Who invented the art of graffiti?

First, the origin of the word; graffiti derives from the Italian word graffiato which means "scratched", and "engraved", from the ancient Greek word graffein, which means the same. The term, which was previously used mostly by archaeologists and which refers to the engraved writings and pictures in the ruins, was used for the writings and pictures made on the walls -without permission- starting from the end of the 60s in the USA.

Let's start by quoting the famous graffiti artist Banksy's book "Wall and Piece" published in 2010;

“I will speak my mind clearly, so it won't take long.

Despite everything they say about it, graffiti is not the lowest form of art. Even if you have to sneak out of the house at night and lie to your mother, graffiti is one of the most honest art forms we have. You won't find any elitism or hypocrisy when graffiti is displayed on the city's best walls, and no one has to pay an entry fee to see this art.

A wall has always been the best place to display your art.

Those who run our cities don't understand graffiti because they don't understand why something unprofitable should exist, and that's why it doesn't matter what they think.

They say that graffiti makes people nervous and is a symbol of deterioration in society; But graffiti is considered dangerous in the minds of only three types of people: politicians, advertising executives, and graffiti writers themselves.

Those who really spoil the appearance of our neighborhoods are those who write huge slogans on the faces of the buildings and on the buses and want us to feel "incomplete" unless we buy their products. They want to get their messages in our eyes from every point, but they have no patience for us to respond. So they started the war, and the walls are our best weapon for hitting them.”

Social developments played a major role in the fact that graffiti, a previously known way of conveying a message, mostly political, began to appear frequently on the walls of US and European cities in the 1960s. The events of 1968 in Europe and the struggle against the Vietnam War in the USA pave the way for graffiti to stand out as effective protest management. Because the most natural and most powerful weapon in the hands of the youth against the extraordinary media power owned or controlled by the system is the walls. Even writing on public/private property walls, on which it is illegal to write without permission, is itself a rebellion against authority – regardless of the content of the message.

The only thing that is promised to the young crowd, who grew up listening to the horrors of World War II from their elders, and some of them even spent their childhood during the war years, is to qualify for wage slavery as long as they are good children.

The requirements for graffiti are simple; first to design the message in the most striking way that can be written/painted on the wall in a short time; then choose a suitable wall that is so desolate as to not be caught red-handed at night, but that many people can see during the day; and finally, working on the chosen wall in the middle of the night with one -or a few-cans of paint as fast as possible and sneaking away without being caught by the police.

[When you get caught by the police doing graffiti in Western countries, you get away with a small fine and sometimes a few months of community service. Smart Capitalism does not bother at all that the layers of society that have problems with the system vomit their anger in a way that does not threaten the system, on the contrary, it sees this as a discharge of energy that can flow into more dangerous channels if it accumulates and organizes. It is only peculiar to tyrannical and foolish administrations that young children are imprisoned for years by making up associations with various terrorist organizations just because they wrote a political slogan on the wall.]

Although graffiti, which covered the streets of the USA starting in the 1970s, first started with simple writings, it gradually turned into art by getting closer to painting. With terms like Tagging, Throw Ups, Blockbuster (huge graffiti covering the whole wall), Wildstyle (messy, hard-to-read style), Heaven-spot (a dangerous place to write), Stencil, Paste-Up, Slap, Piece (masterpiece), 3D As you can imagine, the ghettos and slums of big metropolises are the places where graffiti is most common. Blacks, and especially Latin Americans with the mural culture they brought from their homeland, graffiti are the people whom the system pushes to the edge, whose voices are heard least and ignored.

To give an example of early graffiti, we can cite Darryl McCray, who, at the age of 12, filled every corner of the orphanage he was held under the pseudonym "Cornbread" and continued to do the same on the streets of Philadelphia after leaving the dormitory; He becomes so famous that there are articles about him in the newspapers; McCray even sneaked into the zoo after a newspaper report said that he was killed in a street fight once, writing “Cornbread Lives” on both sides of an elephant, and lies that he died. Before long, the streets of Philadelphia were filled with the “tags” of young people like Cool Earl and Kool Klepto Kid, who took him as an example.

[Street gangs that have just emerged in every suburb of the city do not remain indifferent to graffiti, each gang fills the walls with their own names to make their names known and to mark their territory, and to intimidate rival gangs. This is one reason why graffiti has long been associated with crime.]

In the meantime, spray paints became widespread, and graffitiers were no longer practicing "art" by hiding with paint cans in their hands. Spray paints have now taken the place of paints with their advantages such as being easy to carry and conceal, and being able to finish the "job" in a shorter time without getting caught.

In the late '60s, a young man of Greek descent emerges in New York repeating what Cornbread did in Philadelphia; Nicknamed "Taki 183", which he derived from Demetaki, the abbreviation of his name, Demetrius, this young man, with the help of his work as a bicycle courier, creates his name and followers all over the city in a short time.

[As you will notice, graffiti people write their nicknames on the wall, not their real names. The true identity of every graffiti who has become famous in some way and is the subject of newspaper news has been a matter of curiosity in the past and still is today; So the situation of today's well-known mural artist Banksy is not unique to him.]

With graffiti such as Superkool 223, Tracy 168, and Phase 2 following Taki 183, the texts start to become thicker, more colorful and stylistic, getting closer to the picture.