Abstract
The act of creating graffiti is often perceived as being tied to risks, such as arrest or becoming a target for rival gangs. While graffiti writers seem aware of these risks, some use graffiti to send messages about issues such as race relations, governmental oppression, and war, while others see graffiti as an art form similar to painting on a traditional canvas. Using Lash’s work on aesthetic reflexivity within a risk model framework, we investigate internet images and newspaper accounts of graffiti to highlight the gap between the aesthetics of graffiti writing and the accounts of those who hold positions of power within structures such as city offices and police departments. This gap makes it difficult to distinguish between graffiti that is meant to enliven an area and graffiti that is used to promote violence.
The act of placing a piece of art in public is often thought of as a way to commemorate or appreciate an individual, group, or event (Sharp et al., 2005). Others see it as an opportunity to bring fractured communities closer together (Goldbard, 2006). To the graffiti writer practicing his/her craft, a piece of graffiti may be based on commemoration or some hopeful message, it may be an act of challenging political and social structures that promote inequalities and the concentration of power, and it can be used to mark territory or promote violence against others. The public is then told that all graffiti is a nuisance regardless of its content or style, and those creating it a scourge. Is this simply a myth created and perpetuated by those in positions of power who feel threatened by individuals and groups they cannot control (Kramer, 2010), or is graffiti likely to be linked to other crimes (Wilson and Kelling, 1982)? We will approach this question from a risk analysis framework informed by Lash’s (1994) thoughts on aesthetic modernization. We analyze both internet images and newspaper accounts of graffiti to define the place of graffiti in contemporary US society.
Graffiti as risk
The urban landscape is literally a canvas for some individuals and groups. Banksy, for example, sees the sides of buildings and sidewalks as places to display political slogans and images. While celebrated by some, Banksy’s work is illegal, and Banksy faces fines and jail time if caught. Diego Rivera also plied his trade in public, though his work was typically backed by legitimate funding so he was referred to as a muralist. Not everything he did was appreciated, however. For example, a mural in New York commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller became so controversial due to the inclusion of a portrait of Vladimir Lenin that it was destroyed. In both cases, Banksy as an illegal graffiti artist and Rivera as a paid muralist, painting in public involves taking risks.
While all forms of public art can be controversial and risky (e.g. Kammen, 2006; Tepper, 2011), it is graffiti that is often tied to being arrested, violent gangs, and other criminal or pathological activities (Nayak, 2010; Pani and Sagliaschi, 2009; Wilson and Kelling, 1982). It has also been tied to attempts to challenge the status quo (Hanauer, 2011). It is not our intention to determine the appropriateness of these arguments, but to show how public portrayals of graffiti – through internet images and newspaper accounts – are framed by different groups.
We begin with the typical risk analysis model of risk assessment, management, and communication. This model has been used for decades as a way to approach the threats and hazards individuals and societies face (Koller, 2005). The process is often thought of as linear, with risk assessors starting with assessments of risks associated with an event, new technology, or some other unknown. Assessments take into consideration the likelihood of an event occurring, as well as the potential consequences if the event was to happen (e.g. Mallor et al., 2008). Risk managers use the assessments to make policy decisions which are meant to eliminate the risk or attenuate any consequences stemming from a problem associated with the risk should it happen (e.g. Bouder et al., 2007). Risk communicators relay the work of assessors and managers to audience members, supposedly leading to a better understanding of the risk among the audience and what is being done to contain it (e.g. Eisenman et al., 2007). At that point the typical risk model has reached its conclusion, though audience reactions to risk communication are not always predictable, and risk assessors and managers may be forced to revisit their work to find ways to placate an outraged audience (Sandman, 1993).
We expand this model by arguing that the act of creating graffiti encompasses risks – being arrested, being involved in gang activity, stealing supplies, etc. – and may also be a form of risk communication – renderings of political oppression, slogans against police brutality, portrayals of poverty, attacks on other ethnic or racial groups, etc. Assessment and management are still part of this process, as the police, community and business leaders, and other graffiti writers try to assess and manage the risks of creating graffiti and the messages displayed. The typical model of assessments, management, and communication is still in play and useful, though it is no longer linear when all actions and actors are taken into account.
