Graffiti
In this essay I will look at
graffiti as a cultural text, with specific
reference to graffiti in
Firstly I will give a brief
history of urban graffiti and why people do
it. I will then look at how graffiti is
perceived
both by youth and authority, showing how graffiti is seen to be out of
place in
many societies, but is now increasingly becoming in place, especially
in
Graffiti has always been
visible in human society from the first cavemen
drawing pictures of their lives on the walls of caves to the ancient
Egyptians
writing complex hieroglyphics inside pyramids.
However, what I am going to discuss is modern urban
graffiti. This kind of graffiti apparently
originated
in 1971 in New York when a young man
started writing TAKI 183 on walls around the city, “the name appeared
to
signify nothing other than a made-up name – not so much an identity as
a pseudo
identity” (Cresswell 1996:32). Others
soon followed the example and ‘tags’ started springing up on walls all
over
As would be expected a moral
panic ensued (well the youth were having
fun doing something that the dominant society neither liked nor
understood) and
all kinds of methods from the use of antigraffiti paint to an annual
antigraffiti day, where Boy and Girl scouts would clean graffiti off of
subway
trains and public buildings, were initiated by the city government. However, as with most youth subcultures, after
attempts by the government to prohibit it, graffiti became common place
in
Sibley (1981) discussed how
outsiders are linked with words such as
dirt, filth and rubbish as they are not accepted parts of the dominant
society,
he looks at how the hegemonic binary oppositions define what is right
and
wrong, ‘in place’ and ‘out of place’, one part will ultimately define
the
other. If clean is good, then dirty is
bad, if rural is good then urban is bad and those who do not fit in
with one or
the other, in Sibley’s case, gipsies, then they are deviant, they do
not
conform to either of the oppositions and are therefore ‘out of place’. Cresswell (1996) discusses how the same words
are used to describe graffiti and how to the dominant society graffiti
is seen
as pollution, filth and dirt, but these perceptions of what is and is
not dirt
are socially constructed due to the transgression, by people, objects
or texts,
of socially constructed symbolic boundaries.
Without these socially constructed symbolic boundaries
there would be no
‘in place’ or ‘out of place’,
“Things that transgress
become dirt – they
are in the wrong place. If there was no
“wrong place,” there could be no transgression”
(Cresswell, 1996:38-39).
“Shoes are not dirty in
themselves, but it
is dirty to place them on the dining table; food is not dirty in
itself, but it
is dirty to leave cooking utensils in the bedroom, or food bespattered
on
clothing; similarly, bathroom equipment in the drawing room; clothing
lying on
chairs; out-door things in-doors; upstairs things downstairs; under
clothing
appearing where over-clothing should be, and so on”
(Douglas, 1966:36).
Graffiti is seen by members
of older generations as out of place, as
vandalism and dirt. Graffiti is common
place in urban areas and to younger generations is seen as part of the
urban
landscape and some even see it as art.
The concept of something being out of place is dependent
on the values
of those who are experiencing it. I have
spoken to a number of young people in
There are however those who
condemn graffiti completely, they see no
value and are unable to accept that it has become an integral part of
the urban
landscape.
“Graffiti is the skin cancer
of our civilization…if it
has value it is because it is a symptom of something rotten…Turn your
head
because the stuff is bloody, bloodless brutality”
(Hagopian
1988 quoted in Cresswell 1996).
The language used in this
quote, by Hagopian, is really interesting, Cresswell
goes on to describe how graffiti is seen by some as a disease, a rash
on the
environment and a symptom of urban decay and disorder.
It is common to see graffiti in run down
urban areas blighted by crime as opposed to safe, ordered urban areas. Some even go as far as to describe graffiti
writers as insane, illiterate beings connecting them to asylum inmates
who are
encouraged to write on the walls in order to express their feelings.
Graffiti has always been seen
as out of place, it is illegal and much of
it is done at night in hidden away railway yards and other such places. It takes quite a while to complete a piece
that is why it is rare to see very good pieces in open public areas. It is however, quite easy to see out of place
graffiti. Walking around any city you
will see walls and signs covered in tags (plate 1).
