Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?

tianibob

My name is Sean and Im a 3rd graphic design student.Im currently doing a thesis based on the debate of whether the mojority of people can acknowledge graffiti as a creative talent or will there always be a constant struggle between suppressing it and recognising its art?

RGDATA!

tianibob wrote: »

My name is Sean and Im a 3rd graphic design student.Im currently doing a thesis based on the debate of whether the mojority of people can acknowledge graffiti as a creative talent or will there always be a constant struggle between suppressing it and recognising its art?

kind of a broad question. What do you mean by graffiti? Is any old s**te scribbled on a wall 'graffiti'?

Mr. Presentable

If you graffiti your own wall you can call it what you like. If you graffiti mine it's vandalism.

brianthebard

I think at least part of the point is the controversy, to make people aware of their public surroundings and what form they take, how we experience them, etc, etc. In that sense I think graffiti is wonderful. Also making it accessible to as many people as possible is very important to me of all art, but graffiti makes that part of its form. I'd love to see more graffiti in Ireland, the impact it can have in an area is astounding.

Also, more than that, graffiti is complex. its of its place. Its political, social, cultural commentary. People are afraid of it because it baldly proclaims that its creators are not happy with the status quo.

Mario007

theres a difference betweeen graffiti and just simple scribles on the walls or simple tags. personally i love graffiti but it has to be properly done

Insect Overlord

Mario007 wrote: »

theres a difference betweeen graffiti and just simple scribles on the walls or simple tags. personally i love graffiti but it has to be properly done

+1

Any idiot can spray "_X_ woz ere" in ugly black paint, but real graffiti (see Banksy, Blek le Rat, Inkie) can be amazing.
The cliché "a picture paints 1000 words" springs to mind.

Matt Holck

http://voltic.com/0/i/Graphitti/index.html

Mr. Presentable

An File wrote: »

+1

(see Banksy, Blek le Rat, Inkie) can be amazing.
The cliché "a picture paints 1000 words" springs to mind.

OK. But don't put it on my wall!

Reilly616

It's clearly vandalism! Just look up the definition of vandalism. Art is much more subjective. Many people consider any form of expression to be art. Me? I say if it's pleasing to the eye, thought provoking, or generally "Good" then it's art.

brianthebard

And graffiti is or can be all of those things, so therefore its art.

Reilly616

brianthebard wrote: »

And graffiti is or can be all of those things, so therefore its art.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. That was my point. I'm saying that appart from useless scribbles, it IS art, but it is also vandalism.

Mario007

brianthebard wrote: »

And graffiti is or can be all of those things, so therefore its art.

but only if its good...its the same thing with poetry or any of those things...like a crap poem or a simple tag is pretty much just lame...

Insect Overlord

Mario007 wrote: »

but only if its good...its the same thing with poetry or any of those things...like a crap poem or a simple tag is pretty much just lame...

The problem being that different people can look at a piece of art (or read a poem, or listen to a song) and see many different things. One might look and say "Oh, that's awful, somebody has destroyed that wall" while another might say "Wow, I think that colour-contrast is really pretty" while a third might say "The visionary who made this work is a genius, what a message for us all". Who decides for everybody what makes a good piece of graffiti, or what constitutes a "crap poem"?

That's one of graffiti's greatest strengths: it challenges the viewer to reconsider what art is; what role it plays in society; what the pictures/words represent; what individuals/groups try to repress it and why they do so; etc.

Matt Holck

An File wrote: »

Who decides for everybody what makes a good piece of graffiti?

I didn't take pictures of everything I saw.
There's plenty name tag scribble which I found redundent

alexandros

If Vincent van Gogh had painted Starry Night on the side of a building would it still be around?
It’s considered as one of the greatest pieces of art; yet if you take it off the canvas and look at it in different context… I don’t think it would seem so great.

Buildings / Architecture are also art (some of them).
What is the point of covering one piece of art with another?

Good graffiti has a message and makes a statement; whether it be political, social or cultural. And if that message is a good one, and people can connect to, relate and or be “moved” by it; we would call it a “wall mural” instead.

luckat

For me, just as an ordinary person, it's vandalism. It's intrusive and usually ugly, and a claiming of a public space for an individual or group.

Typical: Bushy Park, a sylvan retreat in the middle of the city's inner suburbs (in Terenure), has a lovely riverside walk. Not as lovely as when Todd Andrews described it in the 1900s as having a crystal-clear river that local boys swam in, and hosts of flowers in springtime, but still - a river, a stone wall, woodlands, sometimes daffodils and snowdrops, silence.

Into this intrudes smeared graffiti, some of it the spray-painted signature of the drug culture (to which culture I have no objection, per se, mind), some of it ignorantly political ("RIP Michael Collins, 1916"!), some of it despairing ("My life is a mess").

