Graffiti: Pure & Simple

Alley in Amsterdam

Can any art purport to be pure? Can any artist claim no concern for his audience? Can ‘art’ be deigned ‘art’ without a viewer?

Some might judge artwork on its technical merits or daring, others might judge it on its ability to engage and hold the viewer’s attention, still others on its ability to express something profound or deeply personal, or simply to dazzle with sheer beauty. 

Historically, artwork was most likely produced as a record of events, to tell a story, or provide guidance to others—as in Lascaux. The earliest ‘histories’ are likely in the oral tradition, rather than written or rendered in any visual form.  And for all we know man may have been scraping pictures into the soil or rocks long before he invented the means to paint them on the walls of caves.  But cave drawings predate other forms of proto-writing, hieroglyphs or runes as a human record of concepts or ideas.  Interestingly, even among the earliest drawings thus far discovered, there is a hierarchy of style and beauty—perhaps by the standards of our modern perspective, but perhaps not.  The most extensive and elaborate cave paintings also tend to be the most stylistically and technically impressive renderings—this would support the notion of a more talented, practiced or inspired painter.

While there are many theories about the purpose of the images most can agree that this was the beginning of visual ‘art’ as a medium of expression for mental imagery. Whether the images were made as histories of events, teaching tools for hunting techniques, a record of sacred animals or ceremonies, it will be hard to ever know for certain, but the images convey stories, even if we are not certain what those stories are. 

Some clue to the historic use of cave drawings might be found in contemporary times. The aboriginal culture of Australia may be one of the longest isolated and most enduring cultures that have continually produced paintings similar to those in Lascaux. The aboriginal culture could in some senses be seen as a sort of time capsule of the past, that because isolated, retained and passed down many features of the prehistoric painting practices. These practices have, of course, evolved, but in more isolation that in most other parts of the world. Certain features of the practices and uses of ‘cave painting’ among the Australian aborigines, could give us some insights into the prehistoric uses of visual representation; these appear to include the use of imagery as teaching or mapping tools, and the development of these tools into powerful visual symbols recognizable to the entire culture—as exampled by the circular 'water hole' symbol in rock paintings at Uluru or images carved into trees in the Blue Mountains.

During the period of exposure to the wider cultural representational practices of the world over the last 300 years, aboriginal painting has branched into non-traditional modes of expression; paintings using paints from natural pigments on tree bark, and more currently the use of acrylic paints on canvas. 

Aboriginal paintings on bark in natural paints

Large contemporary aboriginal painting in acrylics

This transition may be a sort of fast forward for what happened over more than 40,000 years of cultural change in the wider world.

In classical antiquity—in the fertile crescent—painting developed from its 'cave art' roots into more elaborate forms of relief sculpture, murals and mosaics, both as a records of events and as ceremonial tributes to the ideological ‘gods.’

Assyrian relief in the British Museum

Stylistic patterns evolved and cycled as techniques and mediums changed. 

Painting on wall in Knossos - Crete, Greece

 

Fresco on walls and mosaic floor in Pompeii, Italy

Over time imagery also took on a decorative function and man developed an ‘aesthetic’ for judging beauty by comparing works of art.

But the art of comparison itself is a hard-wired instinct that has evolved in almost all forms of life, probably for the purposes of finding the ideal mate. Our surroundings are scanned through our senses and sorted by importance or value. Eyesight is perhaps man’s most highly utilized sense, and through it the art of judging beauty or perfection begins. Drawn imagery could also be said to have provided the basis of early forms of writing—as in the Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese calligraphy. Pictures became symbols, and these symbols as a visual language, likely predate spoken language. Characters in most Asian languages still draw on imagery as symbolic ideas, rather than on  the western use of sound sequence.

Throughout historic time visual representations through a variety of mediums have flourished and grown in complexity. Uses of art and the means to produce art have expanded.

Art has always depicted elements of reality and imagination, and as a narrative, may contain calculated degrees of truth. So inevitably it became increasingly useful for consolidation of power—for propaganda—its purpose going well beyond simply capturing likenesses or recording events. Caesars glorified their triumphs, churches illustrated the loving deeds of their saints and advertised the rewards of prayer and sin, monarchs surrounded themselves with images of pastoral beauty and Bacchanal revelry, the rich commissioned portraits of themselves or their loved ones and murals to decorate the walls of their palaces.

  

Church in Füssen, Germany

Decoratively, art began to orchestrate beauty, rather than mimicking ‘found’ beauty, and came to exemplify elite status. Symbolically, art developed its own language of tropes and references. Works of art were in conversation with each other, through the viewer. And as art became a marketable commodity it also became more valuable.

