graffiti culture was taken a step backwards.

By the middle 0f 1986 the MTA were winning the war on graffiti, eventually removing the last graffitied train from service in 1989.

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After the last graffitied train was removed from the subway an era called the clean train movement.

Artists had to find new ways to paint, roof tops and buildings became there main objectives.

This era is mostly characterized by graffiti artists moving from subway trains to street galleries.

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PRESENT DAY Although the graffiti culture had taken a step backwards in New York it had just begun for many European cities. With tags and pieces starting to appear in many of the big capitals, graffiti had finally reached Europe. With similar styles being used to the ones in New York graffiti kept on developing.

Other ways of getting your name up were being used, from stickers to posters, to stencils and other forms different the classic spray can.

As the years went by and technology was getting better another form of art was created called street art. Which consisted in using image than text. This form of art became very popular in Europe and more accepted in society than graffiti.

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From the late 60s when kids just wanted to get girls attention by writing there names around the city to the present day when graffiti has more of a meaning than just having as many tags and pieces as possible. Graffiti has developed in many ways and as some may see it as vandalism others see it as art. Society has mostly had a negative reaction to this form of art but as time goes by and society develops we have become to understand its meaning and appreciate more its value.

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