15 Graffiti Myths Debunked

There are many different, mostly negative, generalized stereotypes associated with graffiti art and its practitioners. Believe all graffiti is all about hip-hop? Think again. Point is that despite massive popularity, graffiti is all too often misunderstood. We're here to solve that.

WData breaks down and debunks the 15 most prevailing myths related to graff writing.Read on to expand your mind and broaden your view of an often misrepresented genre.

The broken windows theory by social scientist James Q. Wilson has been disproved often, but unfortunately, it is still the main argument for law makers and capitalists to encourage nonpartisan citizens that, amongst other things, they should not become attached to graffiti art, regardless of how attractive it can sometimes be. Every now and then a heavy presence of graffiti suggests a coming positive change in a neighborhood (depending on one's definition of positive). If there is a “hipster” area in your city, chances are that 5-15 years ago it was not a pleasant neighborhood and it was filled with graffiti. That area that you are classifying as hipster today is still filled with graffiti, bursting with coffee shops, health conscience eateries, attractive women walking really large dogs, and is now one of the most up and coming, desirable places to live in your city. The bullshit windows hypothesis is just a real estate manual for gentrifying a neighborhood, and it often acts as an overall cover for aggressive, racist policing, and the criminalization of the homeless and other undesirables in an area.

Another common stereo type is that all graffiti is in some way gang related. Of course, this is not the case. The History Channel had to learn this lesson the hard way back in 2010 when they featured the Guerilla Garden logo, a stylized graffiti gorilla that is used, created, and owned by the artist “JOLT” from Denver, in "Mile High Killers," an episode of the network's Gangland series. The problem with the History Channel's usage was that the Gangland episode repeatedly showed Jolt's famous guerilla image as a gang sign. The Guerilla Garden logo was even flashing on the screen as one gang member's chest tattoo, and a narrator stated repeatedly with utter confidence that “this guerilla signifies the North Side Mafia gang in Denver.” Unfortunately for Gangland, the accusations couldn't be further from the truth, and Jolt soon walked away from the situation with an apology, a hefty sum of retribution, and a promise that the episode would not be shown ever again.

In graffiti lettering and painting, simple is better in just about every way you can apply that phrase. There are only so many ways that you can bend a letter before it is not a standard recognizable letter. The thought process of technical being better is another misconceived stereotype from inside the world of graffiti. Well-done abstract “futurism” style graffiti can definitely be cool in its own subcategory, but there are an abundance of artists producing highly technical pieces that are so wild that technicality begins to replace legibility. It is a fine line between tasteful abstraction and hiding bad letter forms behind colors. The offending writers often become blinded by the obsessive details they create, and they eventually lose focus of the actual art of graffiti lettering. Its interesting, because in many cases their technical style creates delusion and a warped sense of overall ability, causing the excessively technical artist to lose track of (or never gain) universal, simple “good versus bad” design principles. Technical spray painting skills can be and are often used to create amazing graffiti artworks, but as with anything else; moderation is the key.

Graffiti does not have a dress code and not all writers are cut from the same cloth. Typically, stereotypes of how to spot a graffiti writer include wearing baggy clothing, wearing hoodies, baseball caps, backpacks, etc. Even within graffiti there are stereotypes such as the trendy “tight-pants” hipster writer who typically uses teenage girl style handwriting for tags and throwback bubble lettering borrowed from some of the original pioneers as their style guide. You can always identify a writer by the paint splotches on their shoes or on their clothes. That theory goes out of the window of course if the observed individual happens to be a house painter or even a regular artist, which are two professions that share with graffiti writers the woes of paint-stained wardrobes.

Graffiti and hip-hop culture became associated with one another after early graffiti artists who were active in elements of the hip hop culture explained graffiti as the visual expression of rap music. The films Wild Style and Style Wars cemented graffiti as part of the Hip-Hop package that was delivered to the world in the early 1980s. Graffiti has stereotypically been the official art of hip-hop ever since. Graffiti writing is considerably older than hip-hop. For most Graffiti writers; rap is just one of the many types of music that provide a soundtrack to riding the graffiti lifestyle roller coaster. Punk, Rock, Electronic dance, and almost every other genre of music that can be individually classified have shared periods of time associated with graffiti. You may have to take off your Cazals to see it son.

Every cop and assuming citizen believes this to be true 100% of the time, and writers do find that the cover of darkness can be very useful for many applications. However, almost all legal and chill-spot (off the beaten path places to paint non-permission graffiti pieces, such as under a bridge or an abandoned building) graffiti, and a huge portion of illegal graffiti is boldly preformed during daylight hours. In many American cities, curfew laws prohibit minors from being out until 1am. Obviously, the teenaged writers who make up a large portion of the in-your-face bombing that happens are rule-breakers by nature, but on an average night, by 1 o'clock in the morning, 80% of writers have already settled down for the night, at least as far as painting graffiti is concerned.

As an artist you can go outside and if you have the technical ability, you can paint super-scaled Rembrandt caliber portraiture with underlying promotion of world peace. The plan can include all the proceeds going to the local orphanage and not have any political affiliations whatsoever, but if regular citizens see you using spray paint to create your artwork, it automatically becomes "tagging" because; obviously anything created with the tainted elixir of spray paint is pure evil, and the general public has been taught to immediately acknowledge it as such. The word “tagger” is commonly used with the intention of defaming writers, and it describes the pre-metamorphosis larvae form of the delinquents who will either rapidly move to the next fad and quit the subculture, or will soon become actual graffiti writers.

