One of my (somewhat useless) observations:
No matter what city, graffiti spraypainted on a wall, bridge, or subway always looks the same. The backward slant and/or the large “bubble” letters seem to look oddly similar.
Has anyone else out there noticed this, and if so, what’s the theory as to why?
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I believe this derives from the original “Wildstyle” graffiti, popular in the 80s. Perhaps the bubble letters are the easiest to spray with an aerosol paint can.
I know the OP is about spray-paint gestural style, but I often see samples of magic marker tagging, which seems to have its own jagged zig-zag uniformity.
A few weeks ago I wandered into a manuscript museum. One of the documents was signed by Hitler.
Damned if it wasn’t the same zig-jagged style as the magic marker taggers! I’ve always heard that Hitler had the emotional quotient of a pre-adolescent, but here was graphalogical evidence!
Slithy,
You make a good point about magic marker tagging. Different than the spray paint font, but still oddly similar from town to town.
Darren, I’m not familiar with the “Wildstyle” graffiti. I’ll do a web search.
any other ideas?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I think asking why all graffiti looks alike is akin to asking why all breakdancers dance the same way. They’re simply doing their thing in a style that’s the trademark of that thing. Imitating the style.
That said, I have seen graffiti that wasn’t zig-zagged letters. It resembled normal handwriting.