Some call them vandals, others consider them the last real non -profit artists. What is the graffiti subculture - the New Times sorted out
Most of the authors of graffiti will never navigate themselves artists. They will call themselves - the “writer” (Raiter). Graffiti still does not want to break away from the roots: the genre was born from Tags - stylized autographs on the walls. Unable to gain immortality, a person seeks to leave at least his name in the memory of descendants. Few are capable of leading the legions to conquer the world or invent a bicycle. Everyone, which shows a letter, is able to draw their name on the wall.
It is difficult to say what name the very first “Vasya” was bore, which “was here”, but many of it made the company. Byron was fun by the drawing of autographs in the casemates of the Shilonsky castle, Russian emperors - bored in the Winter Palace. Yes, and more powerful figures strove to draw something on the wall-if not their name, so at least the mysterious words “Meneg Farez” (“suspended and found by lightweight”), indicating the verdict of the Babylonian ruler of Valtasar.
Those New York teenagers who went down in history as the first authors of graffiti thought that they were continuing the divine tradition. Now individual erudites love to recall an excerpt from the song of Simon and Garfankel in the late 60s: "And the words of the prophets are written on the walls of the subway." Alas, this coarse flattery was addressed not at all the legendary ancestors of the graffiti Taki-183 or Cornbread-New York teenagers who bang their nicknames wherever. In the song, we are talking about a set of blessings like calls to engage in “love, not war”, which was about the subway hipping youth (and she was not interested in writing letters, but meaning). Graffiti was associated with a completely different subculture, which, for lack of MTV in the late 60s of the MTV channel, lived in the back of the “colored” quarters.
Hip-hop by his origin is a gangster subculture. And the first graffitiists should be considered participants in youth gangs from American megacities: they threw the boundaries of their territory with aerosol paints. And today, about a tenth of the American graffiti are gangster marks.
Letter of the law
Most of the History of graffiti, his adherents arranged night raids on metrodpo. Here without help: while some are doing, others monitor that security, police or competitors who claim to indulge in creativity in the same place do not appear. Involuntarily, you have to get into the teams - Crew. Moreover, at one time in the midst of the graffitists there was a natural war, which entered the history of the genre as a "war of styles." The method of conducting military operations was uncomplicated: the picture or inscription was applied on top of the competitor. Now such tricks are considered unforgivable for the real Router, but a couple of decades ago Cross Out (“delete” - English) was fashionable poet.
The victims in the literal sense of the word fought for their labors with the offenders. And no matter what groups of young people are fighting for the right to care for young ladies in a certain territory, for their favorite football team or for their drawings - they will certainly acquire the features of the gang. And therefore, hip-hop became precisely that subculture that beautifully approached the world of graffiti.
Drawings on the walls are as outlawed as trade in “foolishness”, except that the deadlines for vandalism give less (and a couple of years ago in England of one “writer” the court led the bars for five years). In some megacities, “legitimate” walls are diverted by the rateers, but there are not enough people for everyone. It was possible to feed several thousand hungry with five bread only once in history.
So far, the only case of legalization of graffiti painted without the permission of the authorities has been recorded: the work of the cult British Banksy on the wall of the clinic of sexual health in Bristol received the right to life thanks to the city council and citizens. 97% of the respondents considered that the funny drawing was to the place: the picture depicts a naked lover, dangling outside the window, from which the husband who returned home a very inappropriately peeps out.
But most of the graffiti is not at all plot drawings, but a bizarre letters. There are many styles: from simple and easily read fonts to a complex pile of bizarre forms. The highest class - come up with its unique "handwriting". The uninitiated observer Set of characters on the wall may seem to be a complete abracadabra. But the graffitists themselves, in love with the letters like Gogol Akakia Akakievich, believe the “ordinary” drawing in the occupation is much more primitive.
A letter in Russian
The infection was brought to our country in the mid-80s, along with fashion, another part of the hip-hop culture-Break Dance. The first homegrown graffitiists made out the scenery of brack festivals, whose waves rolled from the Baltic states to Moscow and to the very outskirts of the Soviet empire. That is, the graffitiists were in demand, even when they did not manage to achieve a more or less tolerable level of skill. Even inept work was struck by the audience, first encountered with examples of the new genre.
At that time, to see the “living” - wall - graffiti could only in Riga and Kaliningrad. The fault of this is not at all proximity to the West, more and more prosaic: in the Union, aerosol paints produced only Latvythim. And the products of this enterprise in the Baltic states could only be relatively easy to purchase. And the local authorities were loyal to the new -fiber hobby. At the end of the 80s, the Kaliningrad City Hall, comparing samples of homegrown graffiti and ordinary walls with a set of well-known curses, allocated several places in the city to the adherents of the new genre in order to “refine the visual environment”.
Now the fans of the genre cheerfully report that in Russia there are about 100 teams (most of the Moscow and St. Petersburg). The older parameters are muttering differently: for all of Russia-only three or four people actively involved in graffiti, two more times “get to the wall”, and most are teenagers who have enough to draw uneven beams on the wall of their own house and calm down.
As usual, both pioneering reports and pensioner grumbling are not very true. Any graffiti festival collects a lot of excellent rateers. But in the city - on fences, overpasses and garages along the railways - there are not so many works that delight the eye. And the reason is banal - money.
A person from a party will certainly declare that the place of a real master is on the street, he does not create for the sake of earnings, but for the soul. But the speaker himself will prefer to paint nightclubs or make scenery for video clips. For many graffiti, it becomes an intermediate stage, a step towards a career of a different kind. It is not without reason that teams are increasingly appearing at graffiti festivals whose participants have never painted street walls.
All for sale
Back in the 70s, the American sociologist Hugo Martinez decided that the studies of the graffiti subculture were not bringing as much as the trade in works. He founded the United Graffiti Artists, where he involved the most talented young people who painted the subway cars. The epidemic of the creation of such enterprises began with his Razor Gallery, where potential customers can contact. Now citizens who want to decorate the wall of their garage or the interior of the store have become even easier to find a performer: each self-respecting team has an Internet site. And Banksy mentioned above has completely acquired an agent as a “traditional” artist, and the cost of his custom work is calculated in hundreds of thousands of dollars and above.
So far, not all graffitists prefer to sell inspiration. They earn a living by “related” work in advertising, design, which does not prevent them from shaking the old people from time to time and go to take out intricate words with an aerosol on the wall. However, more and more graffitiists are inclined to create “Carex” (from Character - a character, character), that is, a plot drawing. The party is increasingly focusing on the viewer, and not so many maniacs are found, ready to fork out the decoration of their cottage with a set of giant letters. The picture “inscribed” in a specific landscape is a completely different matter.
And so gradually the hobby turns into a craft. The market successfully chews the subculture. Masters leave the streets, their work is painted - and on the purified walls only the samples of the pen of beginners will appear, who are not yet ready to go to the professional league.
