Graffiti

pesk · 15-09-2005 7:47am #1

What tags have you seen around Dublin?

Maximilian · 15-09-2005 10:06am

Interesting challenge.

In Brown Thomas the other day I saw, if memory serves, €199.00; €36.45 & €650.00.

I plan a trip to the morgue later -should get even better ones then.

Also saw one of these.

Graffiti is for knackers with limp brains who drool involuntarily. Drawing big letters with spray cans is art at its lowest common denominator. If its art at all, then buy a bloody easel. Did you think "Hmm... Boards, I wonder if I can deface that too?

Can't wait for post #4.

adonis · 15-09-2005 10:14am

meh...just cos it aint on an easel dont not make it art..i ahve seen some very artistic works of art in europe (barcelona, paris, munich)
in Ireland it tends to be rather sad...
such as: "f*ck school" or "sex is cool" i did see one that made me laugh in whelans a while ago
"rage against the latrine, f*ck you im not gonna piss where they told me"

Deadwing · 15-09-2005 10:41am

pesk wrote:

What tags have you seen around Dublin?

If by 'tags' you mean those ridiculous little scribbles plastered everywhere, that look like they were written by an epilepsy sufferer in the throes of a particularly violent fit, then yes, i've seen plenty of them. And they're all sh!te, and the idiots who scribble them deserve to be slowly boiled alive in a vat of tar.

p.pete · 15-09-2005 10:48am

www.eiresol.com - used to be mostly stuff done around Dublin, but no idea what's on there now...

Executive Steve · 15-09-2005 10:57am

personally i take huge pleasure in seeing all the tags, even the little scrawly ones.... i love piecing together the route or general area a tagger is from, how he or she went to work... and especially i love watching their style and their tag develop and change over the years....

hoek35

grift

drop

esat - [although he seems to have been quiet for a while]

anybody noticed that character drawing isn't as big in ireland as lettering is? there's that wicked little piece on the northern end of grand canal dock street [the same guy has something similar under lansdowne road, look left as you're going south, it's about 50 yards before the station] - always wondered why....

to all the people who think that it's mindless vandalism... sure... lets all live in a grey concrete maze.... idiots.

graffiti is the purest form of art imo, suppressed, and by definition unsullied by commerce, it can be as playful as a scrawl on a toilet door, or as political as a belfast mural; we've been doing it since we lived in caves drawing mammoths and deer on the wall's by rushlight.

Deadwing · 15-09-2005 11:11am

[cm]tyranny wrote:

to all the people who think that it's mindless vandalism... sure... lets all live in a grey concrete maze.... idiots.

graffiti is the purest form of art imo, suppressed, and by definition unsullied by commerce, it can be as playful as a scrawl on a toilet door, or as political as a belfast mural; we've been doing it since we lived in caves drawing mammoths and deer on the wall's by rushlight.

:rolleyes:
Well then could you kindly tell these people to sod off back to thier own caves and draw on thier own feckin walls. IMO its the lowest form of 'art', its the equvalent of writing 'anto woz ere' or 'tomo damo deco matez '05'. If youre gonna do it, do it legally and do something decent, like the other week when some people were doing an exhibition near jervis st. dont just spray some f*cking load of bollocks on a wall thats completely unintelligible and go 'oh yeah thats art, thats the purest expression of oneself'. All theyre doing is making this city look like an even bigger pile of sh!te.

Maximilian · 15-09-2005 11:22am

[cm]tyranny wrote:

personally i take huge pleasure in seeing all the tags, even the little scrawly ones.... i love piecing together the route or general area a tagger is from, how he or she went to work... and especially i love watching their style and their tag develop and change over the years....

hoek35

grift

drop

esat - [although he seems to have been quiet for a while]

anybody noticed that character drawing isn't as big in ireland as lettering is? there's that wicked little piece on the northern end of grand canal dock street [the same guy has something similar under lansdowne road, look left as you're going south, it's about 50 yards before the station] - always wondered why....

to all the people who think that it's mindless vandalism... sure... lets all live in a grey concrete maze.... idiots.

graffiti is the purest form of art imo, suppressed, and by definition unsullied by commerce, it can be as playful as a scrawl on a toilet door, or as political as a belfast mural; we've been doing it since we lived in caves drawing mammoths and deer on the wall's by rushlight.

