Graffiti, Vandalism, What do you call it?

Art has a lot of different aspects to it, especially when it’s looked at as graffiti. Graffiti can be seen as art when it’s not your own property or business. Almost anywhere in the world that you travel too will have graffiti somewhere. As graffiti is more common in larger cities, it can occur in any community. Private property owners deal with a lot of it, the damage cost comes out of their money and it becomes their responsibility to get rid of it. In most places the age of purchasing spray paint is 18 or older, some places even have them locked away so only employees can access them. The art community is starting to slowly turn their recognization towards graffiti and showing them in art shows to gain more recognization. Graffiti isn’t cheap to clean up and it isn’t very fun for those who own businesses.

Graffiti is more common is larger cities, but can vary through any community. While graffiti can be looked at as art from tourist, it is indeed vandalism and cost a lot of money to clean up and remove. Taxpayers and business people are all affected by vandalism because private property or public it can get tagged ” Artist tag both public and private property, which become costly for taxpayers, business and property owners.” ( 4 ). The communities most affected by graffiti have a high rate of crime and gang related activities.

Graffiti is just the start of vandalism, which leads too many other related activities such as crime. The more vandalism will increase the sight of gang related activities and violence. More crimes related to public disorder are more likely to come around in areas that are highly vandalized. Most tagger’s are known to be male between the early teen ages throughout the early 20’s. The early and the more related crime such as vandalism is a high concern that tagging may be a “gate-way” crime, it is more of a chance that they will entertain more violent crimes “When and area has extensive graffiti people tend to view it as a “bad neighborhood.””( 4 ). The more people notice and highlight that vandalized area more people will avoid it and that’s when most crime happens. While graffiti has its bad side, the art community is trying to do better with it.

The art community started taking notice at graffiti artist and trying to persuade the artist to do legal murals and other work for art shows after their “art” got shown and recognized. Years and years of gaining recognization led to graffiti being shown many different art galleries such as New York and London, “One of the most famous graffiti artist, Banksy, has had his work shown in galleries such as Sotheby’s in London”( 3 ). You may even become famous like Banksy if you try hard enough with you’re work. The amount of recognization graffiti has been shown it limits the validation of it being “vandalism”. The art community has helped with this exposure of the graffiti world to move along the positivity graffiti brings throughout the world ” The messages have also evolved. Graffiti has always been somewhat political, but it has come a long way from simply tagging one’s name to parodying world leaders to make a statement.”( 3 ). Graffiti and the art community have joined forces to try and resolve the constant issue of vandalism by trying to gain high interest by famous people. Graffiti may be looking good in the art community, but I don’t think business owners and property owners like their property being tagged.

Through all the bad and the slight good graffiti has, it still is looked at as vandalism in my eyes until they have permission to do so. On public property which or private someone has to pay for it to be removed/cleaned and it’s probably going to be most of us taxpayers. The more graffiti leads to more vandalism symbols and public disorder crimes in the ares that surround them. Which ends up putting a bad reputation on that community. The art community is trying hard to persuade those who are taggers to bring their art talents forward to be more recognized for the good and not the bad part of it. Overall I think graffiti is vandalism and will continue to put bad reputations on communities and larger cities. Graffiti may be known as art or vandalism until it’s you’re property.

“graffiti, Southbank” by duncan is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.