the_history_of

In the New York of the 1980s,graffiti became a declaration of identity for one wection of society-people who,by and large,grew up in poverty.Graffiti was meant to be seen by as many people as possible,and so the obvious medium for carring it was the trains.As they traveled through the upscale residential districts of Uptown,the Wall street area,Downtown and Brooklyn,the city was "bombed" with this new ,intensely personal art.

Graffiti developed its own terms and concepts.One vital element is the "tag",which identifies the writer.It identifies because graffiti is intended to communicate to everyone who sees it a "proof o existence,"but it is in the form of a pen-name in order to avoid getting caught by the police and fined.

At the start if the 1970s,a writer known as "Taki 183" effectively set off the graffiti boom.Of Greek descend,he was a young man of 17 when he started writing his tag.The numbers at the end of a ag are usually the street number of the writer's adresss so that probably Taki 183 lived at number 183 on some street in New York.The enigma of this tag,being carried around the train system,recieved key publicity when it mad the pages of the New York Times.The media approached tagging and graffiti with some irony,but among a growing number of yound people,this way of proving one's existance became appealing.

This is how New York graffii started,but what is happening to it today ? Graffiti has been banished form the trains. The streets have been cleaned up.But when the shutters come down on the streets of the east Village or Chinatown,the coarsely drawn "throw-ups" and tags can plainly be seen.Graffiti is still alive.For example,take the Lexington Avenue local,the 6 Train,and cross over the Harlem River.When the train surfaces on teh other side,the graffiti is lined up like a scene in an amusement park.Since painting on trains has become so difficult, the target now is teh area that runs along the tracks,and as close as possible to the platform.

As more graffiti writers have emerged,one development has been competition in creating logo designs-all with the purpose of giving one's "proof of existence"greater impact.With the hip-hop music boom and the inevitable involvement of advertising agencies,the logos created by graffiti writers have become a familiar fixture.Graffiti has entered the commercial world,and some of its stars now do lettering for record labels and for advertising.At its heart,however,it retains a purity of expression.It is about afirming one's existence,one's individuality. Now,the soul of Graffiti go over the sea and Graffiti became a world culture.