What an amazing load of old bollocks.

Oriel · 15-09-2005 11:30am

Maximilian wrote:

What an amazing load of old bollocks.

Seconded.

Executive Steve · 15-09-2005 11:37am

i'll merrily agree with you that an awful lot of the graffitti you see in dublin isn't very good... all i can say is that i take enormous pleasure from taking the dart in and out of work on a a sunny day and seeing big bold expressive pieces of colour painted under considerable stress in the dark with a spraycan by someone under serious time pressure to get the hell out before he or she is carted off to a cop shop....

check out some of the pieces around blackrock station and you'll see what i mean...

although someone badly scrawling "anto was ere" is, it's true, expressing the very same thing as the guy who spends weeks hunting a location and making sketches before packing a bag with the minimum of paint and going off to do a creative act that brightens up an urban environment at the risk of being beaten up by an illiterate guard i don't think that cheapens it any more than it means non-rhyming poetry is awful because a lot of sixteen year old girls churn it out by the kilo...

Executive Steve · 15-09-2005 11:43am

Maximilian wrote:

What an amazing load of old bollocks.

which part of the post???? i'm intrigued....

the part that said i enjoyed looking at brightly coloured paintings?

my question as to why irish graffitti was predominantly lettering based rather than pictorial?

my contention that it's an ancient art?

you really confuse me.. i would have thought all of that was pretty much incontestable...

smiaras · 15-09-2005 11:51am

This post has been deleted.

Cianos · 15-09-2005 12:01pm

I think Graffiti is amazing. Its a direct reflection and reaction on the urban environment we live in. Whether you think its art or not really isnt important. While I hate arguing what is and isnt art, I certainly think graffiti has more purity and energy in it than a lot of stuff that one would consider "ort".

Mossy Monk · 15-09-2005 12:16pm

if done properly it can look good. the majority of the stuff seen in this country in complete bollocks, nothing more than a scrawl across a wall

seamus · 15-09-2005 12:22pm

There's a solid difference between Graffiti and vandalism. Graffiti is art - using the environment as a canvas, displaying your work in public. Simply writing your name on a wall is vandalism. Only scumbags do it, regardless of how "cool" it's written.

This is graffiti:
http://www.photojunkie.ca/photoblog/graffitibuilding.jpg
http://gominosensei.org/photos/ipap-uploads/hollywood_graffiti_02.jpg

This is vandalism:
http://www.rosenblatt-sf.com/Selected_Photos/Graffiti%20in%20Barcelona-2%20(072899)-B.jpg

Maximilian · 15-09-2005 12:36pm

How about this one, spray-monkeys:

A owns property, B decides to spray bloody paint over it. What right does B have to do so? Spray your own damn caravans/hi-aces; in between having sex with your greyhounds and stealing milk. Prosthetics offer a genuine chance for you all to enjoy the "opposable thumb experience" so you budding artists can paint "Anto luves Britnee" (sic) with brushes and real paint, as it was meant to be. If you miss the Aerosols, simply keep a tube of glue nearby for the odd sniff.

I take the DART past Blackrock too; lol - art my ass. Its an indefensible practise despite the lame justifications attempted by some.

Cianos · 15-09-2005 1:04pm

Maximilian wrote:

How about this one, spray-monkeys:

A owns property, B decides to spray bloody paint over it. What right does B have to do so? Spray your own damn caravans/hi-aces; in between having sex with your greyhounds and stealing milk. Prosthetics offer a genuine chance for you all to enjoy the "opposable thumb experience" so you budding artists can paint "Anto luves Britnee" (sic) with brushes and real paint, as it was meant to be. If you miss the Aerosols, simply keep a tube of glue nearby for the odd sniff.

