Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art

Jeffrey Ian Ross, Jeffrey Ian Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317645856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art integrates and reviews current scholarship in the field of graffiti and street art. Thirty-seven original contributions are organized around four sections:

• History, Types, and Writers/Artists of Graffiti and Street Art;
• Theoretical Explanations of Graffiti and Street Art/Causes of Graffiti and Street Art;
• Regional/Municipal Variations/Differences of Graffiti and Street Art; and,
• Effects of Graffiti and Street Art.

Chapters are written by experts from different countries throughout the world and their expertise spans the fields of American Studies, Art Theory, Criminology, Criminal justice, Ethnography, Photography, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Visual Communication.

The Handbook will be of interest to researchers, instructors, advanced students, libraries, and art gallery and museum curators.

This book is also accessible to practitioners and policy makers in the fields of criminal justice, law enforcement, art history, museum studies, tourism studies, and urban studies as well as members of the news media. The Handbook includes 70 images, a glossary, a chronology, and the electronic edition will be widely hyperlinked.

Part I
History, types, and writers/artists of graffiti and street art¹

Jeffrey Ian Ross

Introduction

It is probably safe to say that graffiti has been around since the time that humans chose to live together in communities, and discovered the ability to translate their thoughts and ideas on to the surfaces of the spaces where they lived, worked, and travelled. Some experts consider the markings of cave dwellers the earliest form of graffiti (Brassai, 2002).

Others believe that the origins of contemporary graffiti can be traced back to gang graffiti. Readers must keep in mind that gang graffiti is only a small portion of all the graffiti that exists. Not only have the individuals, surfaces, and subject matter of graffiti changed since the time it was first used by street gangs, but gang experts/specialists have discovered that gang graffiti has decreased overall, and that it has been predominantly supplanted by art-related graffiti and street art.

It goes without saying that numerous types of graffiti and street art exist. In order to provide meaning to this body of work, this section of the Handbook provides in-depth descriptions and discussions of the prominent kinds of graffiti and street art that have emerged over time and in recent years. In addition, this section looks at the work and biographies of specific graffiti writers/artists.

Overview of chapters

This section consists of ten chapters. J.A. Baird and Claire Taylor offer the first contribution in the book. In their chapter “Ancient graffiti,” they present the range and variety of the graffiti that existed in the ancient Mediterranean world (c. 700 BCE–500 CE). This chapter explores some of the disciplinary challenges in accessing, defining, and interpreting ancient graffiti, while also tracing the similarities and differences between ancient and modern graffiti trends. Baird and Taylor argue that contemporary paradigms which view graffiti as subversive or subcultural are misleading when applied to past societies. Ancient works of graffiti are important historical sources, contributing to a wide range of scholarly debates about the past, and they also prompt reflection on the interpretative paradigms used within studies of contemporary graffiti. Baird and Taylor reveal that graffiti, like most kinds of mark-making, are bound by convention, context, and performance, and as such, they are a form of cultural production in their own right. Viewing graffiti in this way ultimately raises questions about cultural value: Why are some graffiti preserved and studied, but others erased and vilified?

In Chapter 2, “Trains, railroad workers, and illegal riders: the subcultural world of hobo graffiti,” John F. Lennon explains how hobo graffiti has a rich, mostly hidden, subcultural tradition. This particular graffiti form is rooted in the history of rail workers who chalked railroad cars for utilitarian purposes, writing instructions to other trainmen about which cars needed to be sided or rebuilt. While doing so, some trainmen also began placing their monikers on the cars, sending their messages and symbols throughout the country. Hobos, who physically shared the same geographic spaces as the rail workers (and were sometimes former railroad workers themselves), created a similar set of discursive emblems that were both practical and artistic. This graffiti expanded to all of the spaces in which the hobos congregated. Only those within the subculture could read – or even thought to look at – this graffiti. The means to decipher the graffiti was something taught from one hobo to another, as new riders became acquainted with more seasoned riders. In this way, graffiti was a way to link individuals, even though these people had no prior knowledge of each other and may not have ever met. Reflecting the individuality of the person, hobo markings and monikers were part of the shared language that helped bind together the geographically dispersed hobo subculture.

