Some of the earliest expressions of street art were certainly the graffiti which started showing up on the sides of train cars and walls. This was the work of gangs in the 1920s and 1930s New York. The impact of this subversive culture was extraordinarily felt in the 1970s and 1980s. This cultural movement was recorded in the book The History of American Graffiti, by Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon. These decades were a significant turning point in the history of street art – it was a time when young people, by responding to their socio-political environment, started creating a movement, taking the ‘battle for meaning’ into their own hands

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