Art…Or Colorful Crime?

I believe that meaningful, purposeful, and wanted graffiti should be recognized as a real style of art, as it takes an amount of artistic skill, creativity, and often times can even give an important message. I believe that there are levels to graffiti. If the graffiti is meaningless I could see that it could be viewed as vandalism. If there is a meaning, a motive or message, behind the graffiti, it should be categorized as art.

There are numerous styles of graffiti. Author Steve Dolan, discusses multiple styles of graffiti in the article, “Is Graffiti Art?”. Dolan states that many other works are “often multicolored and complex in design, and so start to push the boundary of whether they should really be defined as graffiti art.”. This shows that graffiti can seem mindless and pointless, but it can also be classified as an evolution to classic art, as they both could feature intricate processes and elements. In recent history, society has learned to respect and appreciate some forms of graffiti, even hiring graffiti artists to paint a mural, or other art on buildings has become a more popular norm.

Steve Dolan acknowledges that some graffiti can be seen as simple and pointless because of the presentation and the process, an example of that would be, “simply a monochrome collection of letters, known as a tag, with little artistic merit.”. In this quote, Dolan was describing the graffiti style commonly known as ‘tagging’. Tagging is widely seen as vandalism, which I don’t disagree with. However, I can guarentee that no matter where you go you will most likely see some level of ‘tagging’. In the article “Grafiti As Art”, George C. Stowers speaks on how common tags ar to come across, but tags don’t define graffiti, for example,”While tags are probably the most popular forms, graffiti art is much more than that.”.

Graffiti is art, however, it can also be vandalism at the same time. If graffiti is done without permission, the art would be vandalism no matter what the message, or meaning behind the art work. In the video “Graffiti: Art or vandalism?” by CBS, a factory owner was very flustered because of the “daily” graffiti that was tagged on the outside of his building. However, even that man still thinks that graffiti can be cattgorized as art, for example, “maybe steer young graffiti artists away from doing illegal work and getting more excited about the fact that they can possibly have a real career in this.”. This is showing that even the owner of an illligally graffitied facotory still belives that graffiti can be calssified as art.

In conclusion, graffiti is considered a form of art as long as the artist has permission, and the art has meaning.

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