| In New York, during 70s of 20th Century, teenagers - losers created a new type of creativity. Artists left their symbols throughout the city, as a result of which “plague” of house keepers around the world - Graffiti came into being.
Graffiti artists look with deep professional concupiscence at freshly whitened walls of houses, bright but single shaded vehicles, morosely similar metro trains and virgin gray walls of tunnels. They soon perceived the chasm which divided them from the powers that be. Works, artistic value of which was soon accepted around the world, were qualified by cops as nothing but damaging of private and public property and vandalism.
The time when masters of this genre would be invited to decorate exteriors and interiors of buildings for big money was still ahead. For the time being graffiti artists existed in organic symbiosis with all types of street cultures of America, especially with Hip-Hop, insolent energy and mobility of which better suited the objective requirements of a graffiti - artist, than the withering rock or abstract transvestite techno.
One more specific feature of the art graffiti, motivated largely by instinct of self-preservation, than by frugality of artists, remains anonymity of these masterpieces. Value of graffiti is not only determined by how it has been drawn, but also, where. It is natural that the hot-rodder, who drew on the walls of a police station, shall not think of leaving his personal signature and communication phone number under his creation. Due to this, names of outstanding graffiti artists were known to a few close people and conspiring became part and parcel of the community.
In the 80s, together with the popularity of hip-hop, the genre graffiti also became renown throughout the world. Although, New York continued to be the Mecca of all graffiti artists, style and subject of the wall writings made with the help of paint spraying canisters were greatly mutated in correspondence with the mood and experiences of each city.
Graffiti arrived in Europe not as a self-contained phenomenon but as a part of the hip-hop culture. Strategy of the relationship of local graffiti artists with power structures from the beginning was directly opposite to what is reflected in books and films about the guerrilla wars of underground New York artists. European graffiti groups approached the administration of cities and made arrangements for work place. Simple and civilized.
As a result European graffiti became what it is today throughout the world – one of the methods for decorating buildings. Some experts consider it to be a dead genre, but it is pleasant to look at walls of a club or own backyard painted with spattered aerosols. |
This Saturday, graffiti vandals tagged nine houses, garages and vehicles of over nine streets in Rockford, IL. Local police declared a hunt for the graffiti gang artists, and are trying to stop this artistic crime.
