From graffiti to street art

The graffiti movement started in Philadelphia in the 1960’s. This did not start as vandalism at

first and it also wasn’t a activity having a bad reputation. It all started when the famous jazz

musician Charlie Parker also called bird or birdman. The graffiti was on walls and said “bird

lives” around the city. This was put to commemorate his life in the city he was most known in.

This then started going around the city of Philadelphia vandalising properties and places of

interest around the city, this was then named as tagging. This consisted of people's names then

a number usually a gang related number an example of this was “Taki 182” who was a well

known tagger in Philadelphia. This then transported from the birthplace of tagging what

escalated throughout America rapidly. The next destination for it was NYC. It then progressed to

the subway cars that travelled all around the city. Taggers used the subway cars so everyone

could see there name and gang number around the city this increased their street reputation

making them more well known. They ended up using the system of the subway as then

everyone needs to see it and doesn’t have a choice, they also used this as it is the most well

used use of transportation. After this the council and police got involved to get the taggers or

bombers off the street, to do this they cleaned off all of the graffiti off the carts across the city.

This caused a massive uproar between all of the taggers and they had an attitude of not being

beaten so they took their tagging to the streets and tagged places around the city. They tagged

places like walls, statues and public areas, generally anywhere they can get to and get their

hand on. The police noticed this and then took it into their own hands by once again cleaning all

of the graffiti off the walls etc. They then took a bigger impact than last time to truly get the

taggers off the street. They done this by making it against the law and having a fine and

imprisonment to all who was caught doing this around the city. This made taggers have caution

and most to stop as the police were checking the city on a regular basis. The taggers yet again

didn't want to be beaten and wanted to carry on increasing their street cred, so the tagging went

under the city in subway tunnels beneath the surface. This craze then went worldwide and was

happening all over the world. The police started arresting taggers to stop the city being

destroyed what it was in their eyes. Once they saw that people were getting caught the taggers

decided to go underground and bomb the underground tunnels so their name was still over the

city but they just weren't getting caught. This was bad as they were getting away with this what

caused more crime to be committed underground. The police then got onto this and caught all

of the taggers underground, by this time graffiti was already all over the world as it was the new

craze. However it was all over the world but not as tagging all of the time most people were

using different techniques to get their opinion across through street art. This brought out the

good and the bad artists. All though most art was very opinionated and good it was still illegal

and still can cause imprisonment or fines. This has caused a big debate in society in whether it

is vandalism or not. In my opinion it is not vandalism if used correctly so no tagging. There are

good reasons for and against graffiti. We will start with the negatives behind graffiti.

Criminal damage: this is the first negative behind graffiti. This is a negative because the main

argument for people who are against graffiti what is vandalism. This argument has been going

on for years by many people debating weather graffiti is or isn’t vandalism. In my opinion it is

vandalism to an extreme as if you don’t have permission to do anything it is against the law as

you don’t have permission, this is the same for graffiti as if you don’t have permission to do it

and you do it anyway it is vandalism no matter how good it looks. There is other arguments

saying if it is a good picture of art it isn’t vandalism but if it is bad or not a piece of art such as

tagging it is vandalism. In my opinion it is stupid as no matter how good something is if you don’t

have permission it is against the law full stop. Another disadvantage to do with criminal damage

is if the offensive graffiti. In this day and age a lot of things offend many people. If this is the

case the graffiti would cause a fuss and would need to be taken down straight away or worse

consequences could occur. The main types of offensive graffiti is religion, race, sexuality or

gang related things and these things are what will gain bad publicity to the area what

communities don’t want so will call it vandalism and will want someone to do something about it.

Another disadvantage is that it influences other, for example if people start doing it in a

community and get away with it they could think i could do this too and make a bad name from it

to try and be cool and be included etc. on the other hand this could also be an advantage if it

influences people in a positive way. This would be a positive if a person is influenced to bring

out their artistic talents, to make something for themselves or to get their opinion across etc.

This could also be called the knock on effect as it starts with one person then somebody else is

influenced by them making them do that same thing and it keeps knocking on like that. This

could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the context as stated above.

