Is Grafitti an art, or is it vandalism?

[CatWoman]

A friend asked me to post this.

Why or why not?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Yes.

There's no reason it can't be both.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Uh oh

:popcorn:

[Kingshakabobo]

17. Keep your spray can in your pocket. We're watching you, tag artist.

:)

:popcorn:

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. I'm not even touching this one!

:-)

[AngryAmish]

3. I just had my picture windows tagged last week

Etched with acid. Not feeling real good about vandals right now.

[0007]

4. It all depends who does the work. I've seen some very good graffiti

when I live in NYC.

OTOH, many good folks have been the victim of malicious destruction. Which is easy to understand.

[sharp_stick]

5. vandalism

for one reason only, it is done on property that doesn't belong to the person carrying it out. My father spends a fortune every year cleaning that crap off of his business. He's near a river valley and most of it is gang tags, some of it has been pretty creative but it's still vandalism.

Since 2004 he began hiring a company that will come out the day after they're called and wipe the crap off the wall. The amount of paint going up is down considerably because nobody gets a chance to see the "art" anymore.

[Eurobabe]

6. I personally think it is

vandalism, the crappy stuff done with spray cans. Being an architectural historian, nothing pisses me off more than spray paint on brick or sandstone. Once saturated, it will never come clean.

I do think the building murals in inner cities are artwork, Philly has some beautiful examples: story here in WaPO. This however is a whole different category.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/28/AR2005122801310.html

[iamthebandfanman]

7. depends doesnt it ?

i mean, you can do grafitti with the promision of a property owner... doesnt mean it hasta be done illegally.

but yeah, u just run around marking other peoples property without their knowledge youre in the wrong.
would u like it if someone painted over the things you owned and payed for without you knowing? probably not.

it happens alot around where i live, unfortunately to old ladies buildings.
i helped one repaint her garage last summer for free. someone put "Bitch!" and the crip star n such on it... she didnt deserve all that.

[11 Bravo]

8. On your property it's art, on mine it's vandalism.

[DangerDave921]

33. Perfect Response

Absolutely perfect.

[gollygee]

34. Yup n/t

[tritsofme]

9. Its art if done on your own property or with permission of the owner

Its a crime if done otherwise.

[Perry Logan]

10. Art is not where you screw up someone else's property.

[EFerrari]

11. It can be both. But most kids are into one or the other.

My youngest is an artist and he went through a grafitti period. I'd find notebooks full of beautiful writing and then, lol, I'd beg him not to destroy property or run afoul of the law or even bother calling me for bail.

His response was to help organize "a wall" at his high school. That wall was shut down when some kids started writing gang stuff. :(

It was interesting, though. Once we were visiting SoCal and at the beach wall, he decoded for me the writers that had visited there from out of town and from all around the country.

I don't see very much art where I live, mostly gang tags.

[Forkboy]

12. Both to me.

Some of it is obviously art, but by the laws it's also vandalism.

[kwyjibo]

13. It depends on the intent only.

Some people intend for graffiti to be vandalism. If the intent is art, then it's art no matter how good, bad or how much it pisses someone off.

[Froward69]

14. My building gets Tagged

all the time. it pisses me off as I have to clean it up. if it were artful I wouldn't mind as much. I posted a notice that says "PEPSI,COKE,Microsoft would all pay me to place their names here. YOU don't So tagging here is THEFT" it slowed the problem but it continued.

[aikoaiko]

15. If you don't have permission to cover something with an image -- then its vandalism whether

...it has any artistic value or not. This is especially true for private property, but arguably also so for public space.

[Warpy]

16. Some of it is great

mural art on blank walls on buildings, on walls next to highway, on walls next to subway tracks. It's in the eye of the beholder, though, and some folks would prefer unbroken expanses of dull concrete, but to me, a big burner is art and I love to see it. Some property owners here in town commission graffiti artists to do murals on blank walls.

Tagging is different. Tagging is what you see on mail boxes, telephone poles, fences, houses, public transit of all types, and anything that will hold still long enough for some kid with a can of spray paint or a marker to scribble it, kind of like a dog pissing on a tree to mark territory. That's what gang sign is, too, although it's more often some wannabe punk with time on his hands and no concept of how hard that shit is to get rid of. What I really hate to see is tagging on top of a really good mural.

Then there's bathroom graffiti. I used to brave a DPW bathroom used by homeless people on lower Washington Street in Boston just to read the stuff on the walls, it was priceless. The Boston Public Library was almost as funny. The loos at Harvard were on the dull side, mostly along the lines of "for a good time, call..." Stuff written by bored people sitting on the toilet can be both enlightening and entertaining and reduce the boredom of the next person camped on the throne.

I guess it can be boiled down to liking everything but tagging.

[uppityperson]

18. Vandalism. Can be artistic vandalism, but still vandalism.1 doesn't rule other out.

It need not be strictly 1 or the other.

[Efilroft Sul]

19. When done without permission of a property owner, vandalism.

When I put my boot in the ass of someone who tagged my property, THAT is a work of art.

[dmallind]

20. vandalism

Why should (sometimes) artistically talented vandalism be given a different standard? If you are scrawling on private or public property without invitation it is a wanton act of antisocial behavior imposing your ever-so vital "gifts" on those who do not want them and must pay to have them removed.

