Modern graffiti (the type that one most likely sees on a possibly neglected corner of a city) is a staple of many movies, shows, and even photos. To acquire knowledge regarding its history, one needs to travel back in time to the 1960s. During that time period, people in New York City started writing their names on the walls of buildings. The graffiti of the time was also very simple, mostly names and numbers. Below is an example photo of graffiti from that time period.
However, the simplicity of modern graffiti was not retained for long. The introduction of the aerosol spray can catapulted the evolution of modern graffiti to new heights. With the aerosol spray can, people could create intricate drawings and writings at a pace never witnessed before. Below is an image showcasing what an aerosol spray can from the time looked like.
After the rapid spread of graffiti throughout New York City. Artists began to target subway cars as places to place their tags. Over time, the graffiti on subway cars that started out as simple tags evolved into large, complex works due to the artists seeking flashier displays that strayed them further away from the increasingly common tag-style graffiti. Below is an image showcasing what a subway car from the time period looked like.
The graffiti eventually became commonplace enough to the point where the New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) started to view it as a major vandalism issue in the 1980s. The MTA initiated a five-year Clean Car Program in 1984 that aimed to eradicate graffiti on the subways through not allowing subway cars to be in service until all graffiti was cleaned off. The aim of the program was to make subway cars such as the one in the previous image look like the subway cars in the image below.
Despite attempts by organizations like the MTA and the New York police to eradicate graffiti, the impact of graffiti was already carved into the world. By the 1980s, graffiti became a great part of New York’s hip-hop culture and was spread around the world through media that often filmed and recorded New York’s hip-hop. Hip-hop graffiti works like the one below were done when graffiti became an essential part of hip-hop and spread throughout the world due to media.
While text-based graffiti remained prominent, artists were starting to stray away from it in order to create more picture-based works, which paved the path for graffiti to morph into the form in which one would see it in a city of the present day. Below is an example of picture-based graffiti that later appeared as a result of artists straying away from text-based graffiti.
With those previous aspects mentioned, there remains one undiscussed aspect of graffiti that is legality. Graffiti is largely illegal and considered vandalism by most jurisdictions. That, in turn, hinders its ability to become its own category of art. Artists have found solutions to the legality issue through seeking city spaces offered by organizations for graffiti and featuring their art in galleries and museums. The image below is a photo of a graffiti museum in Miami.
