Notes on Graffiti
A graffiti enthusiast under the Flickr name Satori has documented graffiti and street art in Cincinnati. Click the above image to visit his Flickr site.
Photo courtesy of Satori.
A graffiti enthusiast under the Flickr name Satori has documented graffiti and street art in Cincinnati. Click the above image to visit his Flickr site.
Photo courtesy of Satori.
In a renowned 1999 experiment by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons at Harvard University, viewers were asked to count the times a team of white-shirted players threw a ball to each other while ignoring the efforts of a similar team in black shirts. The final count was actually irrelevant. The test aimed to see how many viewers were aware of a silly intervention: a person in a gorilla suit wandered across the middle of the screen, pounded his chest, and then exited. Half of the viewers, in fact, did not see the gorilla, even though it had passed through their field of vision. The highly quoted results have since been used for the analysis of diverse phenomenon, from the blindness of cell phone users to the inattention of people under the influence of alcohol.
The goal of writing (the term used for the creation of graffiti) on public spaces is to gain recognition for the 'tag' (the particular moniker of the graffiti artist, rendered in his or her unique style). But due to selective attention, graffiti is something that the general public simply doesn't see—'see' defined as more than having a quick glimpse of something. For example, the bright burst of paint along the highway wall in the form of mutated lettering is (for the average person) dismissed as vandalism before it is properly observed. The colors may make the work stand out and be lightly acknowledged, but the form, tag name, etc. will rarely register; the work is not considered in its individuality. If people do not see the graffiti on its own terms—the particular artists' work as an evolution of the style's aesthetic—then they cannot be expected to appreciate it. Any discussion of graffiti must begin with this simple fact: it is not looked at by anyone save a small minority, despite the expectation of the people making it.
An example of a tag, this one by GAMBLE. Photo courtesy of Maria Seda-Reeder.
Cincinnatians hence do not know their taggers, even though they may have glimpsed (or been frustrated by) their graffiti. Before working on this article, I was not aware of them either. Through Maria Seda-Reeder (one of the curators for Scribble Jam's gallery component, such as the exhibition Raise/Raze in the ArtWorks Gallery, 2006), I learned that GAMBLE and AREL were prominent here in the past, although no longer active so much in this area. WHEN, MET, and RAPES are long-standing names and still active. TA is a long-standing crew (comprised of more than one person), and also still active. Within TA, the apparent standout new talent is MERJE. For well-known non-area artists, OS GEMEOS of Brazil has a piece in Northside. This list is by no means exhaustive.
Even the ethical claim of the pro-graffiti argument—to reclaim public spaces from corporate advertising—does not resolve the issue of selective attention. For precisely in places congested by billboards, people do not look at advertisements or, for that matter, anything at all. People turn on their filters and ignore the visual confusion. At best, they are aware that a place is plastered with corporate propaganda, but try to ignore it. Likewise, the graffiti art in such areas goes unnoticed as well in its individuality; it becomes like a single entity, 'graffiti,' lumped together without discernment. We may call our attitude in such locations 'selective inattention'. Graffiti and street art—the diversity of the entire practice—unfortunately all is dismissed in a blur under the category of vandalism.
Given the complexity of these tags, this may be a legal site for them. Photo courtesy of Maria Seda-Reeder. We may also argue the reverse. It may well be that the graffiti artists are inattentive to the very objects, buildings, and other structures on which they write. The locations are hugely varied for graffiti, though many sites are industrial cement walls (such as the highway graffiti) that in themselves have little aesthetic worth. On the other hand, an old brick Italianate building partakes in a specific architectural aesthetic; the bright artificial spray-can colors of graffiti 'pieces' (short for 'masterpieces,' the highly developed, elaborate examples of graffiti art) are not harmonious with the soothing earth tones of the structure. That of course is the goal; make the tag or piece stand out, draw attention to the name. But the writer, in time, forgets the implications of their tag, so immersed are they in the aesthetics of their art. They do not observe that lovers of old buildings see merely a violent invasion of artificial colors on them instead of an art form. This simple difficulty in failing to understand the cognition of someone outside of one's field is not just a failure of graffiti artists; it is universal. A painter cannot imagine someone not really 'seeing' their art (amateur artists will typically cram too much of their work into an exhibition), while a competent executive will be amazed that others are not aware as to how badly operations are managed at some area stores.