Cost of clean up:

Cost of cleanup is a major disadvantage for graffiti and street art. There is many ways that this

is an disadvantage, starting at the cost. In 2002 it cost the government £100 million and that

was just in London alone. This is bad as it isn’t just costing the government a lot of money it is

coming out of the tax payers money from when we pay tax. This is bad as it isn’t causing a

consequence and they keep on doing it once cleaned so money keeps on coming out of our

pockets to pay to get the walls cleaned as they offenders aren’t getting caught or are just getting

away with it what is wrong. Another disadvantage of this is that the money could be going on

something useful instead, this is because the government only have a certain amount of money

allocated for them to spend so they could be using it for something for the future such as

hospitals, schools, housing, etc but instead they are spending some of that money on cleaning

the cities what isn’t beneficial especially with no consequences what even if it was fines and

imprisonment for repeat offences as the fines would help pay for the cleanup of the graffiti. As

well as this it takes time to clean it all up and yet again costs money for labour costs from

machine hire/usage and getting or paying people to do it. This could take a matter of hours to

clean up each piece what is bad and wasting time what could be used for other things such as

cleaning up littering, helping others, building or other council jobs. The only sort of advantage i

can think from this is that it gives some people some community service instead of everyone

cleaning up litter there is some sort of service people can do so the government won’t run out of

things for inmates to do for community service, however this is only a small advantage what

doesn’t make much of a difference so isn’t the best.

Makes area look intimidating:

Overall this section is all disadvantages. Graffiti can make an area look intimidating what overall

gives the area a bad image. This is bad as this area could be the talk of the country for all the

bad reasons, if the area is given a bad image it can reduce tourism what makes that place have

a decrease in money income in the town what means the town won’t use the money income on

needed things such as buildings and places of interest such as schools or hospitals etc. Another

disadvantage is the broken window theory. This theory is that if you see a house that is well

cleaned and is always up to standard you would feel safe in that place however if you go to an

area with a broken window you would feel intimidated but then if the window has been broke for

ages you wouldn’t go back as you would see the home owners don’t care about their property

and don’t want to fix it or people just keep on smashing windows over and over again for the

sake of it what would make the area look intimidating making people not wanting to visit there

and losing tourism leading to all of my points above. As well as this if a area has a lot of graffiti

especially tagging people wouldn’t want to go to the area as tagging is linked to gangs showing

it is a heavy gang related area making people scared and not visit the area and yet again lose

tourism, so overall graffiti can change an opinion and effect on an area quickly so is important

that it is unharmful and art or that there is none at all.

Personal hurt and upset:

Graffiti can cause personal hurt and could also upset people that can be done by damaging

certain meaningful objects. This is usually done by tagging but can be done by street art but on

the rare occasion. The meaningful objects usually affected is graves or monuments. This is

disrespectful and can hurt people. The things usually put on these is if a person doesn’t agree

or finds out a past experience on a grave for example there was an image i saw that had a nazi

symbol on a grave as he was a former nazi what is disrespectful and rude. Another way to

cause personal hurt is if the graffiti to be offensive. This could be done by having racist remarks,

religious beliefs or other things like that. This could be expressed in images, words or a slogan.

This also decreases values in houses in the area as it causes stereotypes and nobody would

want to live in an area when the houses always get vandalised or have graffiti already on them.

This would decrease value and make people not want to buy houses from that area. The

stereotypes are usually bad and if people see graffiti they usually just think gangs or bad people

what is not always correct as most graffiti shows opinion and a personal message. Personal

hurt could also be dealt by personal damage to properties through vandalism. This could be

done on any object a person owns from any part of the house to the car. This would make the

homeowner have to clean for the clean up and also this could make them be scared or afraid of

the area as they don’t know who did it and why or if it would happen again. This makes them

live in a world of paranoia and want them to sell their house what could not be as easy because

of the history of the area and this is everything that could happen from vandalism on personal

property.

Pop art was also part of the graffiti movement as people think that it is the new and modern

graffiti. About three decades ago, graffiti movement appeared as one of the logical continuations

of the Pop artistic tendencies, but this urban style has very much grown since. Brought to light

by Basquiat and Keith Haring, graffiti art entered the stage with much hype. Developing stages

have taken graffiti from street into galleries, from illegality to legitimate realms, from spray-cans

to mixed media, while incorporating and assimilating styles pertinent to any of the artists’

backgrounds or opinions. Many of these artistic creations are still Pop art, but largely fused and

seasoned with other ideas or approaches, delving into diverse conceptual planes.

Bibliography:

Bomb It, 2007 movie directed by Jon Reiss

Exit through the gift shop 2010 movie directed by banksy

Trespass a history of uncommissioned urban art 2010 book authored by Carlo McCormick

Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents 2007 book authored by Anthony

Smyrski, Caleb Neelon, and Roger Gastman.