The Evolution of Graffiti

Derived from the Italian "sgraffito" meaning 'scratch' graffiti has been around since the beginning of mankind. Pictures, such as those at the Lascaux Caves in France, were mostly carved into the cave walls with bones or stones, but early man also anticipated the stencil and spray technique, blowing coloured powder through, hollow bones around his hands to make silhouettes. In ancient Greece, fragments of clay were found on which notes had been carved, while excavations in Pompeii brought to light a wealth of graffiti, including, election slogans, drawings and obscenities.

In 1904, the first magazine to focus on toilet graffiti was launched: Anthropophyteia. Later on, during the Second World War, the Nazis used writing on the walls for their propaganda machines to stir up hatred towards Jews and dissidents. However, graffiti was also important for resistance movements as a way of publicizing their protests to the general public. One example is 'The White Rose', a group of German nonconformists who spoke out against Hitler and his regime in 1942 through leaflets and painted slogans, until their capture in 1943. During the student revolts in the 1960's and 1970's, posters and painted words. French students often turned to the pochoir( the French word for stencil graffiti)technique, the precursor of the present-day stencil movement. Today graffiti developed towards the end of the 1970's in New York and Philadelphia, where artists such as "TAKI 183, JULIO 204, CAT 161 and CORNBREAD,painted their name on walls or in subway stations around Manhattan. The unique make-up of New York City-in which the Harlem slums and the glamorous world of Broadway stand side by side-seems to have been a breeding ground for the first graffiti artists, bringing together many different cultures and class issues in one single place. This environment fuelled an artistic battle against the power brokers in society, and a breakaway from poverty and the ghetto.CORNBREAD, for example, became notorious by spray painting his "tag" ( the striking signature of a graffiti artist) on an elephant in a zoo. Through these pioneers, American graffiti was born, sweeping through the world and drawing thousands of youngsters under its spell. Initially graffiti artists often used either their real names or nicknames, but soon the first pseudonyms started to appear. The glut of new graffiti artists brandishing their names across the whole city inspired writers to find new ways to make their work stand out. Tags got bigger and bigger until the first pieces' (short for "masterpieces') appeared on New York trains. Many artists sought recognition, either by spray painting the most trains or the best pieces. Stencil street artists,meanwhile, wanted to communicate with the passerby or shape their environment without any constraints. SEEN, LEE, DONDI (RIP*)STAYHIGH 149, ZEPHYR, BLADE and IZ the WIZ became heroes, through the sheer quantity and quality of their work. Artists initially targeted trains because they often travelled through the whole city and were seen by millions of people. By the mid-1980's, it was claimed, there was not a single train that had not at one time been spray-painted from to top to bottom. This changed in around 1986, when the New York authorities too steps to protect their property from graffiti by putting up fences around station yards and buffing trains regularly. As the New York writers travelled around, the graffiti phenomenon spread throughout the whole of the USA, and soon trains became targets in Europe. At the same time, the first exhibitions too place in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Pieces started to appear in almost every European city from the early 1980's, although Amsterdam and Madrid had fostered an earlier graffiti movement that had its roots in punk. However, it was only really with the arrival of hip-hop that the European graffiti scene took off. The majority of graffiti in Europe was based on the American model, which remains the most popular to this day. With hip-hop, graffiti entered almost every Western and Western-influenced country and then started to edge out further afield. Asia & South America caught on later, but their graffiti culture is now growing at a phenomenal rate and has already reached high standard, particularly in South America. AKUSER 189