A practice space for Graffiti tags underneath S.Ludlow Ave. as it passes into Northside. ÆQAI staff photo.In fact, graffiti is complex. Lisa Gottlieb's ponderous Graffiti Art Styles (2008) uses Panofsky's sophisticated model for classifying typographical graffiti (those that manipulate a tag name, such as in the above photo). Using the results of a survey that she sent out to enthusiasts, Gottlieb generated a table of no less than thirteen facets for the lettering style: linearity, use of arrows, symmetry, letter strokes, fill consistency, number of colors, letter shape consistency, fill effects, negative space, legibility, letter outlines, letter overlap, and dimensionality(128). This is only one aspect of her analysis, and hence it is no wonder that the art form remains difficult to appreciate for viewers not versed in its language.
Resolving Visibility and Impact
In response to the problems of people seeing graffiti individually, another style of graffiti has arisen known as the iconographic. Sometimes called the New School (and hence labeling the former as Old School), the idea is that icons, or signs, are more memorable and recognizable than their typographic counterpart. Icons predate words, and hence can have a stronger impact. Whereas graffiti taggers claim artistry in their hand-created pieces, the iconographic street artists tend to be more of the breed of graphic designers. Often involving some measure of mass production (and the expenses that must be encountered), the iconographic style may use postering and wheat paste. Further distinctions also have arisen. Mike Amann and Roman Titus (of BLDG gallery), in an interview on Around Cincinnati, described the difference between the traditional term of 'low brow' for street art with the new term 'high brow' in that the latter is made by artists with academic training. Graphic designers make the advertisements for corporations; the same talents are being used to subvert.
The London Police mural across the street from Molly Malone's Irish Pub & Restaurant, 112 E. Fourth Street, Covington, KY 41011. Completed March 19, 2010.
ÆQAI staff photo.
As in all things, these are not meant to be hard distinctions, since some icon makers carefully paint their works. Along with Shepard Fairey (in my previous article on Fairey, I included documentation of many of his external sites), a great example of the iconographic style is the current exhibition of the London Police in the BLDG gallery in Covington. The London Police are a world-renowned street art crew; their style typically uses thick black lines and white fill to sharply contrast with the textures and colors of the surface around it. The City of Covington worked with the London Police and BLDG to create a small mural on a wall opposite Molly Malone's (see photo); we can hope that more collaborations like this will continue: legal, inexpensive, and attractive.
Does the iconic style really subvert? It has its pitfalls. By creating an icon that is basically mass-produced (via printing, stenciling or some similar process of production in which the final tag is virtually always the same), the artist moves directly into the realm of corporate branding. This is a common criticism of Shepard Fairey, whose financial status allows for the mass production of his brand. Bansky parodied himself by entitling a recent show of his work 'Brandalism,' and he labeled the makers of this vein of work 'brandals.' Yet this branding is not foreign to graffiti art; the tagger tries to get his or her tag recognizable like a corporate brand name. The graphic mass production represents a distillation (or arguably, perfection) of this process. It simply loses the artsy claim of being made by hand on location. Ever since Keith Haring became wealthy and famous for his street art, no street artist can claim pure innocence of craft.
Satori's documentation of HOOD's work in Chinatown, New York. Considered high-brow iconic street art. Click the above image to visit Satori's Flickr site.
Photo courtesy of Satori.
Legitimized and Anti-Establishment?
If a graffiti artist blames the public for not looking deeply at his or her art, and the public blames graffiti artists for their disrespect for the structures on which they put their art, it is an impasse. Hence, a middle camp arises to resolve this: put graffiti art in legal places in which people go to look at visual phenomenon (the art gallery or museum).