“How would you like it if I spray-painted on your house?” asks 7 out of 10 officers. Sure, some people just want to see the world burn, and most graffiti writers employ the same tagline as Sherman Williams; “Cover the Earth.” However writing on and destroying everything is just a harsh generalization and makes graffiti writing sound like an inane anarchist cult. Established graffiti artists, who have made a name for themselves "destroying" urban landscapes all across the world, have well maintained lives and homes and even nicer earthly possessions. They privately curate art and store shoe collections amongst other things, some of which could afford a college tuition. These are primarily family men that we are talking about, with a majority of the people that are around them either not knowing or just not really paying mind to the fact that they write or wrote graffiti. Does the average young thrill-seeking writer want to initially create as much damage as possible? Yes, absolutely. However, somewhere along the line, they usually concede to being weekend warriors who chase the good life with most of their time, like almost everyone else.

Passersby mumble this one at least once or twice every time an artist is painting in a densely populated setting such as the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago or the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. On an occasion or two I've even heard it while I was wearing a respirator. Fact; Just because someone chooses to write graffiti definitely does not mean that all writers like getting high off of the toxic fumes of spray paint. Spray paint smells like shit the same to a writer as it does to everyone else. It's an honest opinion to say that many, but not all, writers and artist types inhale the weed, but only on two occasions have I ever met individuals who have a habit of huffing paint. One of the two people was not a writer, just an old party guy. That leaves one writer I have met over a span of twenty years while meeting many thousands of writers and people across America. To tie graffiti artists and huffing together in America in 2012 is just plain ridiculous.

"You should do tattoos," or "can you design something for me?" While working outdoors and being subject to the original douche bag: Mr. John Q. Public, graffiti practitioners are constantly being asked by civilian people to design something for a tattoo or for a logo, etc. Some writers do happen to claim these professions and are amazing in their fields, but most graffiti writers just have regular jobs, and very few people who regularly spray paint on outdoor surfaces are considered truly good leading designers. The fact is that most writers never pursue the profession. It is also assumed that graffiti artists naturally transition into great tattoo artists, which is the perfect assumption to make to get a really bad piece of non-art scarred on your body forever.

This could be the one stereotype that covers enough of a majority to rationalize generalization. It is also realistic that there are many mental and emotional disorders shared by a large group of the people who willingly participate in repetitively reproducing their singular fictitious names for long stretches of time. This is not the case with all of graffiti's artists, and that is the point. Not all graf writers care about fame and notoriety. These days, it is stylish for an impressionable young individual to pursue “Street Art” which inadvertently promotes itself as less egotistical and more conscience than graffiti, backed with much more public acceptance. “Non-graffiti” street artists can put in a couple years or less to achieve the street credibility necessary to transform their work into a successful self-serving art career. Often discredited graffiti artists are usually not successful in climbing towards financial security based off of their art, a battle that can last for decades with only the smallest percentile eventually breaking through. Ultimately, being a graffiti artist usually becomes an addictive passion after the first year or so of participating, and is not nearly as egotistical as it appears. Hopefully at some point Young America will reclaim and return graffiti to it's glorious periods of the 1980s and 90s when the best leaders and innovators of the craft were young teenagers, which is the direct opposite of today's 30-40 something year old writers that are running the show.

Since well before the year 2012, Graffiti was and is present on 7 continents. Even in Antarctica, researchers have left behind tags of their names on the wooden walls of the expedition bases. Every city, state, and country in every inhabitable geographical point on this earth has graffiti to some extent. Yet despite the clear writing on the wall, many conservatives still believe that graffiti is the practice of poor, nonwhite, minorities or at best; the work of college equivalent pranksters. The fact is; Graffiti is absolutely not discriminatory of race, sex, or creed. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Atheists ranging from being homeless to the top of the Upper Class, and in every demographic between, enjoy leaving their mark on society every now and again.

A common misconception is that it is only kids and a few irresponsible young adults out there scrawling on things. We will all grow up someday. Maybe the many thousands of middle-aged graffiti writers who regularly spray paint the cracks and crevices of society are just harder to catch. Perhaps the older you are, the wiser you get at playing the cat and mouse game of graffiti. Here are just a few extreme examples of graffiti spanning the ages: Dr. Kenneth C. Hopper, a 70 year old man, was arrested in April of 2009 for painting graffiti. Then there is the curious case of Charles Ignatius Wesley; a 71-year-old who was arrested after leaving his tag on hundreds of telephone poles. Lastly, a man in California at the age of 73 years young was arrested for vandalism. Sheriff's deputies say that they saw him slapping up 'Who Is John Scott?' stickers in an L.A. subway station.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about graffiti from both the inside and outside of the art form. There are purists, nonconformists, anti-graffiti authorities, and even aerosol artists who learned about graffiti from an art teacher in college, that all have different opinions about the rules of graffiti. Some will convincingly appeal that graffiti is only graffiti when it is performed illegally, which is just a minority opinion. Graffiti is an artwork, message or drawing coincidentally created more often than not illegally, on a public surface. There are no governing laws or rules to graffiti. There never can be rules of graffiti without being an oxymoron of itself. There are however, some rather obvious common sense guidelines that anyone planning to commit a crime should practice, regardless of how petty the crime may be. Things like don't do the crime if you cant do the time, and don't rat out yourself, your friends, or even your enemies.

Graffiti as signatures or tags as we know it today started to appear in Philadelphia in the late 1960s. Earlier in the 60s graffiti was made by political activists. Since the 1950s street gangs have used graffiti for marking territorial border lines. Getting a common name signature up goes at least as far back as the 1940s during World War II when "Kilroy was here" started popping up all across the country and overseas. It is just a common misbelief that graffiti derived from New York because in the beginning in New York; trains were the main canvas for most writers. NYC had an abundance of trains and they had bigger crime problems to deal with at that time, so when the graffiti epidemic exploded seemingly overnight, it brought a lot of attention to the big apple, and in the 40+ years since, graffiti has rarely looked back.