Plate
1 – A ‘Tagged’ sign in
Graffiti is art, if an unmade
bed (plate 2) or a dead sheep (plate 3)
can be art, then it is relatively easy to understand how a colourful
picture
painted onto a wall (plate 4) can also be perceived as art.
Plate 2 – “My
bed” by Tracey
Emin (source: www.bbc.co.uk), art?
Plate 3 –
“Away from the
flock” by Damien Hirst (source: www.bbc.co.uk),
art?
Plate 4 –
“Fish” – by Chex,
art?
Looking at these three pieces
of ‘art’ could you say that one was more artistic
than the others? What skills do you need
to display in order for something to be ‘art’?
Can you just call something ‘art’ for it to be ‘art’, it
seems that in
the case of Emin and Hirst just by calling something ‘art’ and
exhibiting it in
a gallery makes it ‘art’. But to many,
the painting on the wall by Chex (although painting is one of the most
basic
forms of art) is not perceived as art.
Of course there are those who do not see Emin’s and
Hirst’s work as art,
in the same way there are those who do not see Chex’s work as art, but
a large
part of the dominant society will be happy to accept something as art,
if it is
in a gallery and they are told that it is art.
There are those who would
feel that unless the art is displayed in a
gallery or some other appropriate space, then it is not art, this
highlights
how the meaning of a cultural text can differ greatly depending on
those who
are experiencing it and the location in which it is being experienced,
and
whilst graffiti remains out of place in society it is increasingly
difficult
for it to be recognised as art. There
have been attempts all over the world to exhibit graffiti in galleries,
but it
does not have the same meaning as when it is sprayed on a wall in an
urban
environment, “while they [peripheral groups] may be considered exotic
and
interesting at a distance, they become deviant when enmeshed in the
social
mainstream because of the hegemony of the dominant value system”
(Sibley,
1981:5). For graffiti to be ‘in place’
it needs to be part of the urban
landscape but for many this would appear to be ‘out of place’, so in
order for
graffiti to be perceived as ‘in place’, it is necessary to change the
values
and perceptions of those who feel that within an urban landscape
graffiti is
‘out of place’.
Graffiti is now, however,
becoming more in place. Recently Plymouth
City Council has been
actively encouraging graffiti in certain areas of the city. Something, that I have been told, is already
practiced in other urban areas. The
Plymouth Writers Bench have made an agreement with the council that
they will
only write in specially designated areas in exchange, the council have
been
supplying them with spray paint. You can
see some of this work around
Plate
5 – Graffiti on
Whilst I was out
photographing some of this work on a Saturday afternoon
I spoke to some passers by, from families to pensioners, and many
commented
that they liked it and felt that it brightened up the area. An unspoken rule of graffiti writers is that
you do not tag on a piece, so places that have been decorated tend to
remain
so, unlike a freshly painted wall of a building which will soon be
covered in
unsightly tags. A really good example of
this can be seen outside Bigga Records on
Another example of graffiti
becoming in place is in the Bus Stop Club in
Bretonside bus station,
Plate
6 – Graffiti covered walls inside The Bus Stop,
Graffiti is an important
aspect with regards to the Bus Stop. The
research I undertook for my dissertation
highlighted how the Bus Stop was a locals’ venue and the use of
graffiti to
decorate the space has ensured that it feels like a locals’ venue. Graffiti has long been seen to be young males
marking their territory by writing their names, or pseudonyms, on
walls, they
are letting others know that they are there and it is their space, “the
practice of graffiti by dominant groups makes claims upon the meaning
of
spaces” (Cresswell, 1996:47). The fact
that the owners of the Bus Stop have encouraged local graffiti writers
to
decorate the space with their personal writings is again enforcing the
idea
that it is a local space. Many of the
locals who attend the venue know the graffiti writers, therefore, the
writing
on the walls will mean more to them than to non-locals.