The aesthetic theory that evokes the loudest groans of distaste by any artist worthy of the title is Dickie's institutional theory. It argues that art becomes art when it is acknowledged by art authorities. Hence if a curator or director of prominence identifies a certain creative construction as art, it is art...so much for the poetic views of art as transformative, partaking in the Eternal, or engaging in universal forms, etc. Hence in 1972, when Hugo Martinez curated a show of graffiti at the City College of New York, he hoped that by moving the practice from outer walls to inner ones it would attain legitimacy. It did. In time, mass culture embraced the aforementioned Haring, and the art buyers bought Basquiat's canvases (formerly user of the SAMO tag). 'Art' was added to the term 'graffiti.'
But graffiti arises from hip-hop culture that is culturally anti-establishment. It is innately anti-institutional in both theory and practice. It is no wonder that so many street artists find their financially successful counterparts to be sellouts. The art form is developed and honed in every graffiti writer in conditions of secrecy, speed, and the evasion of authorities. Hence the peculiarity of authorities hosting it in the white box of a gallery, or making legal outdoor wall sites for the practice. Yet within legal domains, the masterpieces of graffiti are born. These are the pride of the graffiti community, and the creators of such often distance themselves from taggers. Brazil, for example, has made graffiti pieces legal, but not the tags, resulting in some of the best graffiti worldwide. In Cincinnati, there are many instances still intact from Scribble Jam's commissions that are striking, labor-intensive works.
All About Colors Autobody, located on 2154 Central Parkway (near Brighton) allows graffiti artists to create complex tags on the sides of the building. ÆQAI staff photo.The illegal aspect of graffiti is ongoing and breeds both the vigor within the art and contempt for its proliferation. The City of Cincinnati's public services section of its web site lists Graffiti Removal just under Dead Animal Cleanup. It states, "The presence of graffiti seems to attract more graffiti and other types of blight and crime. It is best to remove graffiti as soon as possible." Graffiti Hurts, a national organization, reports that "about 80% of graffiti is "tagger" graffiti. Another 5% are "pieces," or large visuals. Nationally, gang graffiti makes up about 10% of graffiti." Rapid cleanup has been documented as essential to graffiti prevention, for once graffiti takes hold in an area, it rapidly grows. I was informed by public officials that Cincinnati spends approximately $250,000 on its graffiti abatement program. Graffiti Hurts did not mind seeing Scribble Jam end, noting that it drew writers from all over the country who then illegally tagged the city; this greatly increased the cost of cleanup. The city recently axed its art funding budget; are graffiti artists responsible, then, for this redirection in resources that could have gone to legal grant requests, or is it the city's fault for removing the graffiti art form? In either case, the state is given authority in determining what is art, from graffiti to individual grant recipients. Along with the poorly done (and perniciously located) tags, there exists some stunning pieces; can we thresh out the good from the bad? Yet who can argue with the frustration of owners of private property when their building is vandalized?
Stephen Powers. Beautiful (2009), mural on 5017 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA. Photo imported from Love Letter web site.
Nevertheless, street artists have permeated all aspects of contemporary culture; anti-establishment or not, they have been absorbed into the mainstream. For it is 'cool' to have an 'attitude' that is anti-establishment (it takes work to actually have a critical faculty; the pseudo-skeptical 'attitude' comes easy). Gottlieb notes that "renowned graffiti writers Stash and Futura have designed sneakers for Nike...Art Crimes, an online gallery and resource center dedicated to graffiti art, sells silk-screened T-shirts, coffee mugs, and mouse-pads featuring pieces by various writers."(7) Much of the products marketed to youth culture are created within the aesthetic of graffiti and street art, and no wonder; it makes it 'cool' and hence a viable commodity.
The practice has permeated other cultural realms. She notes that "Tracy168, a seminal figure in the history of graffiti art, worked with students at the Urban Academy high school in Manhattan—a collaboration that culminated in a public viewing of their work in December, 2005." Stephen Powers recently returned to the city that he tagged in his youth with the massive (and also touching) Love Letters project, made in collaboration with the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Cincinnati witnessed the development of a hugely popular annual event (the aforementioned Scribble Jam, until 2008) and the Beautiful Losers exhibition at the CAC. Currently, the CAC is hosting Shepard Fairey; the BLDG in Covington has hosted (and is hosting) renowned international street artists; and the PAC Gallery will be hosting a graffiti art exhibition in which the entire gallery will be transformed in conjunction with Elementz, a Cincinnati hip-hop youth center. The simple form of tagging has evolved for a long time into many nuanced forms, from elaborate pieces to graphic design.
