The Humour Often Found in Graffiti
posted on 20 February 2011 | posted in
Arts and Entertainment
Sometimes people get too po-faced and serious when the consider graffiti artists - look at all those collecting Banksy canvas prints - yes, he's a great artist, but people often see him first and foremost as a social commentator and miss the playful humour behind some of the pieces.
I became an instant lover of graffiti when I saw the sentence “If 'the system' is the answer, then your question wasn’t original” scrawled across a wall in North London a few decades ago. If graffiti could give expression to such a profound – yet true – fact, it can’t be the sort of low-life activity as people generally make it out to be? Kilroy is easily my most favorite graffiti character. Kilroy dominates the scene so thoroughly that I wonder what would happen to the world of graffiti if one were to spot the sentence “Kilroy woz NOT there” across some wall. That would be so unlike Kilroy! Another work of graffiti I remember enjoying very much was scrawled across a British Airways ad. “Breakfast in London, Lunch in New York”, claimed the airline’s ad. The graffiti artist, surely miffed with past experience of filling out a long missing baggage claim form, had scrawled “And baggage over the Bahamas” across the ad.
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