focus on secondary || adolescents and graffiti

National Art Education Association

Adolescents and GraffitiAuthor(s): Koon-Hwee KanSource: Art Education, Vol. 54, No. 1, Focus on Secondary (Jan., 2001), pp. 18-23Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193889 .

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hat is gdlffti, and why are many adolescents attracted by it?

Art teachers recognize that there are great variations of visual art forms nowadays. As conceptions of art change, so will the ideas about art education. Wilson (1997) has proposed an expanded

concept of "child art" to include activities that are common to the youth of today. This view could encourage teachers to broaden their curriculums and incorporate new art forms that are more engaging to young people.

This article uses teenage psychology to interpret adolescents' involvement in

both private and public graffiti. Graffiti art will be examined in different contexts with its educational implications considered for the secondary school art curriculum and instruction.

ART EDUCATION / JANUARY 2001

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Private Graffiti Doodling

Doodling is a form of private graffiti. These scrawls and scribbles are created when attention is supposed to be focused elsewhere, so their completeness and aesthetic quality are seldom recognized. Adolescents' doodling may seem totally formless and meaningless, but it fits perfectly into certain aspects of adolescents' psychology.

Living in multiple realities, including the "daydream reality," is common among adolescents. My personal experience of interviewing and observing adolescents has alerted me that even when they seem to be very engaged in an activity or a conversation, their thoughts can change dimension and direction at any time without warning. This scattered attention continues to puzzle and worry many parents and teachers. However, adolescents' accomplished "divided attention" and "selective attention" can easily allow them to concentrate on different things simultaneously, switching focus instantly to activities that interest them while allowing others to fade into the back- ground (Higgins & Turnure, 1984).

Thus, the elongated concentration span of adolescence that guides curriculum planning has certain limitations. As academic achievement is not valued by many teenagers today (Meyer, 1994), schooling becomes a boring, frus- trating, stressful, or anxious experience for them. In such cases, their natural tendency to drift in and out of multiple realities increases. From this perspective, adolescent doodling is a form of escape. It can be interpreted as an unconscious rejection of the kind of learning that is not helping them to construct personal meanings and effectively integrate their inner needs to promote growth. "Latrinalia"

Another type of private graffiti is "latrinalia," the kind of graffiti found near toilets (Abel & Buckeley, 1970). In most civilizations throughout history, its creators were usually suppressed individuals in the society, for example, slaves working in monumental construction or prisoners inside jail cells. In contemporary times, such creation is not the sole responsibility of adolescence; people of all ages ai-e equally likely to perform such acts. Yet, latrinalia

For many adolescents, parents' caring questionings are regarded as tight supervision. Nor is the school community perceived as supportive and accommodating of their unique growing-up experience.

is common in school toilets and poses a major vandalism problem.

Creation of latrinalia satisfies the emotional needs of adolescents in an unusual manner. Adolescence is a stage of life in which the individuals seek autonomy. When trying to secure a sense of personal space and time, the presence of others, especially adults, is often deemed threatening. At home, parents may regularly notice the strange behaviors of their adolescents, either behind frequently locked bedroom doors or during unusually extended times inside the bathrooms. Yet, many such episodes end almost immediately with the flushing of the toilet and a speedy reappearance of their teenagers without clues to what had happened just before. For many adolescents, parents' caring questionings are regarded as tight supervision. Nor is the school community perceived as supportive and accommodating of their unique growing-up experience. Thus, latrinalia in schools may be a form of silence and mindless protest for them against the large educational system that alienates their primary needs. There is evidence that school vandalism decreases or is absent in schools that manage a successful community of learning (Flaherty, 1987).

Public Grati In contrast to private graffiti, public graffiti always

makes its debut known. The main distinction between the two types of graffiti is that the latter is often created with an intended audience and special motives, while the former is created more unconsciously. Different forms of

BY KOON-HWEE KAN

ART EDUCATION JANUARY 2001



public graffiti, like gang graffiti, "tags," and "pieces," provide different means to satisfy the psychology and emotional needs of their creators, who are not exclusively adolescents.

Gang Graffiti Gang graffiti appeared in the United States in the

1950s. It is the most unacceptable form of public graffiti because of the notorious reputation of gangs. 'These are primitive scrawls focusing on the gang names or symbols adopted to mark territory and war zones" (Gomez, 1993, p. 644). They are often simple alphabets written back- wards, numbers marked in sets, or letters intentionally crossed out to send coded messages among gang members or warn away intruders. Usually, these activities are carried out by junior members within the gang hierarchy or by newly recruited young members to prove their worth and courage by entering the territory of another gang and leaving an insulting mark.

