At the site of the one of the world’s oldest art exhibits, at Lascaux,
France, we can see Man’s early success at Wall-Art. Drawn nearly 20,000
years ago, this work still makes us stop walking and take notice;
something all Graffiti artists strive to accomplish today. The early
artists who created the works in these caves couldn’t possibly have
known what they had become a part of, and the legacy they left behind,
though lost for countless centuries, would be discovered again and
treasured beyond all others. Their work is our birthright.
The Formative Years
Once Man discovered his ability to modify his surroundings, art began to
cover cave-walls and rocks all over the world. Even so, despite Man’s
penchant for progress, graffiti was slow to evolve during its first
several thousand years of its early existence. While amazing displays in
their own right, it would still be ages before the human qualities of humor, lust, and rivalry begin to work their way into the budding art-world.
Adolescence
It seems true of any subject in any era, that with time comes comfort
and with comfort comes complacency. The Dark Age’s affects were not
limited to daily life, education, research and freedom. Art and its
front-line manifestation of the urban populace, graffiti, suffered as
well; during this period it seems as though people simply stopped
trying. Graffiti degraded to simply marking names over other artists’
work, usually in foreign countries freshly invaded. The occasional,
humorously lewd depiction of sexual escapades could be found from time
to time, such as the above drawing from a castle in Bulgaria, but for
the most part graffiti as we know it today lay dormant throughout the
period. It would be another 200 years before the first semblance of
modern Street-Art would begin to appear.
http://weburbanist.com/2009/04/22/roots-and-history-of-modern-street-art-and-graffiti/
Modern day graffiti as we know it started in New York City.
Graffiti. Artists chose names, or "tags", that were short, easy, and
could be written quickly. Many early taggers chose names that
represented what part of the city they came from. Such was the case for
Taki 183, from 183rd street in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Taki 183
is credited as being the first tagger in New York City. Taki was a foot
messenger and being on the subway, he put his name along the trains and
streets during his travels across the city. A 1971 New York Times
article titled "Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals" was referring to the growing
number of people who, like Taki, chose to mark their territory with
names like Stay High 149, Phase 2, Cay 161 and Joe 182.
Tags
quickly became more elaborate as writers tried to make their letters
stand out from others. Competition grew as "getting up" became the most
important thing a writer could do. The more places you tagged, the more
people saw your name, the more famous you became. Tags soon gave way to
"bombing" or covering an entire wall or door or any area with tags. In
1972 an artist known as Super Kool 223 is known to create the first
masterpiece or "piece" as it would be known. The piece was more than
just a tag, it included an outline, a fill in, shadows, and effects of
clouds, sparkles or shapes around the outside or inside the letters. The
piece was multicolored and took much longer to create, however it was
much more visible thus giving the artist much more exposure.
Artists would break into the train yards where the New York City
Metropolitain Transit Authority parked their subways and cover the train
cars with elaborate pieces. This is where bombing is said to have been
perfected as the usually unguarded trains would soon become rolling
exhibits of artist's work that would be displayed to millions of people
as the trains rolled through the city's subway stations. This is also
where the use of spray paint became a must for artists who would do
"whole cars" and "top to bottoms" covering the whole train cars with
their name. The new goal for a writer was to have his or her work go
"all city" and be seen in all five boroughs of New York City.
In
1979 Fab Five Freddy, a rapper, and Lee Quinones, a graffiti artist,
had their works displayed at a gallery opening in Rome. Lee displayed
many different works of art by both himself and other famous New York
City graffiti artists. This was the first mainstream exposure that
Europe had gotten to the new art form. England had its own underground
graffiti scene that mostly done by punk rockers and their fans in
London, but the rest of Europe had seen very little of this emerging
movement that was taking New York City and the rest of the US by storm.
Tags and pieces soon became common sights in cities like London, Paris,
Amsterdam, Rome and Oslo.
During the 1980's with the graffiti
movement in full swing, the government started to crackdown on illegal
tagging and bombing. The crack epidemic had made the streets much more
dangerous and graffiti was seen as a nuisance. The Metropolitan Transit
Authority in New York City began to clean their train cars thoroughly,
making it nearly pointless to do any type of graffiti on them since the
public would never see the pieces. Authorities actively seeked graffiti
artists, guarding areas that were more prone to graffiti and increased
penalties for those caught writing. Many graffiti artists however, chose
to take the changes as a challenge rather than a reason to stop.
Bombing in the subways gave way to aggressive bombing in the streets by
die hard writers such as BG 183, Blade, Dondi, Cope2 and Skeme. Many
artists found that getting up in their own neighborhoods would lead them
to be caught easier so they traveled to other areas of the city to
write.
Through the late 1980's and early 90's the graffiti
movement spread like wildfire both nationwide and worldwide. In Los
Angeles, Mexican American muralists incorporated graffiti into their
artwork, producing some of the most intense street art in the country.
Street gangs in Chicago, Dallas
and many other cities nationwide use graffiti to mark territory and
threaten rival gang members. In Europe and Asia where hip hop culture
had become just as big as in the US, graffiti artists were bombing the
trains and walls of nearly every major city.
Today, graffiti is
becoming more of an accepted art form in many ways. While stronger laws
and more effective cleaning methods have made it harder than ever to get
up these days, an underground scene still flourishes around the US, as
well as the rest of the world. Graffiti is on display in the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, where writers from the 70's and 80's such as Futura 2000,
Lady Pink, Crash and Daze are featured. Designers such as Marc Ecko and
PNB Nation use graffiti in their logos and on their clothing lines. And
legal murals can be found in many inner city neighborhoods. In New York
City the TATS Cru has murals all over the city in memory of deceased
famous people such as Notorious BIG, Big Pun, Tito Puente Princess Diana
and Mother Theresa. Graffiti is so much more than an illegal form of
art. Graffiti has become an important part of pop culture, and a well
respected form of art.
http://voices.yahoo.com/graffiti-street-art-brief-history-755363.html?cat=16
Example of Graffiti today:
Boa
Mistura - Perspective typography. I really want to do this somewhere
and so does Sam Lane. We will get around to doing it soon.
Keith Haring - artist
and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street
culture of the 1980s. He focused on graffiti using marker pens and spray
paint.
'Art Is Power'
'Portrait of Andy Warhol' 1989
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