History of Graffiti

''The history of graffiti or drawings on objects is to have begun since cave and rock paintings/engravings emerged. This can be dated back to 40,000 to 10,000 BC times, which is known as the Upper Palaeolithic period. The paintings/engravings, discovered to be done by the ‘Magdalenian’, the name of the location site.

The Chauvet Cave situated in the Ardeche region of southern France, is a well-known famous prehistoric rock art site that was discovered in 1994. The most common method used to produce engravings was using flint and etching a drawing onto the rock. These engravings/paintings were a form of visual documentation that could have been done as part of rituals or a way of passing on information to other people that might have crossed through their area and drawings of animals was what was mainly seen. The main fact is that these engravings/paintings were placed in a position where it was available for everyone to see. These paintings/carvings is the way the people of that time would portray their events of the days or months.

As time progressed, the Egyptians used similar methods of telling their stories and lives, this was present around 5000 BCE to 300 AD.

The earliest Egyptian art is found to be located in the Nile Valley around the Upper Egypt region. This art was engraved on the cliffs depicting the actions they engaged in with, this was done in the Palaeolithic period. The Pre-dynastic period, which is what it is called, saw these engravings being placed on pottery vessels or small stones.

These paintings and engravings from the Palaeolithic and Egyptian time were possible because these people used the public spaces or surfaces that were available to them to express on and document stories that they wanted to tell.

This act of communicating through use of a public space continued into the time when Hip Hop started to emerge. I shall be focusing more on the type of graffiti produced in the Hip Hop era to modern graffiti seen today.

From the year 1966 onwards, graffiti was done by political activists that wanted to make statements to the government and other gangs around their area did graffiti. It was present in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. A name that was commonly seen around areas in Philadelphia was the writer, Cornbread. They would leave their names next to their work to get people to publicize up about them. As being a writer became more popular, people began to see more tags and graffiti around their areas. Mainly focused in the area of Brooklyn, writers would use the subway system as a way of getting their messages across because the train would travel the city so this way it would reach a number of places and people. A well known writer around that time in Brooklyn was ‘Friendly Freddie’, his work would be seen on the subway system and this helped increase his popularity. There was competition between writers to try to outdo each other and have more tags. This became a popular activity in Brooklyn area. The form of graffiti done with the use of spray cans could be called traditional art, because it came from different communities from different cities practising similar methods of graffiti on walls and trains. Graffiti to the communities that were of a higher class than these writers did not see it as art; they saw it as vandalism and illegal work. Bando, a graffiti artist stated ‘’I have a saying from very long ago. Graffiti is not vandalism, but a very beautiful crime.’’ 

This is small context from my essay that briefly tells the story of graffiti. I shall now be looking at graffiti artists such as Lee Quinones.