Tags 'Tags are simple, stark lettering like signatures...

that Taggers have adopted for different personal reasons" (Gomez, 1993, p. 645). The invention of magic markers and improvement of spray paint in the late 1960s made tagging possible and popular in the United States, as these two mediums can easily and quickly mark on any surface.

Pieces Deriving from the word "masterpiece," these are large,

elaborate works with refined details often found on the exterior of subway trains and buildings. "Style" of pieces is important since they distinguish how different creators, known as "artists" or "writers" (Gomez, 1993), express their imaginations. Pieces can be a form of political protest or social statement as in the example of works found on the former Berlin Wall (Walderburg, 1990). Many creators of "pieces" consider their work as public art, an improvement to their surrounding environment and community (Geer & Rowe, 1995). Some families of victims of crime and violence in New York have commissioned graffiti artists to paint murals in memory of the deceased (Cooper & Sciorra, 1994). In the 1970s, a Union of Graffiti Artists (UGA) was formed that organized exhibitions and sales.

tow IDid Graffiti 6econe Art? The 1980s were the Golden Age of graffiti art with the

emergence of "wild style," an intertwined and decorative lettering that mixes icons and images from popular culture to form a complex composition (Fineberg, 1995). A big avant-garde art show at Times Square in 1980 featured many graffiti artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Futura 2000, Lee Quinones, and Keith Haring. Most of them seemed to become famous overnight. At that time, high art was being criticized as too institutionalized and intellectual. A huge discrepancy existed between art in museums and the experience of common people. Witnessing the gradual decline of Minimalism in the pre- vious decade, art critic Rene Richard highlighted graffiti art in Art Forum, a distinguished high art magazine. Art dealers sought "new blood" to stimulate the art market. Graffiti thus became an art commodity worth investing in.

Graffiti art was also indebted to the Hip-Hop culture popular at that time, which included rap music, disc jock- ies and break dancing (Hager, 1985). This subculture gained attention in the New Yorker magazine, films, and movies. American popular culture made heroes of graffiti artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, portraying in the movie "Break-in" the young talent who died prematurely at age 29. Another young rising star was Keith Haring, who soon became the most widely renown graffiti artist.

By the 1990s, Hip-Hop culture had lost its initial vibrancy, but had become known worldwide and accepted as part of mainstream U. S. culture. Graffiti art became commercialized at about this time, appearing in the advertisements of Nike and Sprite, while other marketing strategies targeted at youth culture continued to reinforce the notion of graffiti as an artistic form of expression to the younger generations.

Most graffiti creators in the United States today are estimated to be between the ages of 12 to 30, with the majority younger than 18 years old. Half are from white middle- and upper-middle-class families (Walsh, 1996). My research findings, generated from 50 survey forms given to anonymous adolescents in a small midwestern community have convinced me of the validity of these figures. Most respondents regarded graffiti as a means of expression and honestly admitted their involvement in some form of graffiti, especially when they felt bored or stressed out in school. Only one student used graffiti seriously as a coping mechanism: '"Yes, only once, I drew a figure balled up holding the word 'why' in her hands on a school desk. My neighbor had just committed suicide, I




was torn apart... neurotic almost, I created it absentmindedly and during French class."

Should a child-centered art curriculum that emphasizes personalized learning of students by actively engaging their environment and community, exclude lessons on graffiti?

My interviews with some adolescents interested in graffiti and former "writers" have given me insights. A white female interviewee felt person- ally connected to the graffiti-art style and deliberately copied and learned its forms for her own artistic creation. Another interviewee demonstrated a convincing expertise in "graffiti appreciation" when we looked through pictures of graffiti together. The scribbling found around a com- plete "piece" can "... teach you insight into the attitude of the artist too. If he writes something funny,

In addition, when the culture and mass media send out messages that value youth heroism, graffiti can easily spark the risk-taking tendency among some male adolescents. They would "bravely" cross the fatal third rail that carries high voltages of electricity while tagging and creating their "masterpieces" in the dark tunnels.

then you know that the guy has a light mood or something. Or if he like writes something really political, then it is like he really feels like an artist... [It is] information,... like what year it is made and who they are affiliated with."

A third interviewee recalled how his own "angular" and "typographic" graffiti-art style had evolved from his initial involvement in gang graffiti when he was young. As the only minority person growing up in that underprivileged environment, he was eager to gain acceptance into another ethnic group and wanted desperately to join their gang. His "graffiti-artistic development" began when "... it was like sort of copying all those things that I have seen, do stuff like big S, C, (representing Spanish Cobra, his gang's name). Like in black and white, very style like, like some of the older kids would do... so, that's all I had. No magazine, no anything at that time, very little to go on, as far as like learning style or something. Just copying." Despite his humble beginning, with self-improvised equipment, "... using empty paper towel tubes or toilet paper tubes... [that] we use to control the flow of the spray paint." Gradually, his graffiti connoisseurship improved.

