Is graffiti art???

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Ive been a graffiti artist for the last 10 years, I have noticed the change in peoples opinions during this time... Do you consider it art? or do you disagree and find it merely scribble on a wall? Give us your thoughts

As long as it's legal.


I will clarify- Technically anything can be art, but it won't be something that I will personally admire if it is vandalism.

Last edited by calstar2 on 19 Aug 2014, 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

legal or illegal, it's definitely art. sometimes art in protest.

Definitely Art!

I fail to see what legality or public opinion has to do with the definition of art. "Art" in it's original sense was a Latin reference to the work of an artisan. Artisans first mentally conceive then create things, and what they create is representative of the artisan. Artists in the modern sense aren't much different, we've just narrowed our definition of what we think is "art". We often act as if a carpenter and an artist are two entirely different things, but both can be amateur or professional, both can produce something either emotional or unemotional, representative or unrepresentative.

Yeah, nothing says "art" like spray-painting @%#$ YOU on public property. Of course there are places where you're allowed to "tag" walls and stuff, but it mostly looks like a big mess to me. My mother has a real problem with it at work, the fence that surrounds the scrap yard keeps getting covered in vandalism.

Yep. Having worked as a hate-crime adviser to the U.S. Office of the Attorney for the District of Utah, and several law-enforcement agencies, I learned from crime-prevention officers that graffiti is the precursor to more serious crimes. It is a "test" to see if a neighborhood is vigilant enough to oppose a full-scale invasion of other crimes and their criminals. Removing the graffiti as soon as possible tells those who are conducting the test to go elsewhere, and that their other activities WILL be watched, discovered, reported and prosecuted.

Just yesterday, several law-enforcement agencies in Utah announced their "stepped up" efforts to combat graffiti. I wondered why they were restarting efforts that they had started 20 years ago ... until I realized that most law-enforcement agencies have very short memories and, to them, fighting graffiti as property crime (vandalism) which usually heralds other, more dangerous, crime is brand new to them.

So, to ask me if I believe that graffiti is art is akin to asking me if death photographs of the Holocaust victims (including those who were mentally deficient) is "art." And, by they way, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California actually collects such art and enjoys showing it off at his parties.

No, crime (even visually appealing crime) is never art.

By the way, I once asked a graffiti fan if I could smash his expensive cell phone into pieces and use his T-shirt to wipe my mess. He replied (I am translating here...) by saying that his phone and shirt were HIS property, and if I even touched them, I would get smacked. "Gee," I said, "I just want to express myself by turning YOUR property into MY art!" He didn't laugh. I learned that there is a huuuge double standard with graffiti "artists." Apparently, this double standard exists with their fans, too. Such artistic free speech exists only for them, not me.

There are two kinds of graffiti, gang tags, and the art kind.

I think of graffiti as a technique that can be used to make art, or not.

spray paint is a great medium. every year at my high school we actually have a competition between art pieces made from spray paint, and one of my classmates is very good with writing the fat grafitti letters.

if it's merely a gang tag or a scribble on the wall, i won't think of it as art, but, illegal or not, i've seen some beautiful stuff.

What is art? Is a tag art? Does a tag become art if you say it 10000 times? Does a tag become art if you make it fancy? I photograph a lot of graffiti. If it becomes "street art" then it's worth $$$ according to people who have the $$$. http://impermanentnewyork.blogspot.com/

OP: Post your own! I want to see it. And what do you think? Is somebody like COST an artist or a nuisance?