Graffiti - The Unlawful Art :: Urban Art

One day in the afternoon while I was surfing on the Internet, one of my friends forwarded a really interesting website addressed www.stillfree.com to me. At the beginning, I thought it was some kind of shopping promotional website but after clicking on it, an interesting video popped up. I saw a man being video recorded while he was climbing up a fence of a military airport. Then, he ran quickly towards the Air Force One, which is the personal aircraft of the President of the United States, and tagged a graffiti drawing on the jet. It gave me a big shock after watching the video because that man actually sneaked in to the US military airbase and tagged the Air force One aircraft. The event was being broadcast on some major TV channels. After making everything clear, I realized that video was not really took place at the US airbase and it was actually made up by a prominent fashion designer Marc Ecko. The whole process of the video was so real, but it came up as a campaign video to promote the art of graffiti. There are many different points of view on graffiti and it has always aroused arguments on its legalization. Graffiti can be recognized as a form of art, or crime. Graffiti consists of inscriptions, slogans and drawings scratched, scribbled or painted on a wall or other public or private surface. According to The Dictionary of Art, the word "graffiti" is derived from the Greek term "graphein" (to write) and the word "graffiti" itself is plural of the Italian word "graffito." Graffiti is also a form of self-expression. It is the means used to express the artist's identity, feelings, and ideas. The art of graffiti is also a kind of communication that links people regardless their cultural, lingual, or racial differences. When graffiti was first becoming popular, the tools being used were mostly wide tipped markers and spray cans. Graffiti can also be analyzed according to the elements of lines, color, and structures that are present in the work in order to produce a narrative about it. The graffitist first does a sketch, and then he or she plans out characters and selects colors. Next, the artist selects his or her surface and does a preliminary outline, followed by a filling in of colors and ornamentation, and then the final outline is completed. However, graffiti is not readily accepted as being art like those works that are found in a gallery or a museum.