The risk model is further complicated by the political, and often whimsical, renderings of individuals such as Banksy that lead some people to romanticize contemporary graffiti. It is not, however, a homogenous art form. According to one of Lachmann’s (1988: 238) interviewees, “[t]here’s too … many … toys on the line. Brothers can’t see my tag no more.” This individual “decided to retire from tagging and return to junior high school.” For this individual, graffiti was a way to be noticed in a crowded urban environment. Efforts on the line were not aimed at challenging City Hall or developing insightful slogans that sought an end to world hunger. This was about notoriety, and practicing a trade at night that often meant missing school and other social engagements. Becoming known as a graffiti artist was one way to develop a sense of self in an environment that did not lend itself to individual accomplishments in most areas of life.
Some graffiti motivated by style has been defined as an extension of gallery or studio art (Kriegel, 2005). Austin (2010: 34) contends that such work is actually mislabeled. “Despite the claims (but mostly presumptions) of city officials, policing authorities, and their journalistic and academic supporters, graffiti art is very poorly understood as vandalism.” According to Austin, this work is not graffiti but an attempt to produce art in an urban space:
Graffiti art’s recognizable visually aesthetic intentions, the physical size of typical individual productions (throw-up, masterpiece), its rapid proliferation and collective coverage of urban visual space, the locations it occupies within the urban landscape, and the complex social organization of graffiti art production are unprecedented in the history of graffiti. (2010: 35)
Austin, however, does mention that graffiti art is considered illegal by city officials and the police given that much of it is done on public and private property without permission. For this reason we place it within the realm of graffiti with regard to the risks and frames we are interested in studying.
When graffiti writers do turn to overt political messages, the information portrayed is not necessarily positive or funny. Nayak (2010), for example, studied the maintenance of white supremacy in London suburbs, pointing to the fact that hate graffiti was used as both markers of territory and products of emotive work in postcolonial spaces. The messages were political in nature, but were not aimed at developing strong, upbeat linkages between racial groups. Nayak points to the killing of three black teenagers in these areas as evidence of the risks associated with the emotions displayed by those putting up the hate graffiti.
These various styles and motivations lead us to add yet another layer of abstraction to understand graffiti within a modern context saturated with legitimate forms of art (Kimmelman, 2005). Lash (1994) provides a counter-argument to legitimation through aesthetic modernity. From this vantage point, modern society is characterized by individual desire, power, and an “anything goes” attitude. Modernity is characterized by reflexivity, which is the phenomenon of consequences stemming from modernization processes (Beck, 1994). For example, modernization processes that rely on new technology did not seek or hope for environmental degradation, but many technologies – or the manufacturing that made the technology possible – have led to environmental concerns (e.g. discarded cell phones dumped in landfills). The term reflexivity – or reflexive modernization – captures the social and natural world’s “reflexes” to modernization and change. Not all such reflexes have been negative in the sense of environmental degradation, as modern movements in art have led to new ways of knowing the world (Chipp, 1968), to give just one positive example. The point is that any new approach to navigating social and natural environments will have consequences.
At the heart of the approach to modernity is the profit motive, which leads to larger gaps between the rich and the poor, as well as a stronger desire among individuals to succeed financially (Lash, 1994). One possible reaction – reflex – to this hyper-sensitive desire for financial accumulation when one is not successful would be to strike out against the institutions that are seen as upholding these principles or denying access to financial riches. This could include a range of activities, such as the development of countercultures (e.g. the Beatniks, some of whom did become financially successful), unlawful business practices and money laundering, stealing, and vandalism (Duncombe, 2005). Vandalism, however, may be in the eyes of the beholder. If Bourdieu’s (1984) interpretation of society is correct, graffiti in the eyes of those in control of economic resources may be seen as vandalism because it is an effort to control cultural resources and the streets by someone other than themselves. Graffiti writers, on the other hand, may see graffiti as an activity or code to be used to maintain a sense of solidarity among themselves while challenging others (White, 2008).
Aesthetic reflexivity captures these events and situations by arguing that the critique – graffiti as defiance towards the profit motive and gallery art of capitalism – is at the heart of the act itself. According to Lash (1994), these acts are a combination of both the object of social situation (structure) and conscious decisions (agency). Modernity has not led to a completely structured human animal. One cannot escape social structures, but there are opportunities to act within and against these structures. An individual who feels detached from the mainstream economic or art systems may turn to the streets to highlight both their skills and angst. Graffiti becomes a reflexive act with regard to the anomie produced by modern society, while the fight against graffiti is a reflex to these challenges to modernity. Austin’s (2010) argument that graffiti art is an extension of gallery art misses the point that some of these individuals do not want to be (or cannot be) part of the art world that is made up of for-profit galleries. The act of labeling some of the work as graffiti art and some of it as graffiti trivializes the reflexive acts that are very real for graffiti writers who have paid fines or spent time in jail. This is not to take away from Austin’s argument that there are some who spend a great deal of time and effort on developing techniques and aesthetically pleasing forms that come to grace the walls of inner cities, suburbs, and boxcars, but to incorporate the acts of painting and official responses within the larger context of late modern society.