I take the DART past Blackrock too; lol - art my ass. Its an indefensible practise despite the lame justifications attempted by some.

Just because its illegal and technically vandalistic doesnt mean its not art.

Maximilian · 15-09-2005 1:11pm

A turd in a glass case in the Tate can be art. Is that your point?

Also:

technically vandalistic

LMAO.

How about I release some chocolate hostages on your living room floor and call it an "installation".

projectmayhem · 15-09-2005 1:13pm

Deadwing wrote:

If youre gonna do it, do it legally and do something decent, like the other week when some people were doing an exhibition near jervis st. dont just spray some f*cking load of bollocks on a wall thats completely unintelligible and go 'oh yeah thats art, thats the purest expression of oneself'.

your description suits most "art" in exhibitions out there actually

carbonkid · 15-09-2005 1:32pm

I thought the whole point of graffiti is that its ment to be setting the art free and not in an exhibition!!! :P

Ishmael · 15-09-2005 2:24pm

I have seen no graffiti that i would class as art in this country at all. Its all just names and ****e tbh, i seen better stuff on toilet walls. That grift guy is ****e, the only thing that makes him more noticable than the others is that he paints his name bigger.

Cianos · 15-09-2005 2:32pm

Ishmael wrote:

I have seen no graffiti that i would class as art in this country at all.QUOTE]

Thats why we need more of it.

Cianos · 15-09-2005 2:34pm

I remember seeing a nice piece written on a gate or something facing a busy stretch of road...it was along the lines of "Commute. Work. Sleep. Repeat"

Deadwing · 15-09-2005 2:50pm

Cianos wrote:

Ishmael wrote:

I have seen no graffiti that i would class as art in this country at all.QUOTE]

Thats why we need more of it.

Any more of it and the entire city will be just one big scribble.
You can bet your asses most of the pricks who do this, grift etc, are probably little rich boys from dalkey and you wont see one bit of graffiti on the walls of thier houses.

Cianos · 15-09-2005 2:54pm

Deadwing wrote:

rich

What significance does their parents income have?

Giblet · 15-09-2005 3:05pm

Writing your name in block capitals using crazy fonts and random extensions on letters isn't art, hell kids have been doing that for years.

3d block letters

Cianos · 15-09-2005 3:11pm

Giblet wrote:

isn't art

well, define art so.

the_syco · 15-09-2005 3:16pm

Haven't seen any graffiti in ages. The usual name scrawling is just vandelism. Nothing more or less.

As for "tags", if you're reffering to those political messages about bush with a monkey... they're on the decrease.

Saying that, some name scrawling is a case of "I was here", if the place is high up, heavily guarded, or hard to get to, then it has a degree of coolness. I mean if its on the side of a industril building, 40 feet of the ground, and just a smilie face, it looks cool.

http://www.ebbybrett.co.uk/blog/archives/2005/05/02/icn

MorningStar · 15-09-2005 3:23pm

Cianos wrote:

What significance does their parents income have?

You have got to be kidding. Your great love of graffiti and you are not aware of basic social-economic problems. Ubringing is connected to income and moral views. Poor areas have more social problems where graffiti art came from. Tagging was a way to mark terrotory of gang lands and a warning to other gangs. The social acceptance to skateboarding led to it's corruption to tag everything somwhere in the 90's. Orinally if you tagged something nobody else was meant to unless they overwrote yours. High tagging was a crucial part of it.
I like grey concrete why am I not allowed enjoy the artistic vision the original building designer meant.
Graffiti as an art form does not need to be vandalism. Tagging is not art and has never been classed as so. It is known as vandalism as is graffiti on property that you have not been given the right to paint.

michaelanthony · 15-09-2005 3:25pm

Graffiti actually looks ok on motorway bridges and tunnels. Breaks up the monotony of driving a bit.

