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grafitti: art or vandalism?

Graffitti: art of vandalism?  

15 members have voted

  1. 1. Graffitti: art of vandalism?

    • Art!
      9
    • Vandalism!
      1
    • Can't really decide
      5


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Graffiti can be absolutely stunning, but if done on someone's private property without the owner's consent, it is a crime. Period.

That said, I think it's a great idea for some owners to allow very talented taggers to transform their real estate into magic, works of art, when feasible. I'm all for it!

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There is this utensil that I found recently in a cowboy store called a cattle marker, it is this thick greasy stick of relatively low-quality pigment that just begs to be used on walls, vandalism-fashion. I'm having a hard time not taking them out and beautifying the walls around the neighborhood... it cleans up easily, unfortunately, but the marks it makes are more my style than spray-paint.

Is it art? Sure. They're not so much taking beautiful facades and knocking them down or covering them with thick, greasy fluorescent pink paint -- which is what vandalism is -- as much as picking out really ugly walls in the run-down neighbourhood and turning them into something aesthetically uninsulting... relatively speaking.

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Graffiti. Ahh.

I remember once, when I was in 3rd Year/9th Grade, I was making beautiful art on the back of my Homework Diary, and the Professor/Teacher snatched it away from me. "Stop making Graffiti on your book!" she snapped.

"Graffiti?" I was stunned.

"Yes, stop vandalising it," she said.

"Vandalising it?" I echoed, "It's my fupping book."

I was sent down to see the Principal, who sentenced me to talk in front of the entire year about the dangers and wrongs of vandalism and cursing.

Anyway, most of the Graffiti in Waterford is just 'Rebecca woz ere luvin' 98' and 'IRA Rules' and 'Fuck' and there's this really interesting one in Ballybeg right now, right across the wall of the estate, which reads 'Tom McKenna is a drug dealer, he is a murder fuck tom you murderer fuck you'. But I guess not all Graffiti is like that.

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It can be, it isn't necessarily. Some graffiti clearly is clearly art, but some is nothing more than defacement. If you consider anything with some kind of emotional conveyance art (even if it's just boredom or half-ass malice), then I guess all graffiti is but I don't think that's a very useful distinction.

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Is the sound that comes out of a flute art? Even if it is produced by an antisocial teenager who cannot and does not want to play the flute?

Graffitti is just a sound... what you do with that sound is what makes it art... or annoyance ;)

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Someone painted "child killers go home" on the walls of the mosque across the street from me once. :shifty:

Grafitti can be both disgusting/useless crap or awesome art.

Yufster: :clap:

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Graffiti, love it.

Is it art? Yes.

Is the sound that comes out of a flute art? Even if it is produced by an antisocial teenager who cannot and does not want to play the flute?

Graffitti is just a sound... what you do with that sound is what makes it art... or annoyance ;)

Alright... gay.

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Can it be rhetoric if it is answering a question?

OK, so that was a bit flowery. I'll say it straighter: Graffitti is a medium. Art needs a medium, but a medium does not automatically produce art.

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Anyway, most of the Graffiti in Waterford is just 'Rebecca woz ere luvin' 98' and 'IRA Rules' and 'Fuck' that.

This happened to the FÁS building down the street from me, and the spraymanship (coinage) was absolutely dire.

Contrast that with the car park down the other street which has some really nice burners up there, and a good mural of a hooded graffitist.

Not up there with the LA murals, but certainly not vandalism.

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OK, so that was a bit flowery. I'll say it straighter: Graffitti is a medium. Art needs a medium, but a medium does not automatically produce art.
Thank God for saying that. Whenever someone says "are games art?!?!!?" I cringe for that very same reason.

Anyway, on the topic at hand: I really like what's happening with stencil art. Most pure spraypaint stuff is just stupid tags, slogans, or just your average colorful grafitti-style calligraphy (lame!), but I have yet to see a stencil I didn't like. There were some good ones along a route in Amsterdam that I walked every day to work. Tons of bugs crawling up a wall... that sort of thing.

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