How Graffiti change through time. (Serene)

ok, this is gonna be a long post.

Firstly, what is Graffiti?

Its is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property.
and its sometimes regard as a form of art but yet sometimes its regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted.

-Graffiti comes from the Italian word 'graffito' (engraving) and the Greek word grapha (write).

30,000 B.C.E.
first appeared back in the form of prehistoric cave paintings and pictographs using tools such as animal bones and pigments

1st century B.C. to the 4th century A.D
There is the Safaitic language which is a form of proto-Arabic came from graffiti.They are inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia.

-first known example of "modern style" graffiti as a form of an advertisement for prostitution in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey)

-Ancient graffiti displayed phrases of love declarations, political rhetoric, and simple words of thought

-evolved as the common people began to feel displeased with their governments or the state of the world.
-After War World II,people began to scribble different phrases to show their dissatisfaction with the war and its outcome.

1960's
-hippie-culture and the student protests began to grow
-some political activists began to draw and write messages to protest against the goverment

Years 1969-1974: the pioneering era of streetart
-streetart underwent a change in style in popularity in Europe and U.S.
-associated with the anti-governmental punk rock movement; bands and artists were widely writing/stencilling their names and pictures and famous phrases upon house facades.
-In New York City (NYC), different street gangs draw their gang name and logos by using tagging all over town;to mark out the gangs territory

During 1970s
-hip hop culture took up the trend. Graffiti is recognized as a visual expression of rap music, just as breakdancing is viewed as a physical expression.
-tags are shaped into graffiti; became like a form of drawing rather than words or phrases.
-Their point was to "get up", i.e. to draw as much as possible all over town in order to get famous by other artists.
-They began to break into subway yards in order to hit as many trains as they could with a lower risk, often creating larger elaborate pieces of art along the subway car sides

-Tag has grown in complexity and creativity as well as size and scale.
-many artists had begun to increase letter size and line thickness, as well as outlining their tags. This gave birth to the so-called 'masterpiece' or 'piece' in 1972.
-a man named Hugo Martinez formed the society United Graffiti Artists (UGA).
- consisted of many top graffiti artists of the time; aimed to present graffiti in an art gallery setting

1974, the end of the pioneering time
-graffiti artists had begun to incorporate the use of scenery and cartoon characters into their work.

-At the same time, streetart was shaped.

-Streetart was the part of graffiti that wasn't created solely by the gangs in NYC, but by others as well, and it wasn't only placed in the undergrounds but on open spaces such as advertisement boards.

-The new type wasn't fully accepted by the old graffiti-artists, and today there are a drawn boundary between graffiti and streetart as to motives and performance.

Interesting fact:
-In Sweden, Street Art is classified as Vandalism.

About 20 years ago, graffiti and art drawn on walls was seen as something new and exciting.
-Sweden had no experience of graffiti, and the phenomenon was looked upon with mild enthusiasm by the social authorities.

-Street art today in sweden has come to represent destructiveness and even malice.

-Graffiti is looked upon as something hostile that threatens the establishment; the act of spraying becomes associated with violence by the media