There is exactly nothing about defacing public infrastructure which elicits the tiniest spark of "admiration" or "interest" in me.
If you want to live out your "artistic ambitions" do it somewhere away from public property.
If you want to live out your "artistic ambitions" do it somewhere away from public property.
The thing about a big city is it's not just about the people who own the stuff you look at, it's about all the other people who have to look at it. I'll take graffiti over advertising any day. At least graffiti isn't trying to sell me anything or make me depressed or addicted or whatever.
It's all great until your stuff gets destroyed because someone thinks it's better a different way. And when the graffiti is truly spectacular you can find some consolation in the result, maybe truly appreciate it. But that's not the case 99.99% of the time. Most graffiti is just trash, some rando spraying their name somewhere. Takes 10 seconds and 0 talent. It causes extra expense for people or the city to clean up, or it stays there as an eye sore for everyone.
> Most graffiti is just trash
People say that about modern art, and about that crazy 'rock'n'roll'!
Which gets cleaned up with public money that could be used elsewhere, or stays there as an eyesore.
> It’s not on the front of people’s houses.
Sometimes the sides too.
> people say that about modern art, and about that crazy 'rock'n'roll'!
Did you just compare modern art and rock and roll to the few letter “tag” sprayed in 10 seconds again and again hundreds of time throughout a city? Because that’s what 99.99% of graffiti is, simple tags and doodles [0][1] anyone can make.
Charitably I’ll say you just didn’t pay attention to tagging’s aesthetic effect on a city. The less charitable alternative seeing the “tag = modern art + rock and roll” opinion is that you’re one of the “artist”.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fy...
[1] https://cooltourspain.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/tag-gra...
> Did you just compare modern art and rock and roll to the few letter “tag” sprayed in 10 seconds again and again hundreds of time throughout a city?
Yes! That's what rock'n'roll is at its core, three chords (or fewer) and the truth, and that's how it was characterized - artless noise, etc.
People try to put us d-down
Just because we get around
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
I hope I die before I get old
> Because that’s what 99.99% of graffiti is, simple tags and doodles [0][1] anyone can make.
It's just noise, I tell you!
Now get off my lawn geezer! :p :)
Same for EDM, maybe it’s just noise to you but you can at least appreciate some effort went into it and every song is different. You don’t like it but you also can’t do it yourself in a way anyone likes.
Most graffiti is plain text tagging like in the pictures I showed above. Tagging is repetitive, same tag again and again, and literally anyone can do it because there’s close to zero effort or creativity involved. Take a spray can, spray a couple of letters, you got a tag. I can replicate all of the tags in those pictures, like a real artist. So I know what I’m talking about. :)
You make it sound like anything is art, “you just don’t understand it”. The problem with that view is that if everything is art, nothing is art. Me taking a breath is art. You just don’t get it.
Some of the most beautiful art I have seen are graffiti
Granted, I have seen competent images which obviously were commissioned by building owners. All of it was bad art though and immensely displeasing.
Most of his work is graffiti’d onto public property without permission.
There is basically no one who makes greater kitsch than him. Everything he makes is steeped in the middle class, liberal, mediocrity of someone who points out that things, which everyone agrees are bad, actually are bad. It seriously is something of the worst "art" I have ever seen and actually makes me quite sympathetic to the post modernists whose movement is a reaction to people like him.
The middle schooler, scribbling on canvas, is at least not trying desperately to impress the most bourgeois group of people the world has ever seen. That alone puts everything he does a serious step above Banksy.
Yes and yes. Overhyped "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy.
So if I graffiti your car because I believe it improves your car; would that be ok with you? It’s art. You should be happy, right?
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=40...
https://lpix.org/4545647/IMG_8335.jpeg https://lpix.org/4545648/IMG_8336.jpeg
Someone should probably tell that to the graffiti "artists" in my town
It is black and white: someone is defacing something that doesn't belong to them. You can call the result whatever you want ("art","expression" etc) but the fundamental issue doesn't change.
Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you see this as an "improvement" too?
I’ve seen graffiti art that definitely improved grey ugly walls and barriers. I’ve also seen ugly tags that are nothing more than letters. It’s relative
Let me just put it this way, do I get to just move into your home and take it over simply because I believe that I can make it a better home than you can? Do I get to steal your car/property because I believe I can make better use of it?
Stop rationalizing narcissistic behavior and people trying to impose themselves on others. It’s not relative at all. You or the narcissistic graffiti vandals have no right to impose themselves on others.
For whatever reasons, Germany is rather lenient towards graffiti artists which, in my eyes, makes Berlin more enjoyable than it would be otherwise.
I've lived in a lot of places and I've learned that I hate grey boring walls a lot, I much prefer it when they're covered by colorful graffitis. It seems I'm not the only one so some localities tend to be rather lenient towards graffiti artists and even invite them, other places are much stricter and so you can enjoy bleak concrete walls unblemished by any graffitis.
