Graffiti Art

After watching the video in class about the artists who draw graffiti on trains and buildings I was interested to learn the history and background of graffiti. Basically, graffiti is the name for letters or images that are painted onto property. The earliest types of graffiti appeared in ancient times, in the form of cave paintings and writings but modern day graffiti arose during Ancient Rome and Greece where images were carved into monuments and walls representing love declarations, political rhetoric and thoughts. Today graffiti displays messages of social and political ideas and it is normally intertwined with hip hop culture. A famous graffiti picture dates back to the 1920s during Word War II and is called "Kilroy was Here." Graffiti is also used as a memorial for certain occasions. After learning the history and background of graffiti, I consider it a form of art more strongly than I did before because I believe it is an expressions of feelings and thoughts.