The art market in contemporary times has become a cutthroat business. Artists produce work, which they try to market in exchange for fame, money, goods or services—think Andy Worhol as a prime example. Graphic art has evolved into a powerful tool of commercial persuasion and influence. But the confounder of the commercial art market was the advent of photography. Suddenly, the camera could instantly capture a likeness or scene and photography competed with fine art as 'documentation.' It soon also developed its own mode of expression—throwing into crisis the use of an artist toiling away on a painting or sculpture unless his artwork expressed something photography could not. Fine art found its niche by celebrating the artist's perspective—the differences between what can be captured by a camera lens and what man perceives from his surroundings, or what his imagination invents. Fine art began to challenge all historic boundaries, and the conversation of art became more radical, because only in being new and unique, could it justify its commercial or artistic value.

Fine art in many forms is both craft and income for the artist—whether or not it contributes commentary to art’s fundamental philosophical purpose. But as a marketable commodity, it can hardly escape its need for a purpose. Fine art can be safe and traditional, selling itself on its elegance and handcrafted singularity, or it can sell itself through daring, by challenging contemporary concepts of taste or acceptability—regardless of its appeal to a prospective buyer.

Since the dawn of painting, among other motivations, art has surely been produced, at times, purely for the sake of expression—in order to speak directly to an audience who may or may not wish to acknowledge or support it. Art has always been ungovernable when produced without patronage. And as it is created by the hand of man, it may be used as a means of defiance against the very power structures that would like to control it—as a weapon against the artist’s 'enemy'—whomever or whatever that may be.

Graffiti on mailbox in Wellington, New Zealand

One must really go back to the term ‘art’ to define what it is. ‘Art’ would seem to be a collectively agreed upon skill—the ‘art’ of…metal working, basket-weaving, or in this case, rendering through paint or 3-dimentional mediums. Regardless of the form—a collectively determined skill—in order to be an ‘art’, must be compared and judged. Someone, if only the artist himself, must deem the work to be of higher value than that of a more mundane and rudimentary counterpart. The status of ‘art’ must be earned socially and collectively. Consequently, at the root of all art there is comparison and judgment.  The artist must always dance with his audience—whether that audience is only the viewer himself, or includes a friend or relative, an agent, a gallery owner, another artist, a patron, or an indifferent passerby.  

 

Painted wall in Athens, Greece

And whether we like it or not, art must sell itself—in both senses of the word—as a commodity, as propaganda, as an investment, as a historic record, as commentary, as self expression, or as defiance or rebellion.

Graffiti on wall in Genoa, Italy

Naples, Italy

If we follow the evolution of art to its current spectrum of forms, we might find calculated refinement at one end and pure spontaneity at the other.

One of a number of pieces painted on columns under a freeway in Warsaw.

So we are compelled to ask whether one mode expresses the heart of man more fully than the other.

Graffiti on wall in Amsterdam

All art incorporates man’s internal vision and is produced for man’s consumption. But some art—like some ideas—seems to prostitute itself to a lesser degree. Graffiti—‘street art’—seems to ask for nothing but the viewer’s attention and takes art almost full circle to its ‘cave art’ roots as a visual cultural expression in public view.

A bit of whimsy in Palermo, Sicily

Whimsical graffiti on a wall in Krackow, in the old Jewish ghetto.

Palermo, Sicily

Graffiti records the artist’s perspective and yet asks for no compensation.    

Graffiti on wall in Lisbon, Portugal

Certainly graffiti can also be vandalism. As expressions of defiance, or ‘peeing on the fire hydrant’, ‘tags’ are territorial symbols. They attempt to usurp things owned by others, in defiance of the boundaries of the established rights of ownership. 

Graffiti in Budapest, Hungary

I don’t condone ‘tagging’—I actually detest it, but I do admire graffiti as ‘public’ visual expression when it makes a point, or enriches the cityscape, rather than defaces or defiles it.

Section of the Berlin Wall

Alley in Melbourne, Australia

Alley in Palermo, Sicily

Public commentary in the form of graffiti was apparently already around in ancient times.

Interior wall in Herculaneum, Italy

What defiles or enhances, however, is always a subjective determination, for what offends one person is never the same as what might offend the next.

In Kazimierz, a suburb of Krackow.

Wall in Palermo, Sicily

There are Mona Lisa’s even in the world of graffiti.

Graffiti on door in Barcelona, Spain

Alley in Melbourne, Australia

Alley in Palermo, Sicily

Graffiti asks for nothing but a moment or two of one's time and attention.

 Carving on rock ledge in an abandoned quarry on Portland Bill, England

 Carving on rock face in an abandoned quarry on Portland Bill, England

Ode to Chopin, Warsaw.

Sidewalk art in Fremantle, Australia

Michael, on wall in Melbourne, Australia

Graffiti invites contemplation and challenges the boundaries of what 'art' has become in our contemporary landscape, spoken directly from artist to audience. It is one of the most visceral and spontaneous forms of direct expression in our modern world.