As to your example about homes, well, in France and in some other European countries, in the 90s there was a bit of a left leaning political push for "right to lodgings". This movement made squatting much easier (in France, it was extremely difficult to get rid of squatters if they moved in past 48 hours). I've always personally thought those laws were stupid and they were eventually repealed and amended recently. But that's the way it is with governments, you don't get to agree with all the decisions made. If it's a democracy you have some measures of influence.
People who pretend to make art on walls are absolute minority compared to those who'd prefer to keep walls clean, or painted, or whatever (there are plenty of options between gray, and wannabe artists spraying smileys). But somehow you offer the majority to leave. I don't think that's how it can work really
If the actual majority wanted to get rid of this problem, then it would be stopped, I'm not the one making the laws or deciding whether to apply them.
As for grey walls, there are plenty of gray boring walls in any city in the world, usually those tend to be painted on, in my experience, not colorful walls nor brick walls nor older buildings.
Well, no offence, but you idea of how society works is not particulatly correct. Both individuals, and institutions have to prioritize thousands of issues against limited resources. Because of that majority opinions doesn't necessary become policies. Only those urgent/emotional/tribal enough to become election fuel. Apparently, graffiti cannot compete with plenty of pains citizens experience now.
>A lot of cities even give space to graffiti
Try researching where it came from, and you'll see it's an attempt to civilize behavior cities found impossible to control.
So reality is that graffitists are active, and numerous to extent it's hard to fought them off the walls so to say, and while majority doesn't like it, it's not ready to re-allocate resources from other issues. This leads to equilibrium we are in at the time.
>plenty of gray boring
It makes a good excuse in the internet discussion, but it doesn't correspond to street reality. I'm in a nice medieval quarter now, and see lots of graffity across buildings which neither gray, nor boring. It is as if people who do that don't care about beauty, other humans, and all those good things usually claimed to legitimize the phenomenon
Ok, point to you there, that would infuriate me. To be fair, I haven't traveled back to Europe since Covid (moved to Asia 20ish years ago) and I don't know if the situation has deteriorated. I didn't experience graffitis as much in places that are actually nice but I've liked them in places that are gray and drab and I remember enjoying them in Berlin and in Bruxels.
I live in Hong Kong and here quite a few people express disagreement over the government removing the works of invader and other graffiti artist (the "King of Kowloon") but to be fair, graffitis are really limited to exactly the type of places where not many would complain.
> Well, no offence, but you idea of how society works is not particulatly correct. Both individuals, and institutions have to prioritize thousands of issues against limited resources. Because of that majority opinions doesn't necessary become policies. Only those urgent/emotional/tribal enough to become election fuel. Apparently, graffiti cannot compete with plenty of pains citizens experience now.
I think it's not only limited resources, it's a political wish to be lenient against petty crime, there are plenty of countries with the same resource in term of police that are much stricter against petty crime with much more success. There's more policemen per capita in European countries like Germany, France, Spain than in Singapore, Malaysia or Japan (I was surprised looking at Wikipedia that Hong Kong as more but that makes sense given the response to the protests before COVID) [1]. They could absolutely enforce fines but they don't. Whenever I traveled back to Europe, I've not been as bothered by graffitis nearly as much as I was bothered by dog feces and littering which is absolutely everywhere and never fined.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
Just because something is illegal, does not make it immoral or unethical by itself.
I do understand the argument against graffiti, but there’s also something to be said about any kind of expression that’s inherently rebellious and counter-culture.
> Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you see this as an "improvement" too?
Correct me if I’m wrong but the vast majority of graffiti is on public walls and facades, and not on houses or cars. At least here in the Netherlands that’s what I’ve seen.
However only very few graffiti "artists" rise above the skill level where their work could be considered beautiful. Usually it's just plain old dick measuring contests like spraying political slogans and overspraying the opposition's, putting your name on as many places as possible or proving their "worth" in the danger of getting caught, with no aesthetically relevant outcome whatsoever.
Graffiti is (partially) just the consequence of not living in that ideal world, but because of all the other problems with graffiti, I'd rather just treat it as the vandalism it usually is in all cases. No sense holding an election before every prosecution or clean and paint job.
This sounds like the words of a “community oversight” committee obstructing the construction of housing, and we already know the effects of that on the housing market. Society has swung too far into allowing other people to tell someone what to do with their property already.
The buildings have a lot more impact then the graffiti, and arguably should have more community voices involved.
Let's apply some strict law-and-order to the wealthy and powerful, to corporations, to government officials. Then to all adults. Then I think it would be reasonable for kids with spray cans.
As in, "we will leave this unadorned wall, and we won't clean up the graffiti unless it's truly an eyesore, and we won't chase you for it". The wall I most recall was close to quite utilized road, so yes it was very "public facing".
The end result was that it was the one place where I would see actually impressive graffiti, with competition to make better stuff, instead of random vandal tags.
I wish people would be as much against advertising as they are against graffiti.
