Why is the writing on the wall?

Graffiti on a wall in Athens. (I hope the words are not offensive.)

The train rolled steadily along the tracks through the rural community. Behind the three engines was a stream of rust-colored box cars so similar it might have been difficult to distinguish one from another. 

Except for the bold, colorful markings. Each one was uniquely adorned with a series of fat, round letters presenting a message, some clearly understandable, others in some type of code.

Those messages were part of a larger story: graffiti.

Each of us has his own opinions and tastes, and that variety makes the world interesting. I agree with the often-quoted and unsourced phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and the similar assessment by author E. A. Bucchianeri, who wrote, “Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.” 

But why do some people believe that the world is their canvas? Why do they think it’s OK to deface property that is not their own?

Photo of Graffiti in Athens, taken through a bus window.

A year ago I was surprised to see extensive graffiti when I visited Athens in Greece. In a country that has the remains of some of the most iconic and beautiful ancient structures in the world, including the Parthenon, many of the modern buildings in that capital city are defaced by graffiti.

I’m not the first to address it.

“From stunning murals to streets covered with personalised tags, there’s hardly a corner left untouched by a spray can,” wrote Chantal Da Silva in the story “Graffiti city: The rise of street art in Athens” for the website independent.co.ukin late 2017.

“But it isn’t just the walls: vans, street signs, benches, dumpsters, bustling restaurants and cafes – even the ancient rocks surrounding the Acropolis are plastered in paint.

“Street artist and tour guide Nikolas Tongas, known locally as ‘Rude,’ says that while the graffiti scene in Athens started in the late Eighties, the art form has become a way to express widespread unrest following the economic debt crisis Greece suffered in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash.”

Some people today believe they have an important message in the form of an opinion to share with the world, and they believe they have a right to post that message anywhere.

That doesn’t justify it.

The term graffiti comes from the Italian word graffio, meaning scratch, according to Britannica.com.

Some of the earliest forms of graffiti can be traced to cave men, many thousands of years ago, who decorated their walls. Other forms of graffiti have been found on the walls of ancient Rome and on walls in the recovered ruins of Pompeii.

Modern graffiti started to spread and grow in popularity in the early 1970s, mainly in New York and Philadelphia.

“Since its explosion onto city walls and subway cars in the 1970s, the increasing popularity of graffiti as an art form has won commercial success for its artists and a regular presence in pop culture and the contemporary art world,” according to a 2011 story by  PBS, about the book “The History of American Graffiti”by Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon.

“For ‘The History of American Graffiti,’ they tracked down thousands of photographs, from freight trains to city streets, and conducted hundreds of interviews with graffiti artists, ranging from pioneers to the biggest stars.

“The first modern graffiti writer is widely considered to be Cornbread, a high school student from Philadelphia, who in 1967 started tagging city walls to get the attention of a girl.”

Here are some of the interesting things I learned in my research to understand graffiti:

Writing on walls has been an obsession of people for years, including obscene messages and images on public bathroom walls.

Some graffiti is known to be tied to street gangs to mark territory.

Others mark abandoned roads – Graffiti highways –such as the one that runs through Centralia in the southern part of Columbia County, where an underground mine fire has led to a nearly deserted town.

They call them graffiti artists, and there is a talent to create those colorful messages and images. Painters are sometimes referred to as writers. Many of them call what they do “graf.”

The term was used in the title of the popular film “American Graffiti” in 1973 by George Lucas about teenagers in the early 1960s, even though the movie wasn’t about graffiti.

When do the graffitiers do their work? It seems to pop up out of nowhere. You would think more of them would be arrested for defacing others’ property, but they’ve learned to work under the cover of darkness.

Not all public wall painting is a form of vandalism. Some of it is done legally, allowed by property owners or commissioned by public officials to brighten a dull or blighted area. Those also have a wide range of attractiveness and sophistication. They can add class to a neighborhood, or they can increase the trashy appearance.

A preferred type of street art in Venice.

I prefer a different form of street art, which I saw during a trip to Venice, where artists painted scenes on their own small canvas on an easel.

In some ways the growth in popularity of tattoos has been similar to graffiti. I have seen few tattoos that I consider beautiful or even remotely attractive. Most of them are green. Many of them are smudgy or so overwhelming that they look like a glob of dirt on the skin. But – and this is the important point – it’s their body. If they choose to deface it, that’s not my business.

Public graffiti is another issue. If you don’t own the canvas or have permission to use someone else’s, keep the cap on your can of spray paint.