What are the Origins of Graffiti? (with pictures) (2024)

FAQs

What are the Origins of Graffiti? (with pictures)? ›

The first drawings on walls appeared in caves thousands of years ago. Later the Ancient Romans and Greeks wrote their names and protest poems on buildings. Modern graffiti seems to have appeared in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, and by the late sixties it had reached New York.

The roots of graffiti can be traced back to ancient civilisations such as Rome, Greece, and Egypt, where inscriptions and drawings were etched onto public walls and monuments. These early forms of graffiti were often used for political, religious, or personal purposes.

What Does Graffiti Represent? Graffiti often represents rebellion, so it is often the visual language of the unheard or disenfranchised. Graffiti can tell you a lot about the people, politics, subcultures, counter-cultures, and socio-economics of an area.

Darryl McCray (born 1953), better known by his tagging name Cornbread, is an American graffiti writer from Philadelphia. He is widely considered the world's first modern graffiti artist.

1973 / New York / The collective 'United Graffiti Artists' exhibits at the Razor Gallery in SoHo, New York, which makes for the first art gallery show with artworks by graffiti writers.

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti.

While graffiti is inherent in all human cultures and throughout history, graffiti as we know it today started in New York in the late 1960s. The movement then was known as 'writing' (this is still a term we use today). It started with kids writing their names on walls and trains.

Graffiti art is often done without permission and is therefore illegal, while street art can be done legally with the permission of property owners or as part of a community art project. Another difference is the intent behind the art.

The word 'Graffiti' is derived from the Greek word 'Graffein', meaning to write, draw, or scratch, and the label came about long before the arrival of Cornbread in Philadelphia in the late 1960s. In fact, the term was first coined in 1851 when inscriptions were found scratched into the walls of the ruins of Pompeii.

Graffiti artists are focused on illegally painting their name (or tag), with the intention of gaining respect from other graffiti artists. This is unlike street art which is created legally for the general public with the aim of being recognised and rewarded by the art world.

Who created graffiti and why? ›

The first modern graffiti writer is widely considered to be Cornbread, a high school student from Philadelphia, who in 1967 started tagging city walls to get the attention of a girl. But it was only in the 1980s that galleries began to showcase graffiti as artwork.

Balloon Girl

Banksy is arguably the most famous graffiti artist of all time and he's broken more barriers for the art form than anyone else has. So at the number one spot, we have the most famous graffiti artist's most famous graffiti artwork of all time – Balloon Girl.

Graffiti is a form of vandalism that damages property, causes public safety issues and can result in liability. It negatively impacts local neighbourhoods by making public spaces appear unsafe. More often than not, graffiti is also used as a means to mark territories.

The earliest forms of graffiti date back to 30,000 years in the form of prehistoric cave paintings and pictographs using tools such as animal bones and pigments. These illustrations were often placed in ceremonial and sacred locations inside the caves.

Sire One said a reduced police presence meant graffiti writers had more freedom and opportunity in a time of historic social upheaval. “People also got comfortable with the notion of painting anything anywhere they wanted,” he said.

The first three elements of art are line, shape, and form. The three elements of graffiti mirror those art elements by manifesting as a “tag,” “throw,” and “piece.” A “tag” is a word design using the qualities of line.

Over 5000 wall graffiti have been found in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii alone. These contain mostly name tags (37%), but also include greetings, messages, obscenities, quotes from famous literary works, drawings of animals and gladiators, numbers, dates, and prices.

Ancient literary sources remain mostly silent on graffiti. There appears to have been no specific term in ancient Greek and Latin that we could interpret as “writing on the wall”. Mostly scratched into wall plaster using sharp implements, some graffiti was made using more ephemeral means, such as charcoal.