Graffiti in China

Graffiti in China.

It`s obvious that arts are a big part of culture and they take huge place in contemporary culture. But we often forget that besides music, theatre, painting there are some which make what we call "pop-culture". This we can say about, for example, pop-art, photography, graffiti (street art). I would like to highlight the last one.

Although not that often we can see graffiti on the walls of Shanghai and especially some other city in China. But if we look for it hard enough we`ll see them and understand that graffiti in China does exist and flourishes.

It is considered that graffiti were born in in ancient times - this were images, drawings or inscriptions scratched, written or drawn with paint or ink on the walls of ancient buildings. They were discovered in the Ancient East, Greece, in Rome (Pompeii, the Roman catacombs). But we are talking about graffiti in its contemporary meaning, which are drawings made with aerosol, paint or ink on the walls.

Graffiti as it is today were born in New-York as a part of hip-hop culture in 1970-s. Originally the usual markers for graffiti and aerosol, were used for work, a lot of instruments were made by artists themselves. Historically, graffiti were developed from the so-called tags, copyright logos which were written on subway trains.

Graffiti entered the new stage of development in the second half of XX century. T factors were important for emergence of new forms based on the traditional ones. First of all, the paint for graffiti started to be produced in aerosol cans. Second, the expansion of youth culture in the 1950s and 60s in the U.S. and Western Europe, and later in Eastern Europe re as well has reached its climax. That caused a surge in the number of graffiti and inscriptions, and the emergence of a new image of it. An important difference between traditional (old) and subcultural graffiti - the accessibility of the contents of both for the casual observer. Graffiti subculture, accessible for anyone, still remains closed communication channel to outsiders.

Graffiti today - the kind of street art, one of the most vital forms of artistic expression throughout the world.

In most countries, drawing graffiti on someone else's property without permission from the owner of the property is considered as vandalism and is punishable by law.

But let`s talk about China. In China, walls and fences are designed for socially useful propaganda (pic.1, 2). I must say, this is quite useful. Nevertheless, besides propaganda walls serve artists as a canvas for embodiment of their ideas.

I would like to mention Du Yi as an outstanding Chinese graffiti artist. (pic. 3, 4) Du Yi (pseudonymous Dal) is a street artist born in 1984. He graduated from Institute of Fine Arts and in 2004 started to draw in the city. He creates his works with