There was an interesting programme on the radio recently about graffiti - I was busy and missed most of it, but it got me thinking. There are heated arguments over whether graffiti is mere vandalism or whether it can be considered "street art". I don't think there's an absolute right or wrong answer to this one but, on balance, I think graffiti's a bad thing.
The "street art" argument has some merit - there have been works of graffiti which display genuine skill, wit and artistic merit, works of imagination produced by people whose parents didn't have the resources to put them through art school, people defiantly expressing their individuality and imagination in an indifferent world which doesn't value their talents.
Leaving artistic merit aside for a moment, though, I can't help thinking that a lot of the major fans of "street art" are relatively privileged people, slumming it. Admiring street art may increase your edgy cool factor by several orders of magnitude down the the fashionable bar where art school wannabes, or in media creative types go after a hard day's thinking outside the box (or as graffiti artist Banksy put it "think from outside the box, collapse the box and take a [expletive deleted] knife to it").
But I suspect that most of the middle class people who fervently promote "street art" have the luxury of having their exposure to it controlled. For real poor people, living in run-down areas, outbreaks of graffiti are probably less welcome - spray-painted tags are just another ugly assault on an already bleak and depressing environment, along with dumped refuse, vandalised bus shelters, boarded up windows and other signs of neglect and decay. There are a lot of people whose street cred is tied up with a love of street art, but who go home every night to clean, well-furnished homes in clean, prosperous neighbourhoods and who wake up in the morning to find that nothing around them has been torched, kicked in or spray-painted in the night.
As a rule, I don't think that graffiti improves a neighborhood and I'm pretty certain that most people who can afford to live somewhere which isn't covered in graffiti, do so. An American advertising executive once said that no scene had ever been improved by the presence of a billboard (which is why few advertising executives live in neighbourhoods commanding a view of a massive advertising hoarding). Likewise, I can't think of many neighbourhoods which would be much improved by a rash of spray painted tags. In both cases, it's just unwanted visual noise, which most people don't want to see, in much the same way as they don't want to hear the local teenagers' taste in rap amplified to painful volumes via the open windows of some boy-racermobile pimped with an earsplitting sound system.
Sometimes a piece of graffiti can make you stop and smile for a moment - I remember some skilfully-painted murals in London featuring trains and the cryptic line "far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere". But I wouldn't want to see it coming to a wall near me soon.
The "street art" argument has some merit - there have been works of graffiti which display genuine skill, wit and artistic merit, works of imagination produced by people whose parents didn't have the resources to put them through art school, people defiantly expressing their individuality and imagination in an indifferent world which doesn't value their talents.
Leaving artistic merit aside for a moment, though, I can't help thinking that a lot of the major fans of "street art" are relatively privileged people, slumming it. Admiring street art may increase your edgy cool factor by several orders of magnitude down the the fashionable bar where art school wannabes, or in media creative types go after a hard day's thinking outside the box (or as graffiti artist Banksy put it "think from outside the box, collapse the box and take a [expletive deleted] knife to it").
But I suspect that most of the middle class people who fervently promote "street art" have the luxury of having their exposure to it controlled. For real poor people, living in run-down areas, outbreaks of graffiti are probably less welcome - spray-painted tags are just another ugly assault on an already bleak and depressing environment, along with dumped refuse, vandalised bus shelters, boarded up windows and other signs of neglect and decay. There are a lot of people whose street cred is tied up with a love of street art, but who go home every night to clean, well-furnished homes in clean, prosperous neighbourhoods and who wake up in the morning to find that nothing around them has been torched, kicked in or spray-painted in the night.
As a rule, I don't think that graffiti improves a neighborhood and I'm pretty certain that most people who can afford to live somewhere which isn't covered in graffiti, do so. An American advertising executive once said that no scene had ever been improved by the presence of a billboard (which is why few advertising executives live in neighbourhoods commanding a view of a massive advertising hoarding). Likewise, I can't think of many neighbourhoods which would be much improved by a rash of spray painted tags. In both cases, it's just unwanted visual noise, which most people don't want to see, in much the same way as they don't want to hear the local teenagers' taste in rap amplified to painful volumes via the open windows of some boy-racermobile pimped with an earsplitting sound system.
Sometimes a piece of graffiti can make you stop and smile for a moment - I remember some skilfully-painted murals in London featuring trains and the cryptic line "far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere". But I wouldn't want to see it coming to a wall near me soon.
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Heading: Banksy Private Viewing*
Time and date: 7:30-10:30pm November 4th 2009 (Complimentary drinks reception).
Address: The Great Frog Jewellers, 10 Ganton Street, Soho. London W1F 7QR.
RSVP/Contact: banksyviewing@gmail.com for guest list.
Main text: On Wednesday 4th November The Great Frog Jewelers hosts a unique opportunity to view the rare and iconic Banksy street piece from The Shoreditch Railway Bridge.
*Reclaimed pieces of Banksy's original street art is denied official authentication paperwork by Pest Control. However after seeing this piece up close you'll see it's authenticity is undeniable. Come along and see for yourself at this one-off exclusive opportunity to view or even own a piece of iconic Banksy history.
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