Graffiti Is Vandalism

Today there are world known graffiti artists, Aryz, Kaws, and D Face are just a few. Any artist wants to be recognized and have their work appreciated. That is why public property is so appealing to the graffiti artist. A train car moving throughout the city with your mural on it will be seen by hundreds, even if its up for a small period of time. Most graffiti artists take time to create a piece. It takes a lot of planning and effort to make a great piece of art. Graffiti artists are all about techniques, you need to be able to show you are an expert in your medium. It’s also important for a graffiti artist to find an imaginative spot for a mural, so it’s obvious that it’s hard work. To make graffiti a piece of art it must have purpose and inflict emotion on its audience, which is why the forcefulness of the urban environment is as much as part of the artwork as the graffiti itself. Taggers have no real reason to create graffiti. Nor is what they do visually pleasing.

Graffiti is a hobby that many people loved to do, but the other half of most people dislike graffiti and want it gone.

Another reason why people engage in graffiti is to shape their identities. They wish to leave a mark in a permanent environment exclaiming to the rest of the world that they exist, that even though their voices may be lost before politicians, parent, and peers they are real and the spraypaint is proof of this. This form of graffiti is easily passed off as mere vandalism and considered an annoyance to our society but when viewed with more compassion, it becomes clearer how important of an outlet this form of graffiti is. Especially for today’s youth (a generation that often feels insignificant) it is psychologically important for them to have solid, material evidence of their own existence. Correlated with identity-based graffiti is another type called tagging. Tagging refers to types of graffiti that “range from stylized signature [tags] to mural-size [pieces] that elaborately blend fanciful script, cartoon characters and messages with the artist’s street name” (Beaty 43). This is a questionable form of expression for it does not actually exhibit a need for acknowledgment but rather a recreational engagement, an act of boldly testing the boundaries of the law in

Most people can argue that there is a fine distinction between what is recognized as art and vandalism. The individual is often faced with uncertainty when the topic of graffiti arises. The public often portray graffiti as a destructive act towards his or her surroundings however; graffiti can also be considered a form of self-expression. Many questions can be made pertaining to the graffiti movement, but the main question is graffiti a crime or an art? The answers lie in the complex phrase of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

According to Boyd, through Graffiti is essential to understand as a form of art that crosses the boundaries of location, method, and motivation. He acknowledges that graffiti might include “racist remarks, empty slogans and illegal signatures.”(Boyd 251) Boyd’s piece is also very informative because according to the author, there are two methods for creating this form of art: murals and tagging. The most popular one is tagging because it can be found almost everywhere from fence posts to trains, street walls to buses. The main goal of graffiti writers is to put their signature tags in places to be recognized by their

Graffiti can be found everywhere and anywhere. It is a way for people to express themselves and be creative in a public manner. It shows how passionate and talented they can be when it comes to drawing or tagging and have it displayed as a piece of art for everyone to see. Graffiti goes way back to the ancient times and is now very well known in the modern days which makes more and more people interested and fascinated by them. It can be used in different types of ways. Many artists can either spray paint, carve, paste, or stencil them on a surface. From how we see them today they are usually images of random cartoons, big bubbly letters, vintage black and whites or inspirational quotes. Virtually anything colorful or not and big that can be easily spotted. Graffiti is more superior to be known as art than vandalism because it is a self expressing act. People need to be open minded about the images they see and look at the message behind it or else they will immediately criticize and say it is vandalizing property.

While waiting for on a train, the mobile art museum known as graffiti passes you. Graffiti has been integrated into the everyday life regardless of city size or laws. By definition, graffiti is any type of writing or drawing scribbled, scratched or sprayed onto a surface in public. Freehanded graffiti has evolved into a premeditated version known as street art. Graffiti and street art allows artists worldwide to express themselves in their entirety. However, these forms of art are considered vandalism because the majority of graffiti is painted on buildings without permission. This causes debate on who owns public space, expressionism, and consent.

