Category: 18 October

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Contemporary Graffiti

These articles discuss the trends in graffiti artists. Is there a stereotypical graffiti artist and a typical place in which graffiti is created? These chapters point out gender, political, and religious themes in both graffiti subjects and artists. There is an idea that all graffiti artists are male. This is because many of the graffiti artists who are famous are male, so we assume that anonymous ones are also male. Sotheby’s did this on an instagram comment following their sold Banksy print by declaring that the print was renamed “by the artist himself”. Why do we make this male assumption and is it true? While there is a trend in gender, there was also a trend in political leanings on which college campuses have graffiti on campus. Both liberal and conservative schools may include graffiti on campus, but the subject of the graffiti varies in the same way that student political opinions vary. The articles also discuss religious themes in graffiti by using Keith Haring as an example.

The role of the wall is something that has been discussed regularly in this seminar. The last point of these articles is declaring walls as both positive and negative. Walls serve as barriers and as protection, they make us feel safe through closure and also make us feel separated. The connotation that comes with a wall continues when that wall has graffiti on it.

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Contemporary Graffiti

These articles and documentary showed the graffiti subculture in New York City in the 1970s (MacDonald, Gopinath, Style Wars), how this subculture changed over the next decades (Mitman), what we can learn about society by studying contemporary graffiti (Nadrea, Stocker), and what we can learn about artists through the study of graffiti (Phillips).

I learned that there is a lot more to graffiti than I previously understood. I never knew that the goal of tagging was going “All-City” and earning respect in the graffiti community through the anonymous tag you create, which becomes your alter ego (Macdonald). This virtual reality is interesting because it shows that the desire to create an alternate identity was not something new with the internet. I also found the causes and effects of government action against graffiti were very interesting. The cause for action was the public unhappiness toward the run-down subway system, which caused the feelings of resentment to be generalized onto the graffiti in the subways. Eventually graffiti came to represent something out of government control, which meant that locations with graffiti were unsafe. The effect of government action was that graffiti moved out of the subway onto the streets, and the anti-government motivations that were previously incorrectly assumed about graffiti artists, became true (Mitman).

I also found the transition to wildstyle intriguing because I assumed that wildstyle graffiti was legible to other graffiti artists and that I just couldn’t read it because I didn’t have any background information. Instead, wildstyle is intended to be illegible and gains its meaning through the style and form of the letters (Gopinath).