GRAFFITO

plural Graffiti, any casual writing, rude drawing, or marking on the walls of buildings, as distinguished from a deliberate writing known as an inscription. Graffiti, either scratched on stone or plaster by a sharp instrument or, more rarely, written in red chalk or black charcoal, are found in great abundance; e.g., on the monuments of ancient Egypt. The subject matter of the scribblings includes scrawls, rude caricatures, election addresses, and lines of poetry. Apparently, private owners of property felt the nuisance of the defacement of their walls: at Rome near the Porta Portese (formerly Porta Portuensis) was found an inscription begging persons not to scribble (scariphare) on the walls. Graffiti are important to the paleographer as illustrating the forms and corruptions of the various alphabets used by the people, and may guide the archaeologist to the date of the building. Their chief value, however, is twofold. First, they are important to the linguist because the language of graffiti is closer to the spoken language of the period and place than usual written language; the linguist also learns about other languages, as in the case of the ancient Greek mercenaries who scribbled their names, in the Cypriote dialect and syllabary, on an Egyptian sphinx, or the Greek "tourist" from Pamphylia who carved his name on the great pyramid at Giza. Second, graffiti are invaluable to the historian for the light they throw on the everyday life of the man in the street of the period and on intimate details of customs and institutions. The graffiti dealing with the gladiatorial shows at Pompeii are in this respect particularly noteworthy. The most famous graffito is that generally accepted as representing a caricature of Christ upon the cross found on the walls of the Domus Gelotiana on the Palatine in Rome in 1857 (now in the Museo Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini of the Collegio Romano). In some ways graffiti may be thought of as a form of folk art. Twentieth-century preoccupation with the accidental and other manifestations of the unconscious has stimulated an interest in this form of self-expression, and the techniques and content of graffiti have influenced several contemporary artists. Graffiti achieved a notorious prominence in New York City in the late 20th century. Large, elaborate, and multicoloured graffiti created with spray paint on building walls and subway cars were both hailed as an innovative art form by aesthetes and condemned as a nuisance by the general public.