Impermanence vs. Virtual Permanence
Finally, there has been an explosion of online documentation by graffiti writers, using sites such as Flickr to anonymously post photos of illegal tags and pieces. Tag documentation seems to make sense as a form of boasting; this is half of the practice. But such documentation is at odds with the values of the other half of graffiti art, namely impermanence. Impermanence forces the artist into detachment from his or her production, giving it a spirit of vitality and performative value. The city will pay to remove it, effectively creating a new canvas for the next wave of taggers (obviously problematic, from the city's vantage point).
An example of how graffiti comes and goes on 4343 Kellogg Avenue, Cincinnati. These two pieces were made on the same facade. The bottom photo is the current facade. Photos courtesy of David Hartz.That vitality is a good thing for lovers of this art. It keeps graffiti from having the effect of the 'full studio.' This effect results from an the artist so surrounded by their own work that they are unconsciously not inspired to create new productions. The presence of one's artistic creations is certainly calming, since therein lies the embodiment of an artist's raison d'etre. That calming effect is the problem. An empty studio makes an artist feel naked, and he or she gets working. For a banal analogy, imagine never donating any of your old clothing; your wardrobe would never be renewed, and you would in time appear like a walking relic of yourself as your decades accrue. Online documentation gives the graffiti artist a false sense of an opus in a field defined by its vigorous newness and youthfulness. It happens to any artist who over-documents his or her work on personal web sites, or is illusorily succored by a long curriculum vita.
An abandoned building east of 75, on the corner of Arlington and Sassafras St. It is a well-known practice space for Graffiti tagging. ÆQAI staff photo.
The new landscape for consciousness is the internet; will this be the new landscape for graffiti tagging? A youth today often passes hoards of time in the virtual realms of video games, Facebook, twitter, etc. A high percentage of taggers are young suburban white males. As I mentioned at the outset, they are not seeing the environment that they are often tagging. We can make the argument that many may well be transferring to the streets their vision of the virtual realm. The artificially bright colors of tags are computer screen colors; the sharp lines of the lettering arise from a machine-mediated world, not one from looking at a natural landscape. (One learns at the outset of basic drawing classes that the line is artificial; the world is composed of interacting planes.) The graffiti artist today transplants the virtual world onto the 'real', even though graffiti has its roots long before the virtual world came into being. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing.
If the end goal is to create an online gallery of tags, then perhaps the final stage of graffiti art is to dispense with the spray cans and only make online graffiti (it would certainly please the detractors). If the goal is to make one's tag known and show off one's artistry, why not focus where people are experiencing the most amount of input into their visual consciousness? Sadly, humanity is not looking at the world around it anymore; it is between television and web sites. The human brain enters an artificially induced, anti-critical low alpha wave state while passive before the television. Today even a receptionist looks more at the screen at his or her desk than the people entering the office. The internationally beloved artists DAIM makes work so graphically well-prepared on the computer that it could remain purely online and still enthrall.
The online world is full of sites (such as Wikis) and forums which the everyday person can anonymously access; all are places in which a computer generated tag could be placed. The tagger would come into conflict with not only the content of the site and its users, but the graphic design of the site itself. A new breed of graffiti artists may become program hackers in order to insert their tag. Isn't this the split between old and new school, low- and high-brow, the spray can aesthetic versus the graphic design icon maker? It will be fascinating to see this play out in the ensuing years as the internet—the distorted mirror of the human spirit—devours everything in the process of its reflection.
Special thanks to Maria Seda-Reder, Roman Titus, Satori, Alicia Suguitan, David Hartz, Jennifer Pollock, Scott Runtz, Tamara Harkavy, Daniel Brown, and many others who assisted me with this article. This article represents the author's views and not those in this acknowledgment.
