writing

Style Wars is about how graffiti started & became.

WRITING

Style Wars

In 1970’s a graffiti artist wrote his name tag & people didn’t have any idea or understood it was a graffiti tag until they kept seeing his tag “TAKI 183” all over Washington Heights. It was then that people started realizing that he was famous for that & people started tagging their own names all around walls & trains. Graffiti became the written word of the young culture, HIPHOP. These graffiti artists had their own unique names, tags & own styles that are expressing themselves & their artistic talents. As other people who walk by seeing these graffiti pieces all around have different opinions & wonders, positive or negative. What many people didn’t know is how much graffiti actually meant to them. It was deeper for them than it just being vandalism for many people like the government, art critics, & anyone who was against the graffiti pieces. Style Wars gave the inside perspectives to the graffiti artists, other opinions of who were against it, art critics, etc. Graffiti to the young artists was deeper affect because it was an expression of their own name, style, art skills to be displayed all around & it was for their very own self validation. It was for the people who had opinions or wonders of “who is it”, “who’s doing this”, “this/their piece looks amazing”, “how’d they get up there to do that”.. Graffiti was something for the young people to get themselves out there & the self validation that they’re the ones that did that up there. Positive or negative, when people see all these graffiti pieces the artists name tag is being talked about, their names are out there. They didn’t care about the others who thought it was too much or awful, it was something just for them. As graffiti goes on a lot of people still don’t really understand or accept the graffiti all around. Doing Graffiti is finding any open space to have the time to creatively express or quickly “throw up” a name tag without being seen for all the people to see & wonder about.

Washington Heights

4/27/23

Chanyse

iPhone

writing | graffiti | art | culture | HIPHOP | Hip Hop | hip-hop