Foreign Experience of Graffiti Commercialisation: from Objection to Cooperation

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to comprehend graffiti commercialisation process in the European countries and the USA, determine the peculiarities of interaction between graffiti artists, the advertising industry and private companies. The methodology of the research stipulates the use of axiologic, semiotic, comparative analysis, hermeneutic interpretation of the basics of interdisciplinary, namely cultorologic and artistic, approaches. The stated methodological set of tools allows clarifying the peculiarities of graffiti inclusion into the commercial field and the attitude of graffiti artists to the defined phenomenon. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the discovery of the dynamics of graffiti inclusion into the commercial dimension of art, classification of the behavioural patterns in the writers’ attitude to their art monetisation. Conclusions. Graffiti overcame the barrier of hostility with the society and identification with the rebel demonstration of marginalised groups and acquired the characteristics of legitimised form of art in the European countries and the USA, paradoxically holding down therewith romanticised criminal identity that has made it a commercially demanded artistic object. The main behavioural patterns in the writers’ attitude to graffiti commercialisation are negative, integrative, and neutral, the correspondence to which is determined by the degree of interaction with business representatives and authority.

Key words: street art, graffiti, commercialisation, graffiti writer, advertisement, company.