Quote:
Originally Posted by Symz
My BIG problem with graffiti is this. Where I live I've been seeing a lot of graffiti and it's more of the 'tagging' type. Some punk or punks is going around and just tagging EVERYTHING with the words 'THC' or 'PURE'. It's on front facades of newly stucco'd buildings, building walls reachable only by climbing the building next to it, on every damned light post I can see down a few main roads and pretty much on every sign I see.
This type of graffiti to me is garbage, nuisance graffiti. It has no artistic merit and looks like garbage, making the surrounding area look like garbage, it drives me up a wall I wish so much their little fingers will freeze off this winter.  |
I completely agree with you. As has been said, this is likely a group of people (probably young and stupid) that are doing nothing but vandalizing people's property. The reason those types of tags can pop up everywhere over night is because it takes the person five seconds to write it. This is absolutely the type of graffiti that must be fought as everyone including true graffiti artists hate it. That form of graffiti gives the real artists a bad reputation (see Blitz' comments).
That's what I'm getting at with the whole black and white comment. There are divides amongst the community and they should be treated accordingly. All illegal tagging should be frowned upon and cleaned up immediately. As I mentioned in my first post, kids should be encouraged to tag and practice at home where it will not affect people's property. Once they gain some experience they can begin exploring legal opporitunities such as public walls and graffiti jams.
What needs to be understood is graffiti is not going anywhere. If anything, the graffiti community is getting stronger by the day. Cities everywhere need to start accepting that fact and embrace this young talent. They need to start putting money into more creative ideas and offer more venues for the real art to develop. A freshly cleaned/buffed wall is seen as a blank canvas inviting new graffiti of usually worse calibre. The artists that do care about their art will paint elsewhere as they want their piece to stick around. However, the vandals who take five seconds to completely ruin a wall couldn't care less if their shit gets cleaned up the next day. See what I'm getting at here? Buffing does not work. It's an old and outdated graffiti-busting measure. Buffing a wall in a heavily populated graffiti area will not keep it clean. However, an awesome city funded mural
will stop the graffiti. It's been proven that people are less likely to tag over another person's art.
Here's the mural that's on my building (my bedroom window's at the left inside the moon
). The artists responsible for the mural up top are the same artists who did the graffiti at the bottom. That is grade-A street art right there, and the artists that created it worked for free. See how a city could become much more vibrant if the artists and officials could continue to work together to make more murals like this? The only cost for this massive building was for the paint, scafolding and a DJ. It was done about a year ago during a Car-free Dundas event and was an awesome success.
Source - CantThinkOfDopeName