An example of this would be that one of the
writers always adds his girlfriend’s name to his work, this is
something that
would only be known by those who are part of this local core group and
those
that recognise this will be able to further develop their sense of
belonging to
the space. The use of graffiti to mark
territory can be greatly contested, not only by authorities but also by
other
graffiti writers. A wall can become a
battle ground with the graffiti changing regularly as different writers
battle
it out on a wall to claim their space,
“Its weapons are sprayed
words and its war
wounds amount to nothing more than a few dented egos.
This fight is between two graffiti writers
and it takes place on the wall”
(Macdonald, 2001:1).
Finally, I want to discuss
some semiotics in relation to graffiti, I want
to try and show how I feel that graffiti relates really well to the
chapter by
Roland Barthes on the death of the author in his book Music-Image-Text
(1977). Barthes
says that once a cultural text is produced the author cannot add to or
produce
any meaning for it, and what is important is what the cultural text
means to
the audience, which can be affected by numerous different factors from
the
audience’s background to the environment in which it is experienced,
“you bring
to it your own ways of seeing and other kinds of knowledges” (Rose,
2001:25),
for example, a book will have a very different meaning to a reader who
is
unable to read or who does not understand the language it is written
in, as
compared to the meaning given to it by a literary academic. In discussing Barthes’ work, Rose (2001) puts
forward the argument that “since the
image is always made and seen in relation to other images, this wider
visual
context is more significant for what the image means than what the
artist
thought they were doing” (23). Graffiti
is produced by anonymous authors due to its illegality and the artistic
style
of graffiti means that it is sometimes difficult to decipher what is
actually
written, plate 7 shows some indecipherable graffiti, it is not
important what
the text says, what is important is what the audience thinks it says or
what it
may mean to them.
Plate
7 – Indecipherable graffiti,
Sometimes the author will try
to give the text a specific meaning, plate
8 shows a graffiti advertisement for a local free magazine which
sponsors some
of the graffiti writing in Plymouth, but this will only have the
meaning that
the author wanted if the audience is from the same social background as
the
author and is aware of what “24-7” actually is.
Plate
8 – Graffiti with meaning?
The meaning of graffiti can
change depending on the environment that it
is viewed in, as I mentioned earlier, the attempts to display graffiti
in
galleries meant that it’s meaning was different from when it was
sprayed on a
wall in an urban area. “Just as dirt
becomes dirty according to its context, graffiti's displacement to art
galleries changes its meaning. When appropriated and commodified
(bought and
sold for money) by the art world, graffiti
changes to art” (Vogeler, 1996): "Crime
becomes creativity, madness
becomes insight, dirt becomes something to hang over the fireplace"
(Cresswell,
1996:49). Once graffiti is
transformed
into art its audience also changes, and as Barthes (1977) will tell us,
this
will give the text a completely new and different meaning from the
meaning
given to it by those who have viewed it on the street.
Graffiti means many different
things to many different people, to some
it is a way of life, I know people who spend all of their time
designing new
pieces, saving up for paints and spending all of their spare time
spraying
walls; to others it is a part of their culture, like me, I know writers
and will
notice graffiti on walls because of my association with writers; many
do not
even really notice graffiti, it is just a part of the urban
environment; and to
some it is filth, disease and vandalism produced by illiterate,
mindless
idiots.
In this essay I have shown
how graffiti means so many different things
to different people. Graffiti can be art
or graffiti can be vandalism, graffiti can mark territory or brighten
up dull
urban areas. The meaning of graffiti and
other cultural texts can vary greatly depending on who is experiencing
it and
where they are experiencing it. I have
told you what graffiti means to me and why and I hope that I have made
you
think about graffiti and what it means to you.
References
Barthes,
R. (1977) Image-Music-Text.
Cresswell,
T (1996) In Place Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and
Transgression. The
Emin,
T. (2000) “My Bed” (photograph) [online] available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/835932.stm
[01.05.03]
Hagopian,
P. (1988) cited in Cresswell, T (1996) In Place Out of Place:
Geography,
Ideology, and Transgression. The
Hirst,
D. (1999) “Away from the flock” (photograph) [online] available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/456316.stm
[01.05.03]
Macdonald,
N. (2001) The Graffiti Subculture.
Palgrave, Hampshire.
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Sage Publications,
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Blackwell,
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Critical Cultural landscapes of
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