I have always found graffiti annoying. I have also found it by turns to be funny, thought provoking, inciteful and vainglorious. Usually the latter if i'm in a bad mood.
No, I never engaged in graffiti as a child or teenager. Not my style. I have been writing since I was thirteen, so when I had something to express I did it with my trusty typewriter, and then later on my computer.
For the longest time it was difficult for me to separate graffiti from graffiti art in my mind. It was all just the childish scribbling of ratbags with no respect for private property. The word is from the Italian graffiato ("scratched"), which is how the earliest graffiti was created.
The earliest graffiti, besides scratching, was done with charcoal and paint. Sometimes it was political or satirical, other times it was crude anatomical humor or even just normal representational art. Today graffiti has evolved into several types. Political graffiti; such as that in the picture; tagging; which is marking one's territory with a unique signature, usually stylized; and graffiti art, which is usually associated with Hip Hop culture these days. The last are often large pieces, even murals in many colors with a high degree of artistic ability involved.
On a trip to Rome in 2005 we visited Pompeii and I was startled to find the place literally covered with graffiti. Everywhere we looked. There is an inscription from the 1st century on one the walls at Pompeii that reads: “I wonder, O, wall, that you have not fallen in ruins from supporting the stupidities of so many scribblers.” There turned out to be much graffiti in every large city in Italy we visited. I later found out that modern graffiti dates back to both the Greeks and the Romans, and I recall seeing much of it in Greece, especially Athens. There was even graffiti at the Parthenon.
Graffiti has been found in the catacombs of Rome, on the bases of Greek vases, on the faces of coins, on the Mayan temple walls of Tikal, and on early medieval Scandinavian church walls. It is an urge as old as man.
People of a certain age will be aware that during World War II there was a bit of graffiti that went viral, to use a modern expression. Kilroy Was Here. The phrase and image of ‘Kilroy’ poking his head and nose over a fence wall was suddenly everywhere in America and everywhere that U.S. servicemen went. I remember seeing it as a kid on the walls of businesses on the street where we lived.
The graffiti in the picture above was on a wall in Tallinn, Estonia, where we spent a couple of weeks last September. While I usually don't care for graffiti itself, i'm often interested in seeing graffiti that has been vandalized by someone else who begs to differ.
The only graffiti that ever got a great big smile out of me was an exchange of the sort above in San Francisco during the 80's. It was the time of a movement to get the Soviets to permit Jewish emigration. Someone had spray painted in big letters across the wall of a service station:
Free Soviet Jews
To which some wag had added right below it:
With Every Fill Up!
San Francisco is that kind of place.
