Abstract
Graffiti is a general term that describes inscriptions on a wall, a practice with ancient origins, ranging from simple drawings and writings to elaborate pictorial representations. Nowadays, the term graffiti commonly describes the street art dedicated to wall paintings, which raises complex questions, including sociological, legal, political and aesthetic issues. Here we examine the aesthetics of graffiti colors by quantitatively characterizing and comparing their chromatic structure to that of traditional paintings in museums and natural scenes obtained by hyperspectral imaging. Two hundred twenty-eight photos of graffiti were taken in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The colors of graffiti were represented in a color space and characterized by several statistical parameters. We found that graffiti have chromatic structures similar to those of traditional paintings, namely their preferred colors, distribution, and balance. In particular, they have color gamuts with the same degree of elongation, revealing a tendency for combining similar colors in the same proportions. Like more traditional artists, the preferred colors are close to the yellow–blue axis of color space, suggesting that graffiti artists’ color choices also mimic those of the natural world. Even so, graffiti tend to have larger color gamuts due to the availability of a new generation of synthetic pigments, resulting in a greater freedom in color choice. A complementary analysis of graffiti from other countries supports the global generalization of these findings. By sharing their color structures with those of paintings, graffiti contribute to bringing art to the cities.
Highlights
Graffiti is a mass noun generally used to describe writings or drawings made on walls to be publicly seen, from the ancient inscriptions to the social phenomenon of tagging names in public locations [1,2]
There is no consensus in the terminology that describes this more art-related meaning, and this type of graffiti is often called graffiti art [4], independent public art [5], or the most known and general term, street art [6]
We are concerned with the art expression, and the term graffiti will refer to paintings on public walls, either unsanctioned as in some definitions [1] or sanctioned, as many are nowadays [3]
Summary
Graffiti is a mass noun generally used to describe writings or drawings made on walls to be publicly seen, from the ancient inscriptions to the social phenomenon of tagging names in public locations [1,2]. The term has become even more elastic and in recent decades has been used to refer to a contemporary form of visual art, usually wall paintings, done illegally or commissioned, in public spaces [3]. We are concerned with the art expression, and the term graffiti will refer to paintings on public walls, either unsanctioned as in some definitions [1] or sanctioned, as many are nowadays [3]. Negative views relate in general to tagging on public locations [7,8]. Graffiti is considered a new kind of cultural production [11,17] which extrapolates the boundaries of traditional art—“the white cube of the museum”—and makes the city—“the gray cube of the street”—a canvas in an open museum [18]. The money involved with the increasing number of famous graffiti artists—e.g., the Banksy canvas “Devolved Parliament” was auctioned for approximately 12 million
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