Graffiti Movement

It’s amazing how we, as artists, are told that we are some of the most innovative, imaginative, and creative people to ever walk this earth. Even more amazing is how many artists have been ridiculed, chastised, and even killed due to their own artistic freedom of communication. I guess we can say that graffiti is probably the most relevant to the topic of artistic expression. Graffiti is everywhere..whether we realize it or not. We see it in bathroom stalls, sides of buildings, highway overpasses, etc. The movie we watched in class really hit hard on how difficult and dangerous it is to be able to communicate to the world without being accused as a troublemaker, "gangsta", or vandal. The fact that graffiti started out as just figure drawings and engravings on cave walls and ruins and how it has evolved and found its way onto much larger platforms shows just how elaborate, unrestrained, and influential societies are across the globe.

This graffiti, by Banksy, depicts the removal of graffiti.  If you notice the animal figures in the illustration, they resemble the cave art found in Lascaux.



After doing a little research online, I found a couple of websites like weburbanist.com & open.your.eyes.free.fr that had several different pictures and touched on a very interesting type of graffiti called "stencil graffiti". Stencil graffiti is illustrated with the use of graffiti. Some may consider it "cheating" because it's not entirely freehand. Instead, an image is cut out and designed on some kind of media, like paper or cardboard, and then the image is transferred onto the surface with spray paint or roll-on paint. Even though the idea and concept sounds pretty basic, artists like the mysterious Banksy are able to design and illustrate some pretty detailed & elaborate pieces in a matter of minutes and still be able to get their point across.