art or vandalism?

Would it be art if they used your car for a canvas?

im not sure that pertains to the subject...


what are they doing to my car that i dont own yet?

I'm thinking that the difference between art and vandalism just might lie in whose property they might be painting. To you, I suppose that defines it as art.

i dont destroy other peoples property, is it art?

i use canvas squares.

Re: art or vandalism?


Those two things are certainly not mutually exclusive.

good point, art is expression fo emotion in my opinion...


even if it is damaging others peoples property, it can still be art?

hrmm... maybe my refusal to harm property has been gimping me in expressing my artistic side.


i hope not. if someone painted my **** id beat the **** out of them.

Sure. You'll just get sued for it, that's all.

Some graffiti is just craft, I would say. Like calligraphy. It's a skillful action that requires practice and effort, but it doesn't make anybody look at the world differently, or give them the sort of substantial aesthetic pleasure they might get from looking at a Picasso. I think that may be the case with a lot of so-called graffiti which is done on canvas, or in other non-vandalising ways. If all the graffiti 'artist' does is imitate certain styles of writing and drawing - without doing anything new with them or adding any substance to them - then maybe he/she is a craftsman rather than an artist.

But some graffiti may be art. Maybe most of it, I don't know. Graffiti 'artists' who paint the sides of buildings certainly have a different way of looking at urban environments, and if they're able to share that perspective with the viewer when they do their work, then perhaps they really are artists.

I guess "spray paint on wall" is just a medium, like "oil on canvas" or "pencil on paper". It has the potential to be used to produce works of art or works of craft, like other mediums. With a pencil and paper you could draw Escher's Relativity (art) or you could draw Winnie the Pooh (illustration).

So I think the answer to whether graffiti is art is, "it depends." Not all graffiti is art, but it's possibile to do graffiti which is art.

Or maybe all graffiti is art, and some of it is just bad art. I'm not sure.

As for whether graffiti is vandalism, I think that's a legal matter. And I don't think it is relevant to whether graffiti is art. It maybe illegal to spray paint all over somebody's car, but that doesn't stop it being art.

It looks to me like most graffiti people perfect one technique, then repeat nearly identical patterns. They might can develope into black velvet artists with a little more refining of their skill.

It's not art - and I don't say that because I disagree with the Oscar Wilde definition. The reason is simple, if you're going to expand your media beyond what is socially acceptable then you're in the same genre as liquor-store-robbers and hence out-classed and trivialized from the get-go - what's a little paint, risk, squalid turf nonsense compared to what they do? I mean, give me a pound of gold and a hammer, and although what I come up with will be shiny, Aztec gold it will not be - so should I pat myself on the back for making something shiny or kick myself in the ass for screwing up the raw materials? Same thing with graffiti, someone takes an advantage, and screws around with it instead of getting down with higher realities of the situation.

Forgive me, but this gangster script is entirely squalid - the reason is that it's civilized. It's all about the peer-group, social-order, identity, culture. It might look cool because it's anti-establishment but where does it lead? What would a world run by ballers look like if it went all the way? India. Ramafuchs 300th row of ancestors counting back would have been OGs.

There are people (or, as some suspect, peoples) like Banksy who surely qualify as artists.

And then there are taggers who certainly qualify as vandals.

It really depends on what style you're talking about.

Several years ago I paid several hundreds of dollars to have a graffiti artist paint a wall in my photo studio. Tracking one down was not the easiest thing I've ever done by a longshot since the culture is pretty underground and middle aged women tend to make them scatter.

When I finally tracked one down it was amazing and impressive to watch him work; such surity with such simple tools. Fascinating.

I've noticed a lot of people advertising on craigslist for graffiti artists over the last couple of years. I eventually want to have my basement painted graffiti style.