Graffiti art provides novelty in both language and visual representation with an unique and holistic aesthetic

naturally favored by youth. It directly borrows popular icons from the satu- rated mass media to which teenagers are continually exposed and also incorporates common slang as text (Chalfant & Prigoff, 1987). For many adolescents who despise following social norms and cultural conven- tions, graffiti represents the means to rebel against the established taste of society (Ferrell, 1995). Museum exhibitions that they visit on school field trips may represent traditional adult tastes but not "their cup of Coke [tea]". Seeking an alternative form of expression is equivalent to the non- normative ways of communication, like using coded language amongst their own peer group. Moreover, for many living in certain parts of the city, the naturalistic settings where graffiti appears is right in their surrounding. Thus, graffiti is the most familiar form of their "visual culture" of everyday living and a must in their art curriculum.

What if a disciplined-based art curriculum introduced the aesthetic and history of graffiti or the artist Keith Haring without inquiry into the social and cultural context of its creation?

"You're standing there in the station, everything is gray and gloomy and all of a sudden one of those graffiti trains slides in and brightens the place like a big bouquet from Latin America," famous artist Claes Oldenburg lauds the beauty of graffiti (Horworth, 1989). Many young graffiti artists have captured the attention of the mass media with their "unique artistic courage." For example, young TAKI 183 was featured in The New York Times, on July 21, 1971, after tagging on almost every line of the New York subway.' Keith Haring's graffiti art is widely recognized too. His work appears in all forms of commercial arts and museum souvenirs, in many contemporary art history textbooks, in exhibits all over the United States, and even in a number of children's art books.

It is indeed easy to compare the characteristics of graffiti to other art forms and highlight its aesthetics or to simply introduce the graffiti artists' work and learn their graffiti-like art styles. However, will this represent graffiti

JANUARY 2001 / ART EDUCATION



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art adequately in an art curriculum? What about the vul- garity and often explicit hostility in some of the contents that may include biased, racist, and sexist statements and images?

The undesirable fact is graffiti has become an expen- sive social problem in many cities in the world. U.S. cities spent an estimated four billion dollars cleaning graffiti in 1994 (Walsh, 1996). Cleaning graffiti in schools is also a struggle for many teachers, principals, and school staff. School vandalism is an increasing problem in many western countries; it depletes educational reform budgets and delays upgrading plans (Zwier & Vaughan, 1984). As a result, there has been strong advocacy in recent years for stricter state legislation against such juvenile delin- quency on school property. There are 12 states with legislation addressing vandalism and damage to school property" (Menacker & Mertz, 1994, p. 6). These include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

My survey indicates that most young adolescents (12-13 years old) cannot differentiate between graffiti art and vandalism. For them, it is confusing when the art world and society send them contradictory messages; while one highly honors the achievement of individual graffiti artists, the other prohibits the work of unknown artists and even severely prosecutes those who are arrested.

Can school art curriculum relate to social critical theory's call of reconsidering sub-cultural phenomenon like graffiti, but without resolving the issue of vandalism, a social problem and a crime with punishment?

For some adolescents who find the desire to engage in activities unacceptable to adults, public graffiti becomes enormously attractive when society pronounces it illegal.

This rebellious attitude against the whole society is one that many adolescents exhibit, often manifested in their defiance against parental authority and revolt against codes and order. Adolescents may seek autonomy primar- ily in this way, establishing their own identity by breaking away from their earlier dependent and compliant role. However, the undesirable truth is that anti-social behavior is often contagious within youth peer groups. Indeed, adolescents seeking group belonging and acceptance may be subjected to great peer pressure for conformity, even though individual relationships in the groups may not actually be satisfactory (Pabon et al., 1992).

In addition, when the culture and mass media send out messages that value youth heroism, graffiti can easily spark the risk-taking tendency amongst some male adolescents. They would "bravely" cross the fatal third rail that carries high voltages of electricity while tagging and creating their "masterpieces" in the dark tunnels. A great sense of achievement is derived reaching areas that are deemed impossible for normal accessibility. Climbing high on bridges and hanging in dangerous positions to leave their marks proves courage more than words (Anonymous, 1998). Adolescents' high risk-taking tendency contradicts their improved cognitive abilities. The ability to think about possibilities, to employ abstract concepts, and to engage in meta-cognition, or thinking about their own thinking (Keating, 1990), is supposed to make adolescents better decision-makers since they can reflect critically, hypothesize before making judgements, rationalize their choices and preferences, and consider their options. Yet, even a tragic accident2 in 1973 that nearly killed a young writer could not deter the die-hard youngsters.