From the early humans who painted on cave walls to the angst-ridden teenager getting their kicks from spray painting profanities on the side of a small business, human beings seem to have an intrinsic desire to paint images on the walls that surround them. This has led to many individuals painting on walls without permission. Although the walls cannot speak, city officials and the owners of businesses can and when they do, “Graffiti” is usually one of the words used to describe the images produced. However, although often overlooked, a line does exist between graffiti and street art. Christine Graff writes “Graffiti is defined as ‘writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public

There is a lack of supporting evidence about graffiti information such as why people engage in vandalism and how it impacts on communities and so on. This article is useful for my research topic because this book’s focus is on street artists and legal street art. There was a lot of information about street

It is there to show the people that they are not alone in what they feel. It is there to tell stories, make announcements, make statements. Therefore, graffiti functions in unison with time. The art is there to serve a single purpose: to affect the viewer. It is there for a reason, just like the passerby. The public discussion it causes should occur there and then for a reason. Graffiti is quite similar to architecture, they are both of the moment. Funnily enough, architecture receives far less criticism than graffiti - both current to trends, making a statement, to be seen by the public. Graffiti carries the disadvantage, though. It lacks understanding. People incorrectly refer to graffiti art as tagging or street art. Graffiti is there to serve a purpose, start a movement. Tagging is tedious and destructive. Street art is the technical and artistic styles of graffiti, but used for the sole purpose of artistic creation. The misuse of terminology often creates a bad name for graffiti

Graffiti is an extremely influential form of “art”, but people all over the world are still trying to decide if it is a crime or an art form.The laws around graffiti are not black and white, they are extremely gray. There are lots of inequalities around the laws of graffiti, and a few world leaders have made some compromises to make graffiti more legal. Graffiti is like a gateway drug, but for crime, there are gangs and crude images, but there are also beautiful murals, inspiring images, not only that, but it is a very creative form of art. Graffiti art is seen differently by everyone, and in addition it can be seen in a positive way as well as a negative one.

The origin and history of graffiti is not what one might expect. Believed to have been created by a Philadelphia high school student named Cornbread in 1967, it was a bold effort to catch the attention of a girl (De Melker). In this same time period, graffiti sprung up in New York as well. It was “one among many forms of social protest” during

Graffiti has put a major impact on the way people look at their everyday life. It was not used so much here in the United States but was used overseas. Overseas, graffiti, or street art, was used or played as a sport, just like baseball is Americas sport. There are different laws that are put over there than what there are here. They can get away with some of the things that they paint or make over there. If we tried some of that type of work over here, we would get in trouble and possibly serve time for vandalizing someone else’s property. There are many biased outlooks on graffiti, but it should be considered art in all places because of all the time, effort, and design the artist put into their work.

During the 1970's large cities began seeing the rise of spray paint vandalism. Often teenagers and young adults that took to the streets at night armed with spray paint to 'leave their mark' on the city. This form of vandalism, dubbed graffiti from the Italian graffito meaning to scratch (Abel). Though graffiti dates to ancient times it is still a large-scale problem across the world. Graffiti has a negative effect on the community in which it appears. This form of vandalism is not done to uplift or beautify the community, like murals or art instillations, but rather to fulfill the selfish desires of the artist. It is often an indicator of violence and a negligent community that results in lower property values and higher crime rates.

In modern societies, there are ongoing debates among multiple stakeholders regarding the nature and acceptability of graffiti as a sustainable and decent art form. Having gained immense popularity in urban environments, graffiti has always been on the verge between art and vandalism. The reason for such controversial perceptions lies in the definition of graffiti and its origins. As Campos defines it, “graffiti and street art could be considered a practice through which individuals appropriate the city” and whose nature “is consistently described as subversive” (Campos, 2015, p. 17) and illicit. That is, the subculture of graffiti implies the element of illicit artistic expression placed in public view. While the original purpose of graffiti – as the practice was born in Philadelphia of the 1960s – was tagging through specific styles of writing and lettering, further development of the culture (Mettler, 2012, p. 252). At the same time, development of graffiti form lettering focused on the writer’s name to more elaborate forms including imagery and – as street art – making it the focus have raised even more debate regarding graffiti. This essay will argue that graffiti is a decent form of visual art involving skills, artistic vision and sociocultural context: that is, not all graffiti works are vandalism, for many of them occupy public spaces with the purpose of decoration or communication of socially significant messages. As an example, the graffiti created by Futura