The urban aesthetics of graffiti murals: reproducing wall space in China’s urban renewal

Abstract

In China, as in the West in recent decades to a lesser degree, the semantics of ‘graffiti’ have gradually become an alternative term for graffiti murals in urban renewal. Graffiti murals, through various renewal strategies, reproduce the wall spaces of old towns, factories and villages in Chinese urban areas, giving rise to diverse aesthetic attitudes. Taking Guangzhou, China, as a case study, this article utilizes graffiti mural images defined as ‘graffiti’ by people on social media as the basic material. Visual research methods such as photo evaluation and eye-tracking experiments are employed to analyse the aesthetic attitudes and mechanisms of mainstream street art, which in fact differ from traditional graffiti. The study reveals that people perceive different types of graffiti mural spaces in various ways, with a more positive aesthetic attitude towards urban mural landscapes that exhibit aesthetic coherence. Viewers with embodied practice experiences in ‘graffiti’ show stronger aesthetic emotions compared to those who have not visited the case study location. These differences are further influenced by the aesthetic atmosphere of the environment and the aesthetic practices of different subjects onsite, deviating slightly from the spatial aesthetic operational logic of traditional graffiti. From various perspectives on Chinese ‘graffiti’, the visual methodology constructed in this study provides new insights for the aesthetic management of urban renewal.