Reading 2

Unit 3- Reading 2

Page 43

One person’s vandalism is another person’s art

Some call it a plague and an eyesore; others consider it an expression of their basic rights. Some of it has deep political meaning, while some is a word or two written quickly in permanent marker.

And it can be found all over cities around the world: on rooftops, bridges, the walls of abandoned buildings. Graffiti and street art have been highly controversial forms of expression for decades, hated by art snobs and building caretakers alike. The people who complain about it the most, however, are the city officials who clash with artists and taggers over their creations.

Interestingly, this battle has done nothing to lessen street art’s popularity. And now, some experts say, that popularity could do what city officials couldn’t: threaten the very essence of this short-lived art form.

What exactly arc street art and graffiti? For the graffiti artists, the goal is to “tag,” or write their name, on the most places.

Extra respect goes to those who get their tag on hard-to-reach spots, like billboards and the tops of high buildings. “If there are two graffiti artists, they will compete for fame. They might never meet, but they compete because they see each others’ names so much,” said graffiti artist BG 183 of Tats Cru, a group of professional muralists.

Street art, on the other hand, usually has a political or social message and aims to encourage the viewer to think and interpret ideas. Although street art is usually illegal like graffiti, many consider it an alternative art form, valuable to the community at large.

“Street art will only hit certain areas—rich areas—next to museums or galleries where people with money will see and notice it.

They don’t go to tunnels or the side of a highway. They won’t risk getting caught,” said BG 183.

“Graffiti is used in the broader sense, and street art is sometimes classified as a subset of graffiti,” said Dave Combs, co-creator of the street art Peel Magazine.

But, he continued, while some graffiti artists are partly motivated by committing destruction or vandalism, “for the most part, people who do street art do it to create something new and meaningful and beautiful for the person viewing it.”

City councils, though, often do not share that view or distinguish much between street art and graffiti.

They see both as a public annoyance that damages the quality of life in neighborhoods and communities, and they worry that any form of illegal street art makes vandalism seem acceptable and lowers property values. To fight it, cities paint over walls, arrest or ticket graffiti artists, and even pass legislation forbidding anyone less than 21 years old to carry spray paint. However, some cities have a different approach.

S5o Paolo, Melbourne, and Taipei have established areas where graffiti is legal, hoping to allow artistic expression while discouraging vandalism.

INTO THE MAINSTREAM

While efforts to combat street art continue, its acceptance seems to be growing in the cultural world, which may not be good for “real” street art. As its acceptance has grown, street art has started showing up everywhere.

There are books about the topic, it is the main focus of magazines, and blogs display daily photos of street art from more and more cities around the world. A city’s well-known street art appears in guides for tourists. Visitors to Berlin can even take a class on street art as they study local examples.

Some artists have stopped limiting themselves to using the streets as a canvas and begun using actual canvases, which then sell in galleries for high prices. Street art has been featured in world-renowned museums and gallery shows. Banksy, the world’s most famous street artist, has sold individual pieces for tens of thousands of pounds, and celebrities are buying works by street artists from Brazil and Japan.

Thousands of visitors came to inspect the work in a 2011 street art museum exhibit in Los Angeles while neighbors complained that because of the exhibit, more graffiti was appearing on nearby walls. Major companies pay graffiti artists to do advertisements for them. They spray-paint cars, soft drinks and shoes on walls and plaster up posters with a street-art aesthetic.

ARTISTS VS. STREET ART

As street art moves more into the mainstream, some critics fear it will lose its essential edginess. “The Splasher,” an unidentified person or group of people, splashed paint on a number of works by famous street artists from late 2006 to 2007. Believing that street art had become too commercial and mainstream, the Splasher felt the only way to counter it was through destruction.

But many feel that the popularity of street art is going to lead to its disappearance without any destruction necessary. The argument is that street art is a fad, and that people spending large sums for it today are going to regret it in the future when they realize the work has no lasting value.

After all, street art is not supposed to be permanent—it is meant to be washed away by the elements, painted over, or built on top of. It is created quickly and often deals with current and local issues.

All of these aspects, say critics, mean that the art loses its aesthetic value when taken off the streets, and that it is rational to assume that such art will lose its economic value when it goes out of style.