History of Graffiti
Originally other springs than vandalism and delinquency can be found to this way of expression.
On a world scale, Mexican muralism is one of the precursors of graffiti movement. Diego Rivera’s work pays tribute to the Mexican nation : official monuments were decorated with several scenes taken from the Mexican nation history.
These orders were a way of popular education by making national history easily accessible to people in the form of pictures in a public space. Moreover, we have to know that in the 1940’s-1950’s in Mexico, paper was a very expensive medium so adverts were already regularly painted on the city walls. It was cheaper than posters printing. It is also through this way that painting on the walls became a tradition in Mexico.
When a part of the Mexican population set up in the USA, the migrants perpetuated this tradition in the « barrios » where they were living. Then boosting the self-esteem of an ethnic minority grew from latinos ghettos to be used in black ghettos too.
At the same time, the appareance of spraycans and the strong need of recognition of young people passionnate about freedom encouraged illegal practice in order to become quickly famous. This gloomy side often condemned graffiti to marginalization.
But in the middle of the 1980’s, two artists, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat introduced graffiti into the elitist background of contemporary art. The photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant played an important role in the massive spreading of this culture by publishing « Subway Art ».
Nowadays graffiti is an art and a culture which is declined through numerous forms : paintings, murals, installations, numeric art, video, photography ...
