Graffiti: The Art of Transgression

Dating back in historical record as far as the Catacombs of the Roman Empire, graffiti can be defined as the act of vandalizing another’s property, whether it is public or private.

Unlike other forms of art, graffiti is inherently illegal. Due to its illegality, graffiti artists generally operate under anonymous names. So is graffiti truly art, or merely an act a malicious transgression of property? I will consider some tropes of graffiti across history in hopes of demonstrating that it is an amorphic yet legitimate art form.

Due to its transgressive nature, graffiti is must necessarily be quite political and self-conscious – graffiti’s creators are aware they are defying the law – this reflexivity is always a part of their message.

Hence, political caricatures in Roman times

or Banksy’s contemporary work

Yet this leads to the question, is all graffiti automatically artistic simply due to its controversial nature? Does an ill-thought out or perverse image

constitute street art?

Jean Baudrillard notes graffiti’s transgressive nature marks it as a powerful means of communication because it destabilizes the message of the property it has vandalized. For example, the Catacombs or the wall pictured above no longer command as much attention as the piece that has covered them.

In this sense, I would argue that although all works of graffiti serve to destabilize traditional meaning, and is therefore political, only some works of graffiti make an attempt to transpose new meaning in place of what it has destroyed. Banksy’s graffiti

works to destabilize an ordinary wall, distract from typical urban signage, but also through self-aware parody of commercial signage, actively disrupt and dispute the coherence of the commercial logic the city block attempts to fabricate. The above piece makes a powerful statement about commercialization of art – we are commodifying freedom through habits of consumption rather than thinking and acting freely.

Banksy’s work is an attempt to introduce decidedly new ways of thinking, grant the “audience” of his work agency. Ultimately, the physical demonstration of agency – the ability to transgress and defy rules of law – offer the audience the same agency to think outside the bounds of what society tells us to.