Next comes Robert Donald Weide’s chapter, “The history of freight train graffiti in North America.” This text examines the development of the freight train graffiti subcultural niche within the wider North American graffiti subculture, from its inception in the 1970s to the present day. The freight train graffiti subculture has yet to be examined systematically by scholars of the graffiti subculture. As a starting point for further scholarly research on this long-neglected topic, this chapter seeks to begin filling this void in the literature by offering a historical narrative of the emergence and proliferation of freight train graffiti in North America.

“Deconstructing gang graffiti,” by Susan A. Phillips, reviews this variety of graffiti as a particular form of written and visual communication, utilizing three case studies from within the urban United States. The first case derives from Chicano gangs based in Los Angeles and California; the second case is provided by the Bloods and the Crips, African American gangs also located in Los Angeles; and the third case is offered by People and Folk, a loosely configured gang system based originally in Chicago. In each of these cases, gang members utilize complex semiotic systems to represent affiliation, enmity, and alliance. The written systems are situated both in place and out of place, moving between contexts of prison and the street. Gangs use graffiti to communicate at a distance, as placeholders that define neighborhood space. Phillips provides detailed examples from these three case studies in order to theorize about gang graffiti as a specific communicative genre.

In Chapter 5, “Prison inmate graffiti,” Jacqueline Z. Wilson examines inmate-created graffiti in Australian, U.S. and U.K. prisons. Despite its unique nature, few studies of prison graffiti have been conducted. The scant existing literature in the area is reviewed to provide analytical context and highlight important differences between the varieties of “conventional” and inmate graffiti. A selection of examples accompanies the text, illustrating the styles, locales, and underlying motives discussed. A visual-ethnographic approach is employed to interpret the images’ meanings and infer something of their creators’ experiences. Inmates create graffiti for various reasons, not all congruent with those behind non-prison graffiti. While street graffiti, “paint-ups,” “tagging,” and so on are invariably rendered for public viewing, much prison graffiti is intended to remain hidden from anyone other than the graffitist. Inmate-graffitists’ motives tend to reflect concerns arising from total, often dangerous, confinement. Thus their graffiti echoes prison-specific issues: Personal power relationships; sexual frustration and sexual aggression as self-assertion; resistance narratives against perceived oppression; or reactions to boredom. Some prison graffiti function as a form of personal diary.

Artistic creativity drives both clandestine and openly rendered graffiti. A variant form familiar to prison-museum tourists is the officially sanctioned “mural,” often adorning major out door surfaces. These must be viewed as a category separate from the routinely prohibited “private” type commonly found inside cells. Wilson argues that the stylistic and motivational differ ences between inmate graffiti in private spaces and that found outside underscore the need for further research on prison graffiti, and scholarly acknowledgement of this subcategory’s standing as a unique category of graffiti.

In “Ways of being seen: gender and the writing on the wall,” Jessica N. Pabón explicates how female graffiti and street artists are marginalized by the gendered politics of visuality. She illustrates how the writing on the wall is assumed to be the work of a male who is a member of an urban, economically disenfranchised, ethnic minority – an assumption which makes women and girls invisible as participants. Pabón then offers an international sampling of contemporary female artists who are combating their social status through their art-making practices in Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, the U.A.E., and the U.S. This chapter is organized into six discussion points: “Gender Anonymity” allows graffiti writers and street artists to communicate and exercise their artistry without the stigma associated with their gender; “Gender Signification” directly combats the erasure of women in the subculture; “Hyperfeminine and Overtly Sexualized” graffiti and street art reclaims the imagery of girls’ and women’s bodies in public spaces; “Political and Cultural” artworks extend beyond the individual and the subcultural to provide a means to comment on political, social, and cultural environments; painting, graffiti, and street art “Collectively” invite girls and women into the culture and initiate a shift in women’s minority status; and lastly, “Digital” frameworks enable artist/writers to identify themselves and one another, to build networks, and to make history. Overall, Pabón’s analysis contributes to the literature on graffiti and street art by including girls and women, who challenge the conventional field of vision by demanding to be seen.

This chapter is followed by Adam Trahan’s analysis of latrinalia (i.e. graffiti found in public bathrooms), “Research and theory on latrinalia.” This contribution provides an overview of the major theoretical and empirical scholarship on latrinalia, which depicts latrinalia as a unique cultural form that, although similar in some fundamental ways to other types of graffiti and expression, is set apart by the nature of the space in which it is written and read. Public bathrooms are simultaneously “public” and “private” spaces that afford graffitists anonymity and segregate patrons by gender. These conditions give rise to graffiti that address a wide range of topics in a singularly direct and candid discourse. Latrinalia often prompts impassioned debates among multiple graffitists about identity, ideology, and the reproduction of the same.

