Graffiti it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested and reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction. Both "graffiti" and its occasional singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word "graffiato" ("scratched"). "Graffiti" is applied in art history to works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into it. In ancient times
Graffiti in the United States mid-eighties, the form would move from the street to the art world. Jean-Michel Basquiat would abandon his SAMO tag for art galleries, and street art's connections to hip-hop would loosen. Occasional hip hop paeans to graffiti could still be heard throughout the nineties, however, in tracks like the Artifacts' "Wrong Side of Da Tracks", Qwel's Brick Walls and Aesop Rock's "No Jumper Cables". Early modernist graffiti can be dated back to boxcars in the early 1920s yet the graffiti movement seen in today's contemporary world really originated through the minds of political activists and gang members of the 1960s. The