- Scrawling on walls is hardwired deep into every one of us.
- Even the most inspired street art will never turn a bridge on the E40 into a Sistine Chapel.
- We have been doing it for almost 30,000 years. Coatings and drones won't change that.
- The step from biology to artistic expression is surprisingly small.
Scrawling on walls is closely connected to the history of humanity. We have been doing it for almost 30,000 years. It does not look as though coatings, drones or cleaning crews will change much about that.
What graffiti does
Every scrawl on a wall is different. Graffiti are literally signs on our walls, and those signs serve different functions, which, together with the talent of the person making them, determine whether we are glad of them or not.
Even the most inspired street art will never turn a bridge on the E40 into a Sistine Chapel. Find a Banksy stencil on your front wall on a lazy Sunday morning and you will never have to repaint the outside of your house.
Deep roots
A wall challenges us: it literally forms a boundary to our freedom. Prehistoric humans understood this long ago. Their way of dealing with that boundary? Painting on rock faces and cave walls, including negative impressions of their hands.
According to the theory of South African researcher David Lewis Williams, those prehistoric images are not representations of everyday scenes but illustrations of hallucinations or spiritual experiences during trances.
Superstimuli
Our brain actively seeks stimulation, and if it can, a super-stimulus. Behavioural biologists see in the Venus of Willendorf a supernormal stimulus: something that triggers instinctive behaviour through artificial means.
The step from biology to artistic expression is surprisingly small. Scrawling on walls seems to be hardwired deep into every one of us.