Minna Haveri’s chapter, “Yarn bombing – the softer side of street art,” reviews the history and growth of this relatively new phenomenon. Already becoming an impressive part of the street art genre, knitting and crocheting, with a traditionally feminine material and tech niques, are presented as an antithesis to traditionally masculine street art, especially graffiti art. Knitted street art has been called by many names, but the terms yarn storming in the U.K. and yarn bombing in the U.S. seem to have established themselves as the standard terms for visual expressions in the urban space that involve textile. Besides many names, yarn bombing also takes on many forms, but it generally involves wrapping hand-knitted or crocheted items around everyday objects, such as signs, poles, and streetlights, in city spaces. Creative and daring and getting in touch with environmental experiences, yarn bombing is related to social action. For hobbyist knitters bored with only making socks and sweaters, it seems to be an alternative reason to use handicraft skills. It is appealing to knitters because it allows them to use their skills to do something beyond the functional. Despite its subversive nature, knitted graffiti is considered to make the environment feel inviting and cozy. This might explain the increasing interest of art institutions and different communities to organize yarn-bombing happenings.

Ronald Kramer’s chapter, “Straight from the underground: New York City’s legal graffiti writing culture,” draws extensively from observations of and interviews with twenty New York City graffiti writers. Kramer rethinks the contemporary graffiti writing culture in two important respects. On the one hand, previous scholars have tended to explore graffiti writing as an illegal and/or criminalized (sub)culture. On the other, these same scholars have found it to be a practice that embodies a “critical” stance towards society. This chapter shows that, since 1990, a subset of graffiti writers who paint with permission has emerged. Furthermore, Kramer finds that those who produce legal graffiti tend to lead lives and espouse values that most would not hesitate to recognize as “conventional.” The author concludes by suggesting that graffiti writing needs to be acknowledged as a multifaceted and historically fluid culture.

In “American Indian graffiti” (Chapter 10), Favian Martín uses the review of the current status of graffiti on American Indian reservations as an opportunity to engage in a public discourse on contemporary Indigenous social problems. He argues that American Indian graffiti exists as a form of resistance to the historical legacy of colonialism. In addition to this discussion, the chapter also investigates the criminal element of graffiti, which is associated with gang activities occurring in Indian Country. Lastly, the chapter surveys community-level initiatives to reduce the prevalence of graffiti within tribal communities.

Omissions

Despite the breadth of the work contained in this section, there are several notable omissions. One of these includes an analysis of hate graffiti (e.g. Sinnreich, 2004). This type of activity, clearly identifiable by its verbal and/or graphic content, appears all over the world. It is aimed at demeaning people based on their racial, ethnic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Like other types of hate crime, hate graffiti can take the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, or the targeting of specific groups based on their perceived deviation from the prevailing societal or moral norms. Hate crime is recognized by evocative graphic content, such as “general-purpose” symbols (e.g. swastikas) intended to convey hatred toward a range of targeted groups.

Also missing from this section is an in-depth analysis of subway graffiti, which exists throughout the world in cities that support a mass transportation system (e.g. Castleman, 1982; Cooper and Chalfant, 1988; Miller, 2002). The history of modern graffiti is intimately associated with “bombing” major subway systems (e.g. New York City, Paris, and London). Much of this literature approaches the artists and their work in a romanticized fashion, and little of it addresses the global aspect of this graffiti phenomenon.

Although the issue of gender has been examined in this section, as has Latino graffiti/murals and American Indian graffiti, a substantive analysis of the role of race/ethnicity has not been explored here in connection with graffiti/street art. This is a marked hole that future scholarship should attempt to fill.

Alternatively, although most contributors to this section and throughout this book note the political m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Editor’s foreword
• Foreword: graffiti, street art and the politics of complexity
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: sorting it all out
• PART I History, types, and writers/artists of graffiti and street art
• PART II Theoretical explanations of graffiti and street art/causes of graffiti and street art
• PART III Regional/municipal variations/differences of graffiti and street art
• PART IV Effects of graffiti and street art
• Glossary
• Chronology
• Index