Let everyone who disagrees mark their homes as graffiti-friendly canvas and see if those precious "talents" will leave the rest of us alone. I'd lay dollars to donuts that neither is all that probable.

[slackmaster]

21. It's an abstracted expression of simian territorialism

Rather than urinating or defecating on a fixed object to mark a territorial boundary, the modern graffito uses spray paint or magic markers.

[aikoaiko]

27. very nice anthropological answer there slackmaster.

A+

[Mythsaje]

22. Some of it's art.

I've seen some incredible pieces. Hell of a lot better looking that some corporate advertisement like we see splattered all over hell and gone. Some of it's crap. :shrug: I like it when they paint the rail cars. It makes the trains look so pretty when they're chugging past. And the sad thing is that there are few legitimate places to practice this art.

[Javaman]

23. who cares...

graffiti has been around since the dawn of civilization and it's merits have been debated equally as long.

Banning all graffiti puts a limits on freedom of speech and an outlet for public disobedience.

however one feels about it, the reality is: it will always be around in one form or another.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Always vandalism, seldom "art".

[HiddenInVA]

26. Both (maybe)??

I think that it can be both.

Like others have posted, if the "tagger" (I'll just use that term for the person performing the
act) has the permission of the property owner, then it could well be considered a work of art.
As another posted, I've seen some of this work that is awesome, and it just makes you wish that
the person who did the work could find paid work, as they obviously have a good bit of talent.

But, if the person doesn't have the permission of the property owner, it's vandalism, pure and
simple. I don't think that it matters whether my plain concrete wall is a plain gray, or my RR
boxcar is a dull primer red w/ rust streaks. If I wanted it painted something else, I would do
so. Period.

I don't want somebody's gang-sign or some wanna-be artist's latest "artful" rendition sprayed
across the back of my workshop, any more than you'd want them to airbrush their fanciful
portrayal of their porn art on the hood of your family car.....

[mitchtv]

28. Grafitti in the US has lost its soul

In the third worl it serves a valuable political purpose as a voice for the voiceless. We have yet to realize that here. Here it is vandalism with no value (except those rare murals) We need more Freeway blogging which is our version of classic political grafitti.

[Solon]

29. Depends on whether permission for the graffiti is granted...

Those who say its always vandalism don't take into account sanctioned graffiti in various neighborhoods around the country. In a case like that, its art, and quite beautiful when painted right, otherwise its vandalism.

[JuniperLea]

30. Art, if it's your own property

Vandalism if the owner of the property has not given permission.

Simple, really.

Freeway overpasses, road-side retaining walls, etc., are public property and the public has not given permission for graffiti; therefore, graffiti on public property is also vandalism.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I shouldn't be forced to view what another thinks is beautiful, when it's plastered all over my property.

[Throd]

31. Vandalism

[lonestarnot]

32. Depends.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

35. Some is one, some is the other. -nt

[J-Lo Biafra]

36. Glee! An old gem of a flame topic.

It is both.

Defacing property is a crime, but the crime itself often has artistic merit. There is no real black & white on this one.

[Neecy]

37. Vandalism...

I don't care what it looks like, if it's done without permission it's vandalism. And some of it is ugly-ass vandalism. Next to my building in San Francisco we had a real treasure for an urban area: a small open park-like opening with a little stream and beautiful terraced wild plants. Unfortunately the Market Street overpass was directly overhead and the pilings were always tagged with the ugliest, most unartistic gang crap imaginable.

The city never had time to come paint over it so one of my neighbors called and offered to do it himself. The city came out with the paint and we took turns painting over it - which we had to do several times a week because the tags were always back up the next day. Finally they figured we'd outlast them and stopped, but what a pain in the ass.

We reclaimed our little space until an encampment of homeless people pitched tents there and moved in. Soon it was littered with broken glass, feces, needles and mountains of trash. The tagging returned. This is about the time I moved out of the city.

[McCamy Taylor]

38. Art if the perp has talent. Vandalism is he/she lacks talent. Lot of vandalism on display in museums

:headbang:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

39. What about gangland grafitti?

In southern California there are neighborhoods where you can see gang names and symbols written all over the walls, like the "F Troop" gang in Santa Ana. Some homeowners are afraid to remove those markings. The purpose here seems to be marking territory against other gangs rather than art.

[Mountainman]

40. Depends on whether it is painted on your property.

If your house was tagged would it be art or vandalism?

[Lex]

41. Answer: They aren't mutually exclusive.

You don't have to choose one OR the other. It could well be both.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. Vandalism if done without the permission of the property owner

Most of it is just illegible scrawls anyway, nothing either meaningful or beautiful.

[kestrel91316]

43. Vandalism. Someone even has to ASK this??

Duh. Unless the tagger (NOT "artist") has the expressed permission of the owner or tenant of the property being tagged, it's a CRIME.

Vandalism with paint and acid has cost my landlord hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to repair in the 16 years I have been at this location. And not one speck of it remotely resembles art. It is a form of marking territory by hypergonadal males, not artistic espression.

Am I clear enough about how I feel?

[MuseRider]

44. Both. Basquiat

is all I can think of when considering this. I see some beautiful art when I look at the trains as they go by across the road.

I guess if I had to clean it up I would consider it vandalism, well maybe. I don't know.