Giblet · 15-09-2005 3:28pm

Cianos wrote:

well, define art so.

The skilled ability to create a significant or beautiful thing.

Writing your name or nickname is neither, even if it is in "BUBBLE WRITING"

Blisterman · 15-09-2005 3:36pm

What do people think about scratching stuff into wet cement.

I like that. It breaks the monotony of the concrete, and is pretty non intrusive, unlike stuff sprayed onto walls.
Assuming it's something interesting.

Oriel · 15-09-2005 3:44pm

Cianos wrote:

What significance does their parents income have?

The two **** I know do it are both from filthy rich families, so there's defintely some truth to it...

Maximilian · 15-09-2005 5:34pm

If I take your brand new car, shove it into a trash compactor and present you with a crushed lump of metal in the shape of a horse, you would probably be pissed off.

What if I then justified my actions by saying it is "art". What if I got a hundred people to agree that the crushed car-horse is art? Does that justify my actions?

The point is graffiti is sprayed on other people's property against their will. What private property owner wants that crap on their house or their wall? Taxpayers don't want the stuff on public buildings or walls etc either and foot the cleaning bill, ultimately. What right do these vapid morons have to impose their mindless scrawls on others? Hiding behind the "art" excuse is pathetic.

Maybe forward all these replies to the New Orleans looters; maybe they can claim they were engaged in "Performance Art"?

Aisling(",) · 15-09-2005 7:10pm

I always see Est. Sprayed everywhere the tag for the "East side terrorists"
Oh and in clondalkin I've seen Btt. a few times "Bawnouge terrorist team"

Nightwish · 15-09-2005 7:17pm

I see ICN all over Dublin city centre. Personally I feel people who tag buildings with words or letters are vandals Iand should be made clean it up.

electric69 · 15-09-2005 7:32pm

Would all these so called "artists" pratice on their own house walls seeing as they call it "art" instead of destroying building and bridges with their spray cans..

zinc · 15-09-2005 8:09pm

Well Pesk, I'd say Drop and Grift obviously are quite up and have been for some time.

Seen a lot of Rise lately on my way out to UCD for my new semester.

On my way to a house party I got to see a good bit of RFA stuff along the way, some nice stuff by Milk especially and those dudes in general.

Out in the West Str/Stir although aint great just yet are improving especially Ment and they are getting bolder.

There was a Meso tag on my skip in the garden today

By the way this is Sepona.

Deadwing · 15-09-2005 9:24pm

Aisling(",) wrote:

I always see Est. Sprayed everywhere the tag for the "East side terrorists"
Oh and in clondalkin I've seen Btt. a few times "Bawnouge terrorist team"

ahahahahahahah!!!!!
Oh wait, those names are serious. Allow me to laugh harder.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Aisling(",) · 15-09-2005 10:04pm

Deadwing wrote:

ahahahahahahah!!!!!
Oh wait, those names are serious. Allow me to laugh harder.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Yeah they just go around beating people up for no reason :rolleyes:

Exit · 15-09-2005 10:47pm

smiaras wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Most of that Bansky stuff is amazing, but then I came across this one and it really annoyed me - http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/03.html (the 2nd picture down) I don't mind graffiti in public places, I think it's just part of culture, but defacing of statues really disgusts me to be honest.

Lord Nikon · 15-09-2005 11:07pm

Exit wrote:

Most of that Bansky stuff is amazing, but then I came across this one and it really annoyed me - http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/03.html (the 2nd picture down) I don't mind graffiti in public places, I think it's just part of culture, but defacing of statues really disgusts me to be honest.

I have to agree with this....the sprayed statue reminded me of the Sex Pistols though, dunno why.