It takes away from the beauty of the walk, in a place where herons and squirrels and occasional kingfishers, and walkers with dogs, and cyclists and runners, are trying to have an hour of peaceful ambulatory meditation.

I'm sure the youngsters with their spray-cans didn't intend it so. But it is intrusive.

Matt Holck

are we talking about cars?

'cause painting don't make noise

I 'pose graffiti might be intrussive like hamlet's play haunts the king

vango

tianibob wrote: »

My name is Sean and Im a 3rd graphic design student.Im currently doing a thesis based on the debate of whether the mojority of people can acknowledge graffiti as a creative talent or will there always be a constant struggle between suppressing it and recognising its art?

www.flickr.com/people/vango08/

owlwink

Videos such as these only further cement the fact that it is an art form.

Mr. Presentable

That's really fun!

If the painter was working with the permission of whoever owns the properties, then OK you can call it art. Otherwise it's vandalism and someone will have to clean it up.

jim o doom

In part I think it depends where you are spraying - if it's someones house, regardless of whether it is privately owned or a council flat, it should never be sprayed on, unless the home owner specifies it to be ok..

I've seen some great pieces done all over the world and it's a cool artform - but people who just "tag" stuff with an uninventive boring "get my name as many places as I can and do nothing original or even good looking" crap just makes me want to step on the perpetrator. It should have artistic merit!

Mrs Fed

I have seen some really good graffiti, if properly done, if they somehow respect the "common spaces", it they say something, I think they are to be considered a form of modern art.....although too often it's just incomprehensible scribles that ruin the "common spaces".

Smokeyskelton

Vandalism.

There has been a huge upsurge in graffiti around Dublin recently (or at least around where I live) and all of it that I have seen has been extremely ugly.

I would advise graffiti artists to invest in a few pencils and paper and practice at home. This is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than a spray can, and does not involve blighting the urban landscape (not to mention the economic cost of removing this rubbish). At least then if you can't resist your anti-social instincts you might have picked up the rudiments of artistic skill, and your attempt to illegally foist your "artistic vision" on the rest of us may not be so offensively bad.

Smokey

Ave Sodalis

Graffiti is art to me....if it is artistic not a line or a plain name. A name artisically done is art.!

Some are brilliant. Michalagelo drew on walls.(Sistine Chapel) The only difference is he had permission and went into more detail with a paintbrush. It's still graffiti.

Art is also an outlet of expression. Graffiti therefore, if used as an outlet of expression, is art.

jim o doom

sup_dude wrote: »

Graffiti is art to me....if it is artistic not a line or a plain name. A name artisically done is art.!

Some are brilliant. Michalagelo drew on walls.(Sistine Chapel) The only difference is he had permission and went into more detail with a paintbrush. It's still graffiti.

Art is also an outlet of expression. Graffiti therefore, if used as an outlet of expression, is art.

hah interesting point with michaelangelo - but isn't part of "GRAffitti" meant to be that it's a grapic or grapically aressting image? the Sistine chapel is clearly done in the fine arts stle - sure you see graffiti images that call on fine art using the images as part of a graffit piece or a stencil (ala the munroe pics by warhol, but using another artists work on the street) - but those are again generally used in a starkly graphic fashion..

I sort of agree with your artist expression thing, but not when it's at the expense of someone elses home or living space - punching someone in the face is "an expression of anger" - but that doesn't make it ok to inflict it on someone else.

As long as it ain't on homes and it's making a place look good and the art itself has merit, it's fine - on someones home is unfair & a boring ass tag is a waste of space IMO.

Ave Sodalis

jim o doom wrote: »

As long as it ain't on homes and it's making a place look good and the art itself has merit, it's fine - on someones home is unfair & a boring ass tag is a waste of space IMO.

+1:D

tianibob

Thanks for all of your replies, I really appreciate it.

Honestly in my opinion I believe graffiti has earned the title of an art form, since the 60's people have sprayed their creative ideas onto buildings with such talent and skills. But at the end of the day if its done on someone else's property it is illegal and you can't change that whether you call it freedom of speech or art. Some people believe a solution would be to allocate an area where artists can spray freely, but i think this takes away from what graffiti really is and what it stands for. Graffiti is the voice of the creative and the political.

Are there any other ideas to solve the problem of defacing property?

glitterbugs

All i know is the kids doin their so called art around my apartment block have it destroyed its vandalism end off. Banksy it aint!

Mr Fonnen

The thing about graffitti is that its not a new phenomenon its definately been around since Roman times and argueably earlier than that still.Grafitti tends to be a good Litmus test for the general state of a society.As it seldom occours when or where people feel they are being looked after or listened to.Is it art?When its good yeah it is but when its bad its just vandalism

Fartmonger

A poem I wrote this morning on the subject:

Those who dismiss a vandal's scribbles:
Imagine all those hulking grey
city-cages; black claws scrape,
tearing sky asunder.
Splashed with colour they
seem to say: 'We
were human.
I was
here'