The school of graffiti

Graffiti seem to be an inevitable part of modern life.  The urge to make one's mark, to violate a pristine surface seems to strengthen with society's attempts to standardise everyone and everything, to make all penny-plain.  Numerous sociological treatises have been based on graffiti as the eschatological literature of an urban society in its final stages of decay, as a pandemic cris du coeur, as the silent but not wordless majority's bitter annotation of life.  But no one seems to have noticed one very striking thing about graffiti: that they are all written in the same handwriting. 

There are two explanations for this.  First, that there is only one highly prolific graffiti artist. This seems unlikely.  That such a manifestly polymorphic personality could at the same time conceive what would be tantamount to a Gesamtkunstwerk of nationwide proportions would mean the existence of an artist and writer who single-handedly makes Proust and Michelangelo look like Sunday afternoon amateurs. This putative prodigy would also either be extraordinarily rich to allow him or her to travel so extensively, or else be superhumanly fast on a bicycle, or possibly irresistibly charming when hitching. There seems to be no corroborative evidence that such a paragon or monster has impinged on society's consciousness other than as the master graffitist.  If nothing else, this unique character would at the very least have appeared on several chat shows by now.

A more likely solution is that there exists a well-defined school of graffiti.  In other words, the style is part of the act, and graffiti lacking the characteristically flowing and angular appearance would not be graffiti at all.  As an analogy consider the monastic scriptoria.  When a monk was taught to write, he was taught precisely how to shape his letters.  There was none of the present-day's personal variation.  In fact the graphologist would have been totally redundant in the 14th century.  This explains why every medieval manuscript from a certain time and place looks the same: if you could not write the letters exactly as you were taught, you were not able to write in the true medieval monkish sense of the word.

So perhaps even at this moment there are groups of would-be graffitists huddled round some wise old master of the art, practising with empty spray cans the flowing hieratic strokes.  Later they move on to out-of-the-way surfaces where their first stumbling efforts with half-empty and sputtering cans will go unnoticed.  Like the fabled elephants' graveyards with their hoards of ivory, these graffitists' cradles may lie hidden somewhere amongst the inner-city chaos, waiting to be discovered, some fabulous El Dorado of embryonic wall-writings and personal emblems.

Then, when the requisite standard has been achieved, their identifying ideograms will be authorised, and they will be presented with their own full cans, possibly in some distinctive pigment which is allocated rather like coloured belts in judo and karate.  Out into the crumbling world they will go, spreading the word, or words in their case, emblazoning buildings and walls and surfaces everywhere with the gospel of graffiti.

(26.7.86)

Index