Graffiti

London seems to have a real handle on their graffiti problem. You actually don't see too much of it, at least on the busy main roads. Many buildings have pretty active graffiti removal teams. You can see them on the streets, in front of pubs, theatres, and empty shopfronts, scrubbing away with this bleachy mixture that smells of synthetic lemons.

I've seen this face around a few places, usually on plywood or dumpsters. He never sticks around for long.

Urban graffiti is typically of a transient, temporary nature. It's painted or scratched and seen as blight. The penalty for graffiti in the United Kingdom can be pretty intense- one kid got handed a £2000 fine and 240 hours of community service. But is graffiti always a bad thing?

This, for instance, is a lunar calendar carved into a wall at the Tower of London by a man who was accused of sorcery and held there for several years. It is technically considered graffiti, yet it's preserved as artwork of great historical significance.

These pieces are from the Colosseum. I took them when we went to Rome the summer before I went to college. Colosseum graffiti holds a particular poignancy- it was typically carved by gladiators or their admirers. Often, they would scratch these words before going into the arena, not knowing if they'd come out alive.

Of course, many of these were also advertisements for prostitutes, so take your poignancy where you can find it.

The graffiti in the Tower of London, too, holds a certain sentimentalism and darkness as well. Clearly, it was all carved by prisoners, many who knew that they'd never leave the Tower, save for going to the Hill to die. As can be expected, a lot of it is fairly morbid.

These are all examples of graffiti found in the same cell at the Tower, often reused. They contain names, religious symbols, and representations of death. Other motifs, such as family crests and lists of names of loved ones are also found amongst the Tower's graffiti. Many of these are behind plexiglass, yet we know that they were considered a nuisance by the people who maintained the Tower. Some examples are chiseled off or covered over. But these images are ornate. Some of them have enough meaning to be considered art, really. While urban graffiti might be an eyesore, perhaps we should at least reconsider our estimation of its value. Graffiti can tell us an unbelievable amount about the culture that produced it. It's not a product of high art (though Banksy might be a modern exception)- it's a product of the common people, not of the artistic elite. For that reason alone, we should consider it as something more than juvenile delinquency.