Graffiti: An Anthropological Analysis
Graffiti is one of the oldest extant art forms: graffiti has been found on ancient monuments as well as on subways and billboards across the urban landscape of today (Alonso 1998: 3). The piece of graffiti I chose to use was a series of images inscribed on a No Parking sign. I found this piece of graffiti [URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livenature/235459080/] on a common photo-sharing application known as 'Flickr' in which individuals share various photographs. This photograph came from a California-based photographer and was part of a photo-sharing ring of individuals who specialize in taking photographs of graffiti and street art. The impetus behind the group is to showcase graffiti as an interesting and legitimate art form.
Presentation of information
This particular piece of graffiti is instructive because it involves the desecration of a sign representing the law. The law specifically tells the viewer not to do something -- that there is 'No Parking' in the area. In defiance of this, the artist or artists use words and images of a personal nature to render this sign into a political, anarchist statement by showing the power of the individual to make a mockery of the generic-looking sign. The images on the sign are diffuse: jumping frogs (one of who has a dead 'x' for eyes); a sticker showing two men arm-in-arm, and the words 'Earth' as well as some unintelligible verbiage that may be in a foreign language.
Analysis
Graffiti is often termed the act of claiming the right of citizens to create art in public spaces. For a fee, advertisers can claim the right to advertise in public locations, thus defacing public property in a legal fashion for money. Everyone who takes the subway has seen commercial billboards, signs, and other images just as, if not more intrusive, than graffiti. Artists who lack financial capital to purchase space to transmit their art must do so 'illegally.' It is "illegal to paint murals in celebration of...
That these surfaces are referred to as 'public property' is a cruel joke on all of us. That a billboard encouraging the consumption of hard alcohol is '
private property' when it exists only for the public view is another cruel joke" (Neelo 2003). Graffiti can function as a citizens' claim to personal space through the medium of art. Without any permission or red tape, and without having the
money of a large advertiser, the citizen can create a work of beauty with graffiti.
However, in the case of the 'No Parking' sign, the art is not beautiful, but rather cartoon-like and crude. This illustrates another function of graffiti -- its political and subversive self-expressive potential. By selecting a sign, which represents the state, the artist gains some sense of control over the elements of
society that say 'yes' and 'no' to citizens' actions. In many cities, residents are angry about parking tickets and the lack of parking. They resent the way in which their free flow of movement is restricted. By defacing a 'No Parking' sign, a citizen affirms his or her right to be wherever he or she chooses in an anonymous format, without getting a ticket (unless the graffiti artist is caught in the act). Defacing the sign is an exhibition of the private individual's strength and
authority over the state. No image of the state is so strong that its images cannot be defaced.
Expressing political discontent is another important component of graffiti, and signs are very popular locations for graffiti art. This particular 'No Parking' sign seems to be a repository of various spray-painted, unintelligible slogans, possibly suggesting that as more individuals pile on graffiti, the sense that it is 'okay' to deface the sign increases. An act of graffiti enlarges the sense of where it is possible to create, in both a positive and negative fashion: "Graffiti escapes the boring, rectangular cage of canvases so well, and the beauty of it is that the piece does not stop at the borders of what…
