Under my apartment building, at the entrance of the school across the street, crossing the street and entering the office, there is graffiti everywhere.
Moving through the city the same pattern continues, slogans, huge letters small and large "art" works overwhelm the city... No matter how the authorities try to clean walls and monuments from the anarchic murals the evil spreads.... apparently a bunch of spoiled brats have set out to smear whatever they find in front of them, not caring about the aesthetics of the city.
Or maybe not;
Graffiti as a term emerged in 16th century Italy to describe the carved patterns on building facades.
In the 2nd world war it reappeared with anti-fascist slogans and continued in the 60s with the slogan of the students in America "The wall will have their say".
In New York graffiti was done by political activists or gangs to "mark" their areas. It emerged as an artistic movement when the New York Times paid tribute to the Greek postman who had "tagged" his nickname, TAKIS 183, on all the walls and wagons of the city.
In Greece, it appeared in the 80s and found favorable ground since the Greek culture was already familiar with fan and other slogans on the walls.
Graffiti is a general term that today is used for everything that is written or drawn illegally: It can be the "bombing" (bombing) of the walls of an entire area with "tags", or it can be slogans on walls, trains, stops, traffic signs, benches. They can be artless smudges-attempts to tag, imprints with stencils, stickers (stickers usually with tags), but also complex color compositions (Burners) or large visual works (Masterpieces).
Graffiti is a criminal offense both in Greece and in England, the United States, Australia and is pursued by the authorities with excessive zeal, with the result that some municipalities have even removed works that they had commissioned, as was done in Chicago.
At the same time the authorities stand awkwardly in front of works by Moose who creates works without the use of spray but by removing dirt and paint from walls.
But there are also cities like Amsterdam or Berlin that embrace graffiti as a cultural asset. Bogotá authorities welcome street artists to make their mark on the city.
The institution of art has already accepted graffiti and the largest museums in the world such as TATE seek to host his works.
As early as 1974, Norman Mailer in his book "The faith of graffiti" claims that the graffiti on the streets of New York is of equivalent artistic value to Giotto's paintings.
Now many street artists are recognized for their value with typical examples being Bansky, David Choe, Blek le Rat, Renta, the Brazilian Eduardo Kobra or the Parisian Ash.
But what makes graffiti one of the most popular art forms?
The purpose of graffiti is not to beautify the gray walls of big cities, nor to vandalize public property.
Every work is a conscious act, which originates from an inner drive for evolution, for changing the socially formed conditions. It is a protest against the superficial, hypocritical cruel to man and our planet way of life.
He complains about the destruction of the planet by man, he criticizes the futility of consumerism, he worries about loneliness, about the influence of the mass media on our thinking, he complains about the lack of real communication. And it proposes the deepest contact with the self, it claims the dream, it envisions the utopia, it claims a fairer, more humanistic world in which the fundamental values of life will regulate the functioning of society.
Using art as a weapon, he tries to communicate, provoke reflections, awaken and move.
He spontaneously opposes unjust laws and considers his own "vandalism" to be far less than what advertising companies legally commit with their signs in public places.
Most of us could think of dozens of ugly billboard constructions. inconsiderate shades paid for or approved by the local authority. Yet somehow they are accepted unthinkingly. Hostility to the expression of graffiti may begin to look like something more culturally disturbing
Graffiti exists, it is an expression of life, the mirror of a part of society that wants to say "I exist too". It is an image that you will encounter while walking and that will trouble you, that will not exist or change in a little while, following the ephemerality of life, it does not expect recognition, it does not contain vanity, it is not locked in museums and it is not guided by profit.
I remember in 2015, the famous graffiti on the building of the Polytechnic in the midst of an economic crisis. It was eventually cleaned up and left no trace of destruction in the building, the conversations and emotions it caused were significant. A year ago the New York Times had an interview of INO with the title: "One graffiti in Athens equals a thousand words of discomfort"
Disgust is created as a feeling when we see images of the vandalized Villa Sovoye by Le Corbusier, the artist Xavier Delory, who through this work wants to highlight the hypocrisy in our reverence for these famous architectural works since modernism and vandalism are connected closer than we think.
I could not fail to mention the Korydallos Lake Park Wall which was inaugurated in July 2022 and transformed the wall of the former women's prison into an outdoor gallery of 1300.00 sq.m. with famous artists from Greece and all over the world passing on their message of freedom.
Street artists want to change the world for the better, either by writing a slogan on the wall "silly" or by creating masterpieces, but always with freedom and brazenness against urban establishment, as art should be.
"People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly." — Banksy