In reality we just want to live in a city that doesn’t have ugly graffiti all over it.
It’s OK, when you grow up you’ll understand. Walking little kids past a wall that reads FUCK because “the community” (aka a single edgy teen) decided it should is not a comfortable experience.
> If it was a swastika or the n-word I would be very concerned about the nature of the community in that neighbourhood and if I'm in danger.
If you lived in a large city like NY or London and you saw a random swastika, your immediate reaction would be to blame your neighbors? How do you know it wasn’t someone from somewhere else?
> If you really need the authorities to tell your community that swastika graffiti should make them angry and call them to action, then your community is screwed already.
Hopefully nobody needs the authorities to tell them things, but they do need authorities to help them enforce already agreed-upon laws. I can’t spent my time running around cleaning up all the graffiti.
Do you think it should be the duty of citizens to stop bank robbers, too?
> Either way, yeah just as we have laws to deal with incitement to violence and hatespeech we can have that with walls if you'd prefer, it just has to be sth actually extreme and targeted.
We literally already have this which is why vandalism is ILLEGAL, but your previous comments were completely dismissive of this!
—-
Seriously, this is like Basic Empathy and Human Emotions 101. Imagine yourself seeing the n-word written several times around your city. Contemplate the anger that you would feel, the desire for someone to do something about it, the realization that even if you dedicated all your free time to finding and stopping these people you probably couldn’t do it yourself. Now replace “n-word” with something someone else finds deeply offensive and imagine yourself as them. Do you STILL think graffiti is totally harmless, or justified as long as you’re vandalizing a megacorp?
Graffiti is prevalent in every major urban center. Yet you hate it.
Seems like you're the one who can't empathize.
Not sure why that follows, or how it would avoid the tragedy of the commons, or why we should act as if that’s already the case.
That all aside, how would you feel about people reclaiming public space, parks and public transportation, by blasting loud music in there?
It's a struggle for everyone to accept different perspectives on art and aesthetics, but we need to accept that others' perspectives exist and are as legitimate as our own.
Could you imagine that one person's "defaced" is another person's "finally some colors"?
The destruction of property, trespassing etc. is obviously on the wrong side of the law, but on purely aesthetical terms this could be argued either way making it for that narrow category a subjective thing. Proponents of graffiti could argue you cannot deface a faceless thing, opponents would argue they like their lawn short, their fence white, the sky blue. One persons order is another persons prison.
Note that I tried to look at the aesthetic question while ignoring the legal question — mainly because you made an aesthetic argument. For many people the two would be entangled however: Something being illegal makes them look at the result unfavourable, even if a similar legal wall mural would strike them as aesthetically superior to the 10 years weathered white wall that it was before.
As an art person I really see truly good graffiti, yet I have to notice that heavily graffitied parts of my city are tourist magnets — so many people tend to like those "defaced" walls.
I am not arguing I personally think tag smeared walls are aesthetical, but I argue that there are people who do indeed do. But most noise-protection-wall-graffiti where I live isn't tagged smearing. If we go by area easily 80% are big colorful motives.
Having known people who do these things I also know that for them the "where" is sometimes more important than the precise what and while the aesthetics won't convince me personally I can't say that I never asked myself the question: "How the hell did they manage to paint this thing in that location?"
And I don't see train stations on instagram, because I don't follow people who post them. But I also don't see couples posting their vacation photos or influencers selfies for the same reason. If I did follow them I would see them.
Was the graffiti made with approval of the owner of the building? Does it fit general aesthetics of the city? Yes and yes - it's finally some colors. Otherwise it's a vandalism.
If it's a public building - it's vandalism, unless it was decided by all people living there.
> As an art person I really see truly good graffiti, yet I have to notice that heavily graffitied parts of my city are tourist magnets — so many people tend to like those "defaced" walls.
Yeah, way to make life hell for residents of the neighborhood.
No. The graffiti I have seen in my life was clearly put there as narcissistic self expression by (usually criminal, if only by trespassing) youths, very rarely I have seen something which comes close to presenting an attempt at improving the environment.
I grant you that I can emphazwith the idea of clearing withering concrete slab with anything at all. But the few times I have seen it be an improvement were when it was a commissioned piece. But even then it was a small improvement at best.
"Hacker" can have different meanings, but certainly in this case it isn't meant to reference the tech enthusuast anarcho communist subculture.
I know it's commonplace, but let's consider whether extreme expression has any rational substance to it, whether it's somehow more meaningful than an argument with actual reasons.
Outrage is a weapon. Do we want it to be? I think (apologies to the parent comment) it should be disqualifying, shunned, excluded. It's a demonstration that they have no reasoned basis and will not contribute.
Every shitty graffiti is about to be replaced by a better one!
As always, reality has some nuance, and we need to be careful about assumptions.
(the OPs photo is actually a perfect example of that, without graffity it would just be a depressing grey wall, I much prefer the colorful "defaced" version)