This notion of reflexive actions leads us to approach graffiti as potentially an act of risk and an act of risk communication. It is a debate and fight that is being played out in the streets, as well as in corporate boardrooms and city halls. We now turn to our data and methods to begin making sense of how graffiti is portrayed to the public.
Data and methods
We collected data from two sources – internet (Yahoo!®) images and newspaper articles. Five hundred internet images were collected and coded using the following search terms – urban graffiti, New York graffiti, Los Angeles graffiti, Chicago graffiti, Houston graffiti, Phoenix graffiti, Philadelphia graffiti, San Antonio graffiti, San Diego graffiti, and Dallas graffiti. Fifty images were collected under each search category for a total of 500 images. The term “urban graffiti” gave us a number of images from both the US and around the world, as well as clothing lines and wedding photos. We then decided to only include pictures from the nine largest cities in the US to provide more definite structure to the image search. The first 50 graffiti images were coded for the following categories – depictions of gender, race, explicit political messages, violence/hate, popular culture, and commercial symbols. Each image could be coded into none of the categories, one of the categories, or multiple categories. For example, many of the depictions of race were also coded for gender, though in some cases it was difficult to tell the gender of the person depicted either because the person displayed was very young or parts of the image were covered so that all we could see was a face or other body part in which race was clearly indicated but not gender. Each image was coded as one unit, and images that were labeled as murals on the internet, or that looked as if they were inside a building (on display), on book covers, or were too close up to make sense of the large image were not included in this study.
We also coded 150 randomly selected articles from Lexis-Nexis between 2007 and 2009 that were published in the same cities where our images appeared, as well as USA Today for a measure of what was being read by general audiences. It is difficult to know what the proper lag is between media coverage and public perception, but given that we are not surveying attitudes of the public, we felt three years was a long enough period to gain a sense of how modern institutions have been thinking about graffiti. Fifty articles were chosen from each year (five from each newspaper) using a four-digit random number generator that captured every day (0101 to 1231), without replacements. If the generator gave us 0781, we chose an article on or near July 8. If the number was 0718, we would code an article on or near July 18. We generated ten separate groups of numbers, one for each year. The articles were coded for placement, length, and news source of the article (wire service or in-house report), city in which the article appeared, slant of the headline (positive, negative, or neutral), theme of the article (up to two themes could be coded), institutional affiliations of sources (up to three institutional affiliations could be coded), our general sense of the overall slant of the article (positive, negative, or neutral), whether graffiti was the main theme or simply mentioned, and if graffiti was used as a metaphor.
Our main objective with these searches was to see if graffiti images were positive, negative, or neutral, and whether news reports, which are often based on official sources (Gitlin, 1980), reflected the images or looked to portray graffiti in a certain way regardless of what people who were posting images on the internet thought. It is not our intention to provide a comprehensive overview of this topic in the U.S., or to argue that graffiti should or should not be accepted as an art form. Instead, we hope to provide a snapshot of how graffiti is portrayed in two public forums that are accessible to a wide audience.
Graffiti images on the web
As early as the 1980s, graffiti artists were being asked to practice their craft on canvases to be sold in galleries (Lachmann, 1988), and many of the graffiti pieces that we saw on the internet were advanced in terms of skill. This is not to condone the practice, but to recognize the amount of work that went into some of these pieces. That is obviously why the pictures were taken, and this is a bias in the study. However, if someone is willing to do a great deal of work on a piece of art considered illegal, one could assume that they would also want to be sending a message. We also saw a great deal of quick tags and throw-ups, which is the term for an image that is more elaborate than a quick tag (the latter consisting of gang sign or initials often done with a paint pen or permanent marker), but not at the level of a mural or masterpiece (a graffiti term for a larger, multi-layered/multi-colored piece).
