history graffiti

 

The word GRAFFITI simply means--words or drawings scratched or scribbled on a wall. The word comes from the Greek term "graphein" (to write) and the word "grafitti" itself is plural of the Italian word "graffito."

Art in the form of graffiti (graffiti by style and considered so only if it appears on public or private property without permission) originated in the late 1960s, but graffiti in term of public and unsolicited markings has been around for ever. Some say it represents man's desire and need for communication, and the history of this type of communication dates back to one of the first communicative acts--drawing.

It was in the late 1960s when "Julio 204" began writing his "tag" all around the city of New York. Soon following Julio came a Greek youth from Manhattan named Demitrius who tagged his own "Taki183" all over the city as well. Taki also focused on writing on the subway in New York. Even though what Julio 204 and Taki 183 did in New York eventually developed into what was called by some "New York Style" graffiti, these New York writers only popularized it. It is said that tagging first started in Philadelphia with the emergence of the legendary "Cornbread" and "Top Cat." Soon after the Philly development and the start of New York Graffiti, Top Cat's style started showing up in NYC and was called "Broadway Style" because of the long skinny lettering.

In 1971, the New York Times found and interviewed Taki 183 to try and explain this new phenomenon. Within a year of the article, "Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals," hundreds of new writers emerged and took New York City by storm.

As tagging and graffiti started blowing up in the early 70s, people were caught off guard. One day there were the "natural colors" of the city and then came all the names out of nowhere.

"You have no idea what a blow graffiti was to us," said Mayor Lindsey of New York City. "You see we had gone to such work, such ends, to get some new subway cars in. It meant so much to people here in the city to get a ride, for instance, in one of the new air conditioned cars. On a hot summer day their mood would pick up when they had the luck to catch one. And you know, that was work. It's hard to get anything done here. You stretch budgets and try to reason people into activities they don't necessarily want to take up on their own. You have to face every variety of criticism, and it all requires so much time. We were proud of those subway cars. It took a lot of talking to a lot of committees to get that accomplished.....and then, the kids started to deface them!"

Now there are some interesting points to be made about kids defacing property. You see it was much more complex than just "defacing," there are many ways writers "deface" things.

One type is the individual marks, slogans, slurs or political statements usually found on bathroom walls and stalls or on other exterior surfaces. Some refer to this as "latrinalia" or some just call it junk; this is the stuff that gives writers a bad name. There is also the individual "tag" which is a fancy way of writing ones name or nickname (nicknames often include the street number that a writer lived at, such as Taki 183, on 183rd Street in Washington Heights). A tag is usually decorated with a variety of stylish marks. Although they may have style, they still lack an aspect of quality art work--anyone can come up with and practice and put up a tag. But it is not really meant for artistic purposes--it basically indicates a writer's presence. The tag is one way that graffiti artists are similar to gang members, although gang graffiti doesn't usually evolve into anything very skillful, its purpose is to also, like for writers, indicate a presence (a gang presence) and also to mark around specific gang turf.

Although lots of writers would not want to be compared to gangsters, the two groups do have several things in common: "both seek recognition from their peers, use aliases, take part in illegal activities, see themselves as noble outlaws and are young and most often poor."

Even though graffiti has grown in style and artistic quality, even though graffiti crews can now be found everywhere from (my own) Louisville, Kentucky to mainland China, most people would still say that "New York City conceived graffiti and it will always be the capital and cultural centre of graffiti."
Also, when graffiti first started coming up, it was done predominantly by Puerto Rican and African American youths from poor inner-city neighborhoods. Now, graffiti has attracted people, male and female, of all races, religions and nationalities from the broadest types of backgrounds from all socio-economic classes, and you can regularly find writers ranging in age from 8 to their 30s.

One writer, Shmoo, commented: "Graffiti is one of the few movements that I have been involved in that includes people from all backgrounds with one goal in mind...`getting up.'" Getting up means "To hit up anything, anywhere, with any form of graffiti from a tag all the way to a wildstyle burner."