Graffiti
When I was in Berlin, I saw graffiti everywhere—buildings, subways ,trains, you name it. With their vibrant color and exaggerated forms, they stood out easily. In fact, not only in Berlin, but also in many other places, especially large cities, graffiti has become part of street landscapes.
The history of graffiti may be much longer than what you have imagined. The word “graffiti” has a Greek origin which meant “to write”. But before it got a name, such paintings had already existed. To talk about that will take ages, so I’d like to focus only on one period of its evolution in modern times and help you catch a glimpse of it. Let’s go back to 1960s when teenagers in New York were crazy about graffiti. The teenagers who did graffiti called themselves writers, because that was what they do. They wrote their names among other things everywhere. Names they had been given or had been chosen for themselves. Most of all, they wrote in and on subway trains which carry their names from one end of the city to the other. It’s called “bombing”. Once they were hit by an inspiration, they would grab their spray paint, sneaked into the yard where the trains parked and began their creation. So the next day, people would be shocked to see all these metal giants wearing all kinds of colorful names. Taki 183 was said to be the first name became famous in that way, then it was followed by many others, Papo 184, Junior 161 and so on. To rock the city with their names was the very initial driving force for those writers to take up bombing.
For graffiti writers, bombing was a lofty cause which was worth lifelong devotion, yet in the eyes of many other people, especially government officials, it was nothing but a plague that never ends. According to them, marking or painting property without the property owner's consent is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime. So they might chase a graffiti writer for miles to get him in prison. or use publications to persuade those young kids out of writing. They even spent 8 whole weeks painting the trains white then built fences and put dogs in order to keep the graffiti writers away.
However, despite all the oppositions, graffiti survived and made its way to the mainstream pop culture. Nowadays even some renowned artists in fashion owe their masterpiece to graffiti. Why does graffiti have such great vitality? First, I think there’s an inner reason. It has something to do with our human nature. Dating back to the ancient times when cavemen lived, the ceilings and walls of their caves were all inscribed with figures of huge animals like mammoth. And Egyptians covered their tombs walls with pictures of men and women in the belief of coming to life again. And think about your own experience, when your are telephoning or listening to a lesson or whatever you are doing, you may feel the urge to draw something as long as you have a pen in your hand and a pad within your reach. Similarly, once a graffiti writer begins his creation on the wall, like a farmer cultivating a virgin land, he will easily become addicted. Besides, those paintings do have some underlying meanings that resonate with our emotions. These are some pictures I took when I visited Berlin Wall. It’s just a series of numbers, but it reminded me of the time when German was divided in to two parts. how the people blocked by the wall missed their families and friends and were eager for peace and unification. Finally, the perennial liveliness of graffiti I think, lies in those young people who want their voice to be heard and their wild dreams to come true. Graffiti writing has become a vocation that has been passed from one generation to the next. Nowadays, it also plays as a storage of creation which provide a flow of inspiration for artists who pursuit fashion. I still remember clearly at the end of a documentary featuring on graffiti, a talented graffiti writer, a black boy who only has one arm, proudly declared himself to be a king of bombing, the one who rocked the jazziest car. At the moment I watched it, I was greatly moved. And I realized that it’s the young people who endowed graffiti life.
The history of graffiti may be much longer than what you have imagined. The word “graffiti” has a Greek origin which meant “to write”. But before it got a name, such paintings had already existed. To talk about that will take ages, so I’d like to focus only on one period of its evolution in modern times and help you catch a glimpse of it. Let’s go back to 1960s when teenagers in New York were crazy about graffiti. The teenagers who did graffiti called themselves writers, because that was what they do. They wrote their names among other things everywhere. Names they had been given or had been chosen for themselves. Most of all, they wrote in and on subway trains which carry their names from one end of the city to the other. It’s called “bombing”. Once they were hit by an inspiration, they would grab their spray paint, sneaked into the yard where the trains parked and began their creation. So the next day, people would be shocked to see all these metal giants wearing all kinds of colorful names. Taki 183 was said to be the first name became famous in that way, then it was followed by many others, Papo 184, Junior 161 and so on. To rock the city with their names was the very initial driving force for those writers to take up bombing.
For graffiti writers, bombing was a lofty cause which was worth lifelong devotion, yet in the eyes of many other people, especially government officials, it was nothing but a plague that never ends. According to them, marking or painting property without the property owner's consent is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime. So they might chase a graffiti writer for miles to get him in prison. or use publications to persuade those young kids out of writing. They even spent 8 whole weeks painting the trains white then built fences and put dogs in order to keep the graffiti writers away.
However, despite all the oppositions, graffiti survived and made its way to the mainstream pop culture. Nowadays even some renowned artists in fashion owe their masterpiece to graffiti. Why does graffiti have such great vitality? First, I think there’s an inner reason. It has something to do with our human nature. Dating back to the ancient times when cavemen lived, the ceilings and walls of their caves were all inscribed with figures of huge animals like mammoth. And Egyptians covered their tombs walls with pictures of men and women in the belief of coming to life again. And think about your own experience, when your are telephoning or listening to a lesson or whatever you are doing, you may feel the urge to draw something as long as you have a pen in your hand and a pad within your reach. Similarly, once a graffiti writer begins his creation on the wall, like a farmer cultivating a virgin land, he will easily become addicted. Besides, those paintings do have some underlying meanings that resonate with our emotions. These are some pictures I took when I visited Berlin Wall. It’s just a series of numbers, but it reminded me of the time when German was divided in to two parts. how the people blocked by the wall missed their families and friends and were eager for peace and unification. Finally, the perennial liveliness of graffiti I think, lies in those young people who want their voice to be heard and their wild dreams to come true. Graffiti writing has become a vocation that has been passed from one generation to the next. Nowadays, it also plays as a storage of creation which provide a flow of inspiration for artists who pursuit fashion. I still remember clearly at the end of a documentary featuring on graffiti, a talented graffiti writer, a black boy who only has one arm, proudly declared himself to be a king of bombing, the one who rocked the jazziest car. At the moment I watched it, I was greatly moved. And I realized that it’s the young people who endowed graffiti life.
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