Of the 500 images we studied, many of them were artistic versions of the graffiti writer’s name or moniker. Table 1 shows that the most popular images used were taken from popular culture (157 instances), such as characters from video games (e.g. Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers) and the Devil (which was also categorized under violence/hate). This was followed by gender (131 instances of a recognizable male or female character used) and race (120 instances of a person of a recognizable race used). All other categories were used less than 20% of the time (less than 100 instances), and many used images that did fit into any of our categories.
Descriptive statistics for internet images of graffiti
Each of these three categories – popular cultural images, gender, and race – send a number of messages, some simply showing a tie between the graffiti writer and his/her favorite video game, the ethnic make-up of the area, or often an exaggerated gendered image (e.g. female with large breasts and obvious nipples under a tight shirt, male with abnormally large and defined muscles), though it is difficult to see these as risk communication on the part of the graffiti writer (this is not meant to ignore the risks of spreading unreal body form expectations for men and women).
If these renderings are critiques of galleries and the profit motive, it is not in terms of the styles or abilities. That a number of internet images tied graffiti to products (wedding gowns, cars, perfumes) also highlights the blending of forms and the potential for financial success among graffiti writers (Peterson and Anand, 2004). At the same time, most of these pieces look to be done in such a way that the graffiti writers could not sell them (unless they have been paid to do the work in the first place), as it would be hard to move a concrete or brick wall to someone’s home, or to a gallery or museum. This is a possible reaction to gallery and museum art which has been shown to be linked to certain classes (Zolberg, 1992). If graffiti writers can get people out of the galleries and museums, or provide art for anyone who is traveling through these streets, then the places that show legitimate art become threatened. This threat is challenged in return by making the links between legitimate art and higher socioeconomic class even stronger (Lamont and Fournier, 1992). The accompanying critique would be to strengthen the links between graffiti and criminal behavior, leading to a possible increase in graffiti activity as a reflex to crackdowns on urban art.
More explicit messages – our political category – appeared 59 times. These messages ranged from Banksy-esque stencils showing (anti)war images, to swastikas, to environmental slogans and images meant to call attention to issues such as global warming and urban sprawl. These were typically not tied to a specific neighborhood, though swastikas are often used to threaten ethnic or religious minorities, as became clear in our study of newspaper coverage of graffiti (see below; see also Nayak, 2010).
Violent depictions appeared in 75 of the graffiti pieces we studied. There was no one specific image that was used by all artists, though the Devil and other images tied to Hell (e.g. a pitchfork with flames) were common. There were also knives and swords, often infused into a letter or part of the larger image, guns, and occasional bullets and bullet holes. In most cases, these images seemed to be as much about the artist and his/her skill in depicting flying bullets, as any specific message of hatred or violence to society.
The final category – commercial images – appeared 17 times. This included the use of the video game characters mentioned above, characters from cartoons, and an occasional use of a name or symbol from a product such as a soft drink or food item. It could be the case that these 17 graffiti pieces were attached to a building that housed the company that was connected to the products, though most appeared to be instances where copying an image was meant to show one’s skill or a propensity towards some commercial item (see Orend and Gagne, 2009, for a study of corporate logos and tattoos). If these were meant to be a dig at commercialism much like Warhol’s soup cans and silk screens, there was little commentary to move the viewer in that direction.
We should also mention how these categories played out among the cities. There is very little variation across most the categories, and much of what we viewed as we were coding these images did not change radically from one city to another. New York had the highest number of gendered images (18), and the highest number of racial images (14, tied with Chicago). San Diego had the highest number of violent images (11), followed by Houston (10), while Chicago had the highest number of political messages (10), followed by Houston (9). Popular images were highest in San Diego (23), followed by Dallas (20), and commercial images were highest in New York (4), while no commercial images were seen in Los Angeles.
Much like Lachmann (1988) and Austin (2010), the graffiti we saw posted on the internet looked to be more about style and skill than specific messages about one’s neighborhood, some governing body, the economy, or the environment. Those messages did appear, but to a much lesser extent than messages about the graffiti writers’ skills. Many of these images were large, colorful, involved a great deal of skill to pull off, and not meant to challenge any specific issue or topic besides the illegality of graffiti. We understand that we have only scratched the surface of the graffiti available in most towns and cities, but this is one public face of the practice, and it seems less than threatening or risky. If it is a reflex to modern society (Beck et al., 1994), it is taking one of two forms. Either it is a reflex to what is appropriate to display and where, as these pieces are often large and use supports that cannot be easily moved (if at all) into a gallery or museum. Second, it is a critique of authority and action against the anonymity of modern society. Graffiti is seen and recognized at varying levels by different people (Lachmann, 1988), and so becomes a marker of both the self and individual existence within larger social structures that relegate the individual to a number. This, however, is only one public presentation of graffiti.