Dave! · 18-09-2005 12:49am

I think some graffiti is very impressive... of course there's alot of crap, but some people who do it have alot of talent, and it looks great.

adonis · 18-09-2005 10:23am

i dont think u have to be skilled to be an artist..
i think some graffitti is quite artistic. i thought being artistic was more about creativity than monotonous reproductions of still life.
I quite like it, i wonder if this same argument occurred with mondrian.

netwhizkid · 18-09-2005 12:43pm

DaveMcG wrote:

I think some graffiti is very impressive... of course there's alot of crap, but some people who do it have alot of talent, and it looks great.

Graffiti is an eye sore that say inner city slum and chav alert, It is not art but vandalism and if these "artists" want to adorn someplace with their "art" why don't they get approval to paint a mural or something like that. I do find back of toilet door humour amusing though, i say one recently "some come here to sit and think others come to S*it and stink" i thought i was quite funny. I also noticed that there are usually several tel. no.s saying ring X person for a good time or whatever. IMO Graffiti is vandalism and should be punished with the full force of the law.

Dave! · 18-09-2005 1:07pm

Well, I guess that's where we differ; I think that this looks brilliant -- alot better than this. I doubt you'd complain if Michelangelo's 'the Creation of Adam' were painted in your neighbourhood; so it's just a matter of taste -- you don't think that graffiti paintings are art, and I do; so who's right?

nedoo · 18-09-2005 2:18pm

In Switzerland they encourage Graf. Art in many places. There are stunning examples of talent and creativity...that to me is art. Granted I would be pissed off if the side of my house got taged by a talenless twat however they are let loose on rail bridges, some buildings and some public area like skate parks etc. Top quality stuff, adds colour and energy to otherwise boring places and things.
Saying that it is the rich kid who do it is like saying that only dull ****wits object to it...

Mimikyu · 18-09-2005 9:59pm

This post has been deleted.

ExoduS 18.11 · 18-09-2005 10:18pm

Maximilian wrote:

If I take your brand new car, shove it into a trash compactor and present you with a crushed lump of metal in the shape of a horse, you would probably be pissed off.

What if I then justified my actions by saying it is "art". What if I got a hundred people to agree that the crushed car-horse is art? Does that justify my actions?

The point is graffiti is sprayed on other people's property against their will. What private property owner wants that crap on their house or their wall? Taxpayers don't want the stuff on public buildings or walls etc either and foot the cleaning bill, ultimately. What right do these vapid morons have to impose their mindless scrawls on others? Hiding behind the "art" excuse is pathetic.

Maybe forward all these replies to the New Orleans looters; maybe they can claim they were engaged in "Performance Art"?

To compare somebody spraying a few letters on a building, to robbing a car and crushing it into a "crushed lump of metal".. is completely ****ing stupid. Your talking about tagging, have you ever seen pro graffiti? Do you have any experience with art because you seem to have a pretty arse-ways perspective on art to be honest with you. The cleaning bill you talk about is buying a bottle of industrial ink remover and rubbing off the letters, big deal, please, please get over it. Many pro graffiti pieces are done with the permission of the building ownerand are often sponsored for it. Wheres FX Meister??!

ExoduS 18.11 · 18-09-2005 10:23pm

anyways back to the tags.. well uek and icn are the most common ones i see but im not relaly in the city centre that much. I remember seeing here where the lead guy from uek is actually a solicitor ?

Maximilian · 19-09-2005 11:05am

ExoduS 18.11 wrote:

To compare somebody spraying a few letters on a building, to robbing a car and crushing it into a "crushed lump of metal".. is completely ****ing stupid. Your talking about tagging, have you ever seen pro graffiti? Do you have any experience with art because you seem to have a pretty arse-ways perspective on art to be honest with you. The cleaning bill you talk about is buying a bottle of industrial ink remover and rubbing off the letters, big deal, please, please get over it. Many pro graffiti pieces are done with the permission of the building ownerand are often sponsored for it. Wheres FX Meister??!

Since you missed the point entirely, I'll repeat it. Graffiti "artists" damage property. It costs other people money to clean it up. It is imposed on people without their consent. Diagram available upon request.

Graffiti

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