Is all graffiti "malicious destruction of property," or does it sometimes cross an invisible line and become "art?"

If graffiti is removed from its environment and sold in a gallery, what is it then?

If graffiti is created in a "controlled environment," is it graffiti? Or is it graffiti-style art? Is some graffiti useful? Can graffiti be a valid form of sociopolitical commentary?

Personally, I view tagging as self-indulgent vandalism, although with varying levels of damage. (I like it on trains, but I wouldn't like it on my home.) See Spek's work:
http://www.robotswillkill.com/graffiti/showgraff.php?artist_id=3614
(I hope that's the right Spek; there's another one living in Canada.)

But sometimes a graffiti artist can become transcendent...
http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Anyway, that's my take.

Graffiti can be both a form of art and - by definition - the malicious destruction of property.

Graffiti sold in a gallery is something like a tattoo design on a piece of paper (it's not a tattoo). It's more like graffiti-style sellout where the style itself is merely a reference to the public cultural practice of graffiti.

Kitkat: I hate the way graffiti on trains or trucks destroys the right to free speech of the people who own those things. Someone tagged my door and wrecked my signage for my business. Not cool.

I respect agit-prop productions when they are indeed in the service of a political cause. I don't respect much art at all that is all about branding one's name without postmodern irony.

Art certainly has the right to be obnoxious and graffiti wouldn't be an edgy art if it weren't illegal. Look at it this way: Adam Brandt wouldn't be interesting at all if it weren't for the police. He needs the police. They, of course, probably have better things to do than worry about vandalism.

I will gladly press charges against the person who tagged my door and the police know it. So am I supporting graffiti, or oppressing it?

All right, I respect that somebody owns those trains and has a right to not have them painted up without permission. But I don't get the "free speech" reference.

But I disagree that it takes police to make graffiti interesting. Weird comment. That's like saying it takes an art critic to make an artist's work interesting. It may help with exposure, but it's not a necessary part of the equation. A tagger's got to watch out for the police, and the fact that tagging is illegal effects the public reception of the work on many levels, but illegality itself has no aesthetic consideration.

The "free speech" reference about the trains is quite simply that it is the prerogative of the people who own the cars to cover them with the message of their choosing. Most cars are painted not only for identification, but with the owner's logo and branding. It's their advertising that's getting destroyed.

In terms of graffiti's "illegal" status, you have to look at the urban centers where graffiti developed as an art form. The illicit nature of graffiti had everything to do with how the artists would produce it: they worked out designs in advance in their design books and refined the designs with efficiency in mind. The work had to be produced quickly on site because it was/is illegal and the artists could/can get busted while producing it.

So, indeed, the police were absolutely a major ingredient of graffiti's aethetic consideration.

Producing graffiti was something of an anti-establishment and anti-police statement from the beginning and the police see it that way as well. And as an urban art form that was at odds with police and the status-quo urban power structures (including property owners), it was a natural medium for the voice of groups - specifically African Americans but not limited to them - who were expressing tensions about the status quo.

Graffiti was not developed simply as an artistic style like cubism or impressionism. It was radically anti-establishment: art outside of the commercial system with a brazenly political message.

You might think of graffiti merely as a style, but that would hint that you haven't lived in a major urban center for any length of time or that your awareness of the arts didn't begin until well after the 1980's when graffiti entered with impact the New York galleries either as an appropriated style (a la post-modernism) or when some art world movers and shakers brought street talents like Basquiat into the galleries.

So I absolutely disagree with you: illegality is core to the aesthetics, the political message, its commercial status, its attitude, the public reception and the production conditions of graffiti. Altogether, this is why graffiti isn't just a style but a truly unique art form. New major art forms are very rare and even more rarely have a powerful political voice (take music videos on both points, although they did start to find legs after a while).

One of graffiti's limitations, however, is that it rarely finds its way out of the urban centers with any of its encumbant power. In Maine, for example, we don't have standing tensions between the police and major populations of minorities. So when we see graffiti in Maine, our reference is to urban hipster wannabes or student artists merely appropriating the style (or often, just the look of the style). In other words, it's hard for us to read the plight of racial oppression into bits of graffiti we find in Portland. So we don't.

Tagging is a subset of graffiti. I don't usually admire it since it rarely has any content out of the cat and mouse game with police: someone is posting their moniker all around town and the police don't know who it is. You could argue that it is a way of getting under the police's skin by implying that the counter culture community is large, organized and would never give away one of its own. But in the end, it's only about the plight and reputation - with notoriety as the goal - of the tagger personally rather than having any broader political message that's legible to the public.

I am from Waterville, but I used to teach Junior High School in Spanish Harlem - el Barrio. I was impressed and moved by the presence of graffiti there - and at time intimidated by it. It's a different world in the big cities. How easy do you think it is for a black 13 year old boy to get a can of spray paint or paint markers? It's not like here where there's an Ace Hardware store on every corner. Just possessing some of the tools of graffiti was empowering to some of my students.

I understand that it is wrong to spray paint on public property but lets be happy that his house was not filled guns & ammo but filled artistic tools. I am not saying anbody should be innocent but I think a better punishment could be served. Sending this individualk to jail will not solve anything but probably crush a person emotionally. Not to mention everything else that comes with going to prison. Here a few ways that this negative could be turned into a postive. I just don't think this person would hold up well in prison.

Here is how this person can help out.

1. Have him set a graffiti related fundraiser to raise money to clean the city where graffiti artists can come together in peace and create art and raise money for a good cause. I have a very strong feeling that turn out would be very positive and many art students from around the hub would come out of the woodwork to express themselves. This could be a controlled event that could bring a lot of good to an already artistic city.

http://www.bostonknucklehead.com

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