The dilemma of adolescence psychological and emotional needs versus the creation of graffiti did not reach the consciousness of the U. S. public until 1994. Michael Fay, an American teenager, was caned in The Republic of

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Singapore after his conviction on criminal mischief charges for spray-painting graffiti on 18 cars.

The polarized conflicts of interest surrounding the definition of graffiti and its place within the art world present challenges for art teachers. How should they approach it?

Tips for art teachers to minimize the "red tape" in order to incorporate graffiti as part of their curriculum in school: 1. There must always be a serious consideration of age

appropriateness in pedagogy. Do not try to introduce controversial art forms and content to a whole student body. For example, most art teachers recognize that sharp linoleum-cutting tools or acid are inappropriate printmaking materials for younger students. Concepts and ideas may sometimes be more dangerous than sharp tools and toxic materials.

2. Seek the approval of all the authorities in the school and district, including the principals and other colleagues. Take it as an opportunity to educate them about the multiple dimensions of art in the present time, so that they may become aware of art as a social- ethical activity instead of a beautiful and fun act to kill time. Perhaps in this way, the marginal role of the arts in school can be revised.

3. Fully consider the community and its interests. If it is necessary, speak to the community leaders and parents instead of sending letters home. Sincerity matters. Use this as an opportunity to advocate the importance of arts to learning.

4. Try to involve a decent graffiti writer or artist who may be already known in the neighborhood. The kids can sometimes help to locate one easily. However, always double-check his or her philosophy of life, thoughts on education, and the meaning of his or her "art" (Gomez, 1993).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Christine Thompson, Julia Kellman, and Reed Larson for insightful comments on this manuscript. I am indebted to Irena Kola, Aida Orgocka, and Silvana Dushku for reading numerous revisions of this article.

REFERENCES Abel, E. L., & Buckley, B. E. (1977). The handwriting on the wall:

Towards a sociology and psychology of graffiti. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Anonymous (1998). Racking, bombing, tagging... my career as a writer. In P. Kay, A. Estepa, & A. Desetta, (Eds.), Things get hectic - Teens write about the violence that surrounds them. p. 141- 145. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Chalfant, H., & Prigoff, J. C. (1987). Spraycan art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Cooper, M., & Sciorra, J. (1994). R.I.P. New York spraycan memorials. London: Thames and Hudson.

Ferrell, J. (1995). Urban graffiti: Crime, control, and resistance. Youth & society, September, 27 (1), 73-92.

Fineberg, J. (1995). Art since 1940: Strategies of being. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Flaherty, G. (1987). Reducing vandalism by changing the school community. Trust for educational leadership, 16:5,28-30.

Geer, S., & Rowe, S. (1995) Thoughts on graffiti as public art. Public Art Review, spring/summer. p. 24-26.

Gomez, M. (1993). The writing on our walls: Finding solutions through distinguishing graffiti art from graffiti vandalism. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 26, 633-707.

Hager, S. (1985). Hip Hop: The illustrated history of break dancing, rap music, and graffiti. New York: St. Martin's.

Higgins, A., & Turnure, J. (1984). Distractibility and concentration of attention in children's development. Child Development, 44, 1799-1810.

Horworth, L. N. (1989). Graffiti. In M. Thomas Inge (Ed.) Handbook of American popular culture. p. 556-557. New York: Greenwood Press.

Keating, D. (1990). Adolescent thinking. In S. Feldman & G. Elliott (Ed.) At the threshold: The developing adolescent. p. 54-89. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

Menacker, J., & Mertz, R. (1994). State legislative responses to school crime. West's Education Law Reporter 85, 1-9.

Meyer, L. (1994). Teenspeak: A bewildered parent's guide to teenagers. Princeton, NJ: Peterson's.

Pabon, E., Rodriguez, O., & Gurin, G. (1992). Clarifying peer relationships change during puberty? Psychological Bulletin, 10, 47-66.

Walderburg, H. (1990). The Berlin Wall book. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Walsh, M. (1996). Graffito. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Wilson, B. (1997. Child art, multiple interpretations, and conflicts of

interest. In A. Kindler, (Ed.), Child development in art, p. 81-94. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.

Zwier, G., & Vaughan, G. M., (1984, summer). Three ideological orientations in school vandalism research. Review of Educational Research, 54 (2), 263-292.

FOOTNOTES 1 The same article also reported the annual expenditure that the Mass Rapid Transportation of New York was spending to clean graffiti, an alarming figure that was revealed to the public for the first time. 2That particular teenager was hiding under a stationed subway train while avoiding another passing train; his faulty spray paint caught fire and nearly burned him to death.

Koon-Hwee Kan is a doctorate student in the Art Education Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. E-mail: [email protected]

JANUARY 2001 / ART EDUCATION



focus on secondary || adolescents and graffiti

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