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Why Should Graffiti be Considered Art?

In this article, I will explain why graffiti is art, and I will explain how graffiti is essential in our culture. There are some reasons why graffiti shows us the potential that life has to offer.

First, graffiti enables the public to see something they may have never seen before. It connects them to the artist, and the artist gets to know that their work is loved and affects those who see it. They can take a simple old building or any piece of art on the side of a building and turn it into a masterpiece by putting their mark on it. The artists who paint graffiti have made this art form what it is today. Graffiti artists can change the meaning of what they are drawing to the public.

Second, graffiti has the power to affect people positively. The people who create it are expressing themselves. They are expressing their artistic abilities and their voices through a canvas. Their voices are the voices of our future. You can tell the quality of a person’s painting by the audience that they are drawing. People will stand and watch you paint for hours. Many times, they will stand and look, never once moving from their spots. People will then tell