As you know in the concept of street art we can find many different forms of artistic expression. The most-known form is graffiti, which in history of art is described as “a kind of technique and artistic activities, which consists of scrubbing or painting of words, signs,
pictures on the walls of buildings in public places.” However, in the ordinary meaning of the term has been narrowed down to painting to, in which spray paint is used.
Graffiti we know it was founded in New York in late ’60s and ’70s. Demetrius, a Greek who lived and worked in New York was considered as a precursor of graffitti art. He was the first one who signed his “TAKI 183” pseudonym in the subway using a marker. Because of the high mobility of subway, signature “tag” was visible throughout the city. However, we can also find information about Julio 204, who was ahead of famous Demetrius and made his historic signature already in 1968. The cause of confusion is the fact that as a gang member Julio never came out further than his own district.
1971 “New York Times” as first reached “TAKI” and interviewed him, the result was that almost every kid living in New York wanted to be like him. Hand over hand the city became flooded by the “tags” , that was a problem for the writers themselves, they had to make a change to their work stand out from the sea of others.
The breakthrough came in the ’70s when the waterproof markers were slowly replaced by spray paint. This change helped “tags” to become larger and more colorful, with the same effort and work time. The paintings quickly moved to the walls of public buildings. The Brooklyn Bridge became the world’s first “gallery of graffiti.”
With growth of popularity, graffiti took on more and more sophisticated forms and, more importantly, was creation a canon of style construction. Fancy inscriptions with soft shapes also accompanied figural characters.
After this long introduction we got to the place, which for me is most important. At the end of the 90s in Europe became popular photorealistic style. That happened because of Daima, a German painter and also was directly related to the growing number of places where you could paint legally. Because of that, painters were able to focus more on refining their workshop and work.
But you can not only narrow graffittti in to artistic manifesto. Graffiti is also full of adrenaline contest about who will be able to leave mark in the least expected place.
Is no doubt that some of the work can be called art, creation of those items requires of the artist to have painting skills. Those few are rewarded with a possibility to exhibit their work in galleries, but they are drowning in a sea of doodle that are flooding our cities.
pictures form: http://www.streetartutopia.com/ http://koikoikoi.com http://xaxor.com http://www.123inspiration.com http://www.wild-about-travel.com http://blog.globalstreetart.com żródło http://www.andegrand.pl www.artica.org.pl/tl_files/…/historia_graffiti.pdf