Graffiti in the news
According to Beck (1999:4), “[r]isk is the modern approach to foresee and control the future consequences of human action”. Coleman (1990:778) argued that risk was “when probabilities of differing outcomes are known”. For the graffiti artist, the potential negative outcomes consist of being caught by the police, violent treatment by others, being ignored or even ridiculed for poor efforts, and having to finance one’s own work. Arrests for graffiti are major events in some places, as is evidenced by a search for “graffiti arrests” on Yahoo!.com on 22 July 2010. The following headlines were found on the first page of the search results:
Wisconsin Announces Arrests of Graffiti Vandals Graffiti Arrests (in Bellevue, NE) Revok Arrested for Graffiti Salem (OR) Police Make Record Number of Arrests for Graffiti Graffiti Arrests Include Repeat Offenders
National law enforcement agencies are also taking notice of graffiti. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which considers graffiti a form of vandalism, published a study in its January 2006 edition of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, concerning residents from Long Beach, CA, and found that graffiti was rated third among the major concerns in the city, behind unkempt neighborhoods and drugs, but ahead of concerns with gangs, shooting, and prostitution. 1 Being arrested for graffiti can carry punishments ranging from a fine of a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars for restitution and jail time. Being arrested also carries the risks of financial strain, social isolation, and social stigma.
So, why are some individuals willing to take these risks to put their names on a wall? Aesthetic modernization (Lash, 1994) would lead one to argue that these efforts are critiques, and this is where the risks of creating graffiti overlaps with risk communication. According to Kriegel (2005:44), “[i]n today’s New York – and in today’s London and Paris and Amsterdam and Los Angeles – the spread of graffiti is as accurate a barometer of the decline of civil society as anything else one can think of.” This message carries at least two meanings. On the one hand, graffiti marks civil disobedience or disenfranchised youth (Pani and Sagliaschi, 2009). The risk entailed in the collapse of a neighborhood or city is a rise in graffiti. Increases in the amount of graffiti can signal that an area is beginning to crumble socially and economically. Increased graffiti can mean more gang activity and more violence (Innes, 2004). From this standpoint, graffiti is a harbinger of more risky behaviors.
Kriegel (2005), however, also points to the fact that graffiti can be a way for the voiceless to be heard. In a situation of social decay, those in the most desperate of situations may feel powerless to bring about change through formal channels (Turley, 2009), so they voice their frustrations on the walls that surround them. From this vantage point, it is a plea for help – or at least recognition of the problems these people face – not a causal factor in leading to more violent crime. The crime, if present, is due to a lack of opportunities. Graffiti is the message about this situation.
Which of these interpretations is more likely to appear in the press? Table 2 shows that nearly 70% of the articles treated graffiti as something negative, while only 16 (10.6%) of the articles we coded put a positive spin on it. The negative articles ranged from the use of violent images in graffiti to a 12-year-old girl being kicked out of school for drawing a heart on a gym wall with a permanent marker. That particular article appeared on the front page, and according to school officials, “the district is following a state law that requires mandatory removal to a disciplinary alternative education school for such an offense” (Houston Chronicle, 7 July 2007: A1). The article goes on to say that any graffiti on school grounds is treated as a felony.
Descriptive statistics for newspaper coverage
Not all reports of graffiti were as innocuous. The following appeared in the Business Section of the Philadelphia Inquirer (6 May 2008: C6):
A life-size noose hanging in their work area. “I love the Ku Klux Klan” scrawled inside portable toilets on the job site. The regular use of extreme racial slurs. To four African American construction workers building a new Conectiv Energy power plant on the old Bethlehem Steel site in Bethlehem, the graffiti, the noose and the language amounted to significant and frightening harassment.
This article went on to discuss how these workers were financially compensated by the construction company ($1.65 million settlement), but the term ‘graffiti’ was used to signify a hate message written in a portable toilet. In a sense, the message was a form of risk communication – if you happen to be of a certain race you should be careful – but it became a risk for the company which had to pay a large cash settlement to those targeted by the message.
These are just two examples of negative messages, and show the range of how newspapers covered this topic. The positive stories, while only 16 in this sample, had a different take. This ranged from graffiti artists making money through contractual agreements (such as a graffiti artist providing patterns for shoes) to a company asking graffiti artists to decorate their office building. According to the Chicago Sun-Times (14 September 2007: NC10):
Bust magazine co-presents another lively music bill, featuring acclaimed local rapper Psalm One with ESG Bronx art funk band (playing their last show), Yo Majesty, Bahamadia, Rita J, Brandy Dew, Magic Madge and Eddie Edge. There’s even an after party with more acts, plus live graffiti art by the Graff Girlz.
What is meant by “live graffiti art” is difficult to interpret, but it is part of a “lively music bill,” and, therefore, part of something to look forward to by this audience.
Other companies also used graffiti to promote an image of coolness. As USA Today (8 May 2009: 6D) reported:
Paramount’s Star Trek parties also had a personal touch, albeit a less family-friendly one. Hipster photographer Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter was hired to throw underground parties in cities including Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Berlin. While DJs kept the crowds dancing, graffiti artists created massive Spock-themed paintings, and models in silver bikinis and bright green full-body paint writhed seductively.
It is hard to visualize a highly publicized party as “underground,” or to label individuals who are making Spock-themed paintings graffiti artists, but this again points to how graffiti is seen as hip or edgy by some in the press. In this case, being attached to graffiti is neither a risk nor risk communication, but is a message of consumerism. This is part of the dialectic of aesthetic modernity, as street culture is co-opted and made consumer-friendly by corporate interests (Peterson and Anand, 2004).
Table 2 also shows the themes of these articles, and who was being used as a source. The most-used themes were lifestyle and art (32.7%), followed by police stories and arrests (27.3%). It should be noted that these were not necessarily mutually exclusive categories. Numerous articles linked graffiti to vandalizing other art pieces, or as threatening a certain lifestyle (such as a particular neighborhood). These reports were coded as having both a police story/arrest theme and an art or lifestyle theme.
Public citizens (such as the parents of the child mentioned above who was expelled from school), government officials, and the reporters themselves were the most likely sources to be used for information (50.7%, 36.7%, and 36.0%, respectively). Individuals associated with the arts (30.7%) were more likely to appear in an article than police officers (18.7%), but this may be due to the fact that articles in which artists were quoted tended to be longer, so there were more sources within that particular article, where many of the reports which quoted police were shorter and only had one source.
The articles in this sample were most likely to appear in either general news or lifestyle sections (30.7%), followed by the local section. The sample also included editorials (16, 10.6%), and two articles which appeared in sports sections. The average word count of these articles was 865 words.
While these descriptive statistics give us some sense of the way graffiti was presented in the news, Table 3 breaks the sample into articles across the nine cities (or their newspapers) and USA Today. A χ2 test shows a large difference between the categories (χ2 = 45.46 [df, 18,1], p < .01), though we would caution against too much interpretation from categories which contain only 15 items from much larger populations. What we did find were two newspapers (New York Times and USA Today) had a nearly even spread of articles, while the Phoenix New Times (which is more like the Village Voice than the New York Times), was split between negative and neutral articles. All other newspapers were likely to have more negative than positive articles. In short, not all newspapers and cities present graffiti in the same way.
Newspaper slant of article concerning graffiti
χ2 = 45.46 (df, 18,1) p < .01
An OLS regression analysis was also performed (Table 4). While knowing that there were differences across cities, we also wanted to look at how strong variables such as theme and source predicted the treatment of graffiti in these articles. Surprisingly, having a police theme did not necessarily mean the article was negative (and this included hate crime stories). Having an art theme was related to more positive stories. Government sources (e.g. a mayor or city council person) were more likely to be connected to negative stories, though business sources were more likely to be spread across the types of articles, highlighting the fact that graffiti is becoming tied to business opportunities in a positive way, though there were also many instances in our sample of articles of business owners feeling they had been victims of graffiti writers (e.g. graffiti was driving customers away from their businesses). As could be expected, if an article showed up in the New York Times or USA Today it was more likely to be positive. Also, the slant of the headlines tended to match the way in which graffiti was discussed, though whether graffiti was featured in the story or was just mentioned did not seem to have much predictive power concerning the treatment of the topic.
Standardized OLS regression analysis on overall treatment of graffiti in article
Adj R2 .44
p < .10
p < .05
p < .01
Peterson and Anand (2004) argued that countercultures and their tangible products are often adopted into the mainstream if a profit can be made, and the same seems to be the case of graffiti. As mentioned, various companies are incorporating graffiti artists into parties and celebrations, and the fact that business interests were not automatically tied to negative articles shows the some people are seeing graffiti as a way to draw in customers. This is a possible extension of Lash’s (1994) idea of aesthetic modernity. If graffiti is seen as a reflex to typical gallery art and the profit motives of modern society (McGuigan, 1999), any positive reflex to the graffiti itself could be seen as a business opportunity. This is Peterson and Anand’s (2004) point about the absorption of aspects of countercultures into mainstream cultural production. What is interesting about Peterson and Anand’s perspective is the idea that the original motives for developing a counterculture are typically lost when middle-class individuals begin adopting the aseptic versions coming from the corporate world (how many original graffiti artists would appreciate Star Trek murals and people being painted silver at parties?). There are, however, some links to the stories told to Lachmann (1988) by graffiti writers. Both Lachmann’s writers and those being paid by a company such as Paramount, are looking for notoriety. The similiarities, however, end there. Part of the skill of working the streets is being able to stay away from the police and other authority figures, and the motive for writing graffiti is to be seen and noticed in an uncaring world. The risks of such work have already been noted. For the corporate graffiti artist, the point is to continue finding what the client wants so the money continues to flow.
Conclusions
Graffiti potentially incorporates both taking and communicating risks. We say potentially, because some graffiti artists have been incorporated into mainstream culture and are currently working as legitimate artists for large corporations. Illegitimate graffiti writers – illegitimate from the vantage point of the criminal justice system – face risks of being arrested, being fined and/or spending time in jail, being connected to gangs, and having to finance their habit (or stealing their supplies). Art provides opportunities to communicate risks (Antliff, 2007), and some graffiti writers use the walls of the city to express their opinions and feelings about themselves, their neighborhoods, city officials, global warming, war, etc.
Our study found that graffiti images on the internet (through a Yahoo!® search on the nine largest US cities and “urban graffiti”) found some images that were definitely communicating a risk, but many of the images highlighted the graffiti writers’ skills as artists without any portrayals of political or social concern. Violent symbols such as the Devil or weapons were often incorporated into the graffiti so as to give a viewer the sense that the symbol was part of the art, and not some message about violence or fear. The cities we studied shared this characteristic of images of graffiti being more about the artists’ skills, and not communicating specific messages of social change. We assume this is partly due to coding the first 50 images of an internet search, but it also shows what attracts people to certain types of graffiti.
Our analysis of newspapers from the same cities and USA Today highlights a different aspect of graffiti. Of the 150 coded articles, nearly 70% treated graffiti in a negative way. Such stories were more likely to point to swastikas and hate speech quickly drawn on a wall, alley, or door than speak about the skills needed to put together a large mural. When graffiti was treated in a positive light, it was often tied to a business opportunity or gallery showing, a part of the dialectic of aesthetic modernity in which the profit motive still reigns supreme. These latter efforts were typically not the same kind of multi-colored street graffiti pieces displayed on the internet. Very little was said about the skill needed to create these larger, multi-colored pieces.
Finally, newspaper portrayals of graffiti were not uniform across newspapers, as the New York Times and USA Today carried more positive stories about graffiti than the other newspapers. Given the place of New York City with regards to avant-garde art (Crane, 1987), the fact that New York Times was more likely to publish positive articles on graffiti may show that graffiti is becoming more accepted in some art circles, though to reiterate, much of the positive coverage was not focused on graffiti being displayed in the streets.
Whether some graffiti is becoming part of the avant-garde art scene and seen as legitimate, is still open to interpretation. We would argue that since some graffiti is being tied to legitimate business practices as part of aesthetic modernity (Lash 1994), the question of whether this is a critique or reflex to the critique remains unclear. Throwing up a mural on a wall is considered a criminal activity in most instances, and we assume such practices are, in some cases, a reaction to gallery art, as well as the profit motive of modern society. If graffiti is a critique of aspects of modern society, it becomes a threat regardless of the aesthetics appearing on the internet. As long as this is how it is presented in the press, an institution controlled by for-profit corporations, graffiti will be about taking and communicating risks.