Graffiti

Graffiti is writing or drawing made on walls and other public surfaces, usually with spray paint or markers. It can be a name, a message, a cartoon, or a giant painting that covers a whole building. The word comes from the Italian word graffio, which means "scratch." People have been making graffiti for thousands of years, but the modern style most people picture today started in American cities in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ancient graffiti is found all over the world. Roman soldiers carved their names into stone walls. Visitors to the Egyptian pyramids scratched messages into them more than 2,000 years ago. In the buried city of Pompeii, archaeologists have found wall writing that looks a lot like what kids scribble today. One famous Pompeii message complains that the bread at a certain bakery is terrible.

Modern graffiti grew up in Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s. Young people started writing their nicknames, called tags, on walls and subway trains. A teenager named Cornbread is often called the first modern graffiti writer. Soon hundreds of writers were competing to get their tags seen by the most people. Subway cars carried their art across the whole city every day.

Tags grew into bigger and bigger pieces. Writers added bubble letters, shadows, and bright colors. A full painting that covers a wall is called a "piece," short for masterpiece. Graffiti became closely tied to hip-hop music, breakdancing, and DJing. Together these four things formed early hip-hop culture.

Graffiti is one of the most argued-about art forms in the world. To some people, it is a powerful way for young artists to be heard, especially kids who cannot afford fancy art supplies or gallery space. To others, it is vandalism, because it damages property that belongs to someone else. In most cities, painting on a wall without permission is against the law. But many cities now have legal walls where artists can paint freely.

Some graffiti artists have become world famous. The British artist Banksy paints stencils that often make jokes about war, money, or power. Nobody knows for sure who Banksy really is. Keith Haring started by drawing chalk figures in New York subway stations and ended up with paintings in major museums. Their work shows how a style that began on subway cars climbed all the way to the walls of the art world.