From graffiti to street art

The graffiti movement started in Philadelphia in the 1960’s. This initially was not seen as

vandalism at first and it also wasn’t an activity that had a bad reputation. It all started when the

famous jazz musician Charlie Parker also called bird or birdman died. The graffiti on walls said

“bird lives” around the city. This was done to commemorate his life in the city he lived and

played in. This then spread around the city of New York 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 New York. This then escalated throughout America rapidly. It was mainly seen

on 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 used the system of the subway as then

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

mode 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. The police then took greater steps than last time to get the

tagging off the street. They did this by enforcing fines and imprisonment to all who were caught

doing this around the city. This made taggers have caution and most stopped 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 credentials, 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 cities being destroyed. 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.

The police then arrested the taggers underground, by this time graffiti was already all over the

world as it was the new craze.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 executed 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 aspect of graffiti. This is a negative because the main

argument for people who are against graffiti the effect of 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 because 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 are other arguments saying if it is a visually appealing 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 this

is wrong as no matter how good something is if you don’t have permission it is against the law

full stop. Another disadvantage is that graffiti can offend people. In this day and age a lot of

things offend many people. If this is the case the graffiti would cause offence and would need to

be removed. The main types of offensive graffiti is religion, race, sexuality or gang related

slogans and these gain bad publicity for the area. 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. When one crime increases, crime in the area it is

known as “the broken window effect”

Cost of clean up:

The 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. According to the BBC ‘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. This is bad as the

culprits did not receive consequences 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 which 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 such as fines

or prison.This also 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 and wastes time which could be used for other things such as cleaning up

litter, helping others, building or other council jobs.

Makes an area look intimidating:

Graffiti can make an area look intimidating which overall gives the area a bad image which can

reduce tourism which decreases in income and house prices in the area. Another disadvantage

is the broken window theory. The 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 upset by damaging certain meaningful places. This is

usually done by tagging. The meaningful places 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 which is disrespectful however i think that the pain

caused by this is nowhere near the pain he caused people with all of the deaths, however this

has also occurred on people's graves who has done nothing wrong but somebody just disliked

him what is disrespectful. 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. Personal hurt could also be caused 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 pay 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 has also been compared to the street art movement as people think that it is the new

and modern graffiti. About three decades ago, street art movement has been described as one

of the logical continuations of the Pop art, but this urban style has very much grown since.

Brought to light by Basquiat and Keith Haring, street art entered the stage with much hype.

Developing stages have taken street art 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.” The key difference of pop art is to celebrate modern movement however most street

artists such as the likes of banksy hate the modern so this is another way in which it is different.

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.