the.com/graffiti art
vandalism with a portfolio, breaking the law one wall at a time
means Visual art created by spray-painting, drawing, or marking on public surfaces like walls and trains, ranging from quick tags to elaborate murals.
from From Italian "graffiti," the plural of "graffito," meaning a little scratch or scribble, which itself comes from "graffio" (a scratch) and ultimately the Greek "graphein," to write or draw. Archaeologists borrowed the word in the 19th century for the casual messages, names, and drawings scratched into the walls of ancient sites like Pompeii — proof that scribbling on someone else's wall is a very old human habit. The word later attached itself to the modern spray-can movement that exploded in late-20th-century cities.
- ancient roots
- Pompeii's walls were covered in scrawled jokes and insults
- banksy economics
- his shredded painting doubled in value mid-auction
- spray invention
- the aerosol can predates modern graffiti by decades
- legal limbo
- some cities fine artists, others commission them
- keith haring
- started in NYC subways before galleries noticed
keith haring subway drawings — drew over 5,000 unauthorized chalk murals in nyc subway cars 1980-1985
banksy girl with balloon — stenciled mural on waterloo bridge london, sold for £1.4m in 2021
jean-michel basquiat tagging — neo expressionist painted subway cars and walls as samo© in 1970s new york