Taking Graffiti Seriously

November 4, 2006 - 3:34 PM by

Idan gives us a serious overview of the street art of Tel Aviv. As I read, I can really picture him delivering a lecture on the subject:

Street Graffiti.

It is an integral part of any vibrant metropolis. As a means of communication, though, it has some unique constraints that make it an extremely good window into the counterculture segment of society:

Graffiti can (and often is) very stylized and designed — not always just text on the wall.
It is an intrinsically “wrong” activity (defacement of property), but graffiti artists don’t think it belongs in the same category as “real crimes” (say, theft). Seen as a way of thumbing one’s nose at the establishment without any “real” damage to anybody, as well as being artistic and rebellious at the same time.
Before the internet, it was probably the only essentially free method of publishing with wide coverage
Relatively low-bandwidth (only room for a few very recognizable elements per impression)
So basically graffiti is the ideal window into counterculture, because it’s produced only by motivated, literate, able members of that very specific segment of society. It’s the seedier side of Israel’s ubiquitous bumper sticker politics and slogans. It can be very potent: anybody who has spent any time in downtown NYC has seen the OBEY posters, even if they don’t know what it means and who put it there.

Ok, enough with the sociology — on to the pictures!

Walking around Tel Aviv, there are a bevy of taglines and images painted in various places. Some of them are abstract, some are textual, some are handwritten, some stenciled, some one color, some multicolor. Some have multiple authors — the original, and the modifier who goes around subverting the original work, like parasites. Usually, I happen to see the really interesting ones when I don’t have my camera on me. Nokia camera phone to the rescue!

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The original slogan, “?? ????? ??”, means “The Nation of Israel Lives!” (implied exclamation point). Since the exclamation point is missing, somebody converted the statement to the interrogative with the addition of the question mark — notice that the color and style of the ‘?’ is different from the original tag.

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I’ve seen “Know Hope” in various places — it is perhaps my favorite piece of Tel Aviv graffiti. Uplifting. Simple. Enigmatic. Google can’t find a thing about it. I wish I knew more about the people writing it, but I guess it doesn’t matter. This image has a full-size poem, in correctly-spelled english, culminating in the Know Hope tagline. It’s the first time I’ve seen something other than just the tagline written somewhere in that blocky handwriting.

Tags: • Category: Art 

Comments

2 Comments on Taking Graffiti Seriously

  1. Danielle on Mon, Nov 6th 2006 8:23 PM

    2. Why don’t you tell us what’s written on the “Know Hope” page? What you posted was a real teaser.

  2. $0.00 on Mon, Jan 29th 2007 6:43 AM

    3. know hope is a guy who is half american he is a great artist and person there is alot of other street art going on that is not know hope and not just tags if you look harder there is some amazing art work in the streets of tel aviv and it is growing every day along with the crap but still it is out there if you just look alittle harder look more at sticker art

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