Often demonized and dismissed by politicians and police as “gang hooliganism”, graffiti and street art have nonetheless emerged as a leading force in contemporary art worldwide
Graffiti is many things to many people, but by and large it is a conversation that a city is having with itself – spoken by many voices and seen through many eyes.
Its inherent illegitimacy makes it by default interactive, which allows it to be uniquely powerful in a way many gallery-showcased artists can only dream of.
Graffiti is pervasive, yet often overlooked, typically because we are taught to disregard it. One friend of mine recently had her mind blown when she realized that graffiti actually contained text, comparing it to a “Magic Eye” stereoscopic image.
Toronto city councillor Howard Moscoe was quoted in the Toronto Star saying, “I think most people can tell the difference between a tag and artwork.” The “tag” Moscoe is referring to is a piece of graffiti that is merely a word, typically the artist’s name, as opposed to a picture.
However, I would like to suggest that tagging – while admittedly far less appealing aesthetically – is an important part of graffiti culture that not only forms the foundation of the art but also allows inexperienced readers to discover and interpret more complex pieces.
The historical timeline of graffiti is open for debate. Cave paintings and hobo symbols are worth considering for inclusion, but the earliest forms of what we would call modern graffiti appeared in the mid-20th century during the Second World War. Many U.S. soldiers, spread across the globe, would leave behind the familiar “Kilroy Was Here” tag with a drawing of a face created from a horizontal line and several circles. To this day, this remains a part of our culture – I found a Kilroy drawing, sans text, markered onto a Toronto subway ad warning people about iPod theft.
The actual culture that has now been labeled graffiti is one of the four pillars of hip-hop culture – along with MCing, DJing and breakdancing – all of which are based on expression and creativity built out of next-to-no resources.
The first single-person tagging campaign was apparently run by “Cornbread,” a.k.a. Darryl McCray, who began writing his nickname with a crown over it in 1967 in order to impress a high school crush. He went on to tag an airplane belonging to the Jackson 5 and even an elephant at the Philadelphia zoo.
This filtered through into the development of hip-hop culture in New York City in the late 70s and early 80s, when writers would use stolen supplies and stolen space in order to give themselves the artistic outlet they craved. Subway trains were the preferred canvass because a well-bombed train could then take the artists’ name and work across the entire city for many eyes to see.
When NYC cracked down on subway graffiti with their “broken windows theory” of criminal space reclamation – which postulates that neighbourhoods that seem unwatched and unprotected are more susceptible to criminal activity – local artists were pushed onto building walls and competition for territory became extremely high, making it a dangerous time for artists, who risked being attacked when going out alone.
Starting with NYC’s subway train template, graffiti took to the broader continental railway system and was soon seen by people from all over. These works often took the form of full-fledged spray-paint murals and were primarily intended to carry the artists’ tag and accompanying messages to other graffiti writers. This is where “wildstyle” emerged, which is possibly the most definitive graffiti style in today’s terms: a complex interlocking arrangement of text with arrows and symbols that was highly codified and impossible for laypeople to decipher. This is where tagging comes in handy to the newcomer, as one may not be able to recognize a masterful BACON piece without already realizing that someone is tagging the unusual word across the city.
A dispute developed within the culture between artists who would spend many hours meticulously working on a piece and those who would “Cap” (named after the artist) their pieces by just spraying a quick bubble-letter throw-up over top. These quick throw-ups are among some of the most visible today.
The street-level disputes exemplified by capping are only one of many risks graffiti artists face, including arrest and death by a speeding train while at work.
In time, street art was soon stuck with a more inclusive definition. In 1986, in Providence, R.I., Shepard Fairey designed a sticker with wrestler Andre the Giant’s face and the words “Andre the Giant Has a Posse.” These were distributed among the skateboard community as part of a campaign Fairey called “an experiment in phenomenology.” He eventually redesigned the sticker into the ubiquitous OBEY Giant.
Then there’s street art’s expansion into the world of the quasi-legal, legal and legit. Stenciling became prominent as a method of quick-application of detailed images with minimal risk of arrest. Stickers and postering (like the work of Toronto artist fauxreel) also emerged as a way for artists to apply even more detail while minimizing the actual illegal vandalism they were doing.
Contemporary installation street art (like, internationally, that of Mark Jenkins and Specter here at home) even evolved into high-technology artwork through the Graffiti Research Lab: projection “tagging” with lasers, LED “throwies” and glowing LED tags.
With this increased legitimacy came a fallover into gallery space. You can currently find a number of galleries in Toronto showcasing graffiti work. The Royal Ontario Museum also showcased a number of local street artists this past year in an exhibit called “Housepaint.”
For further exploration, check out Toronto-area graffiti blog at www.416streets.com as well as the global graffiti blog based out of NYC at
www.woostercollective.com.
-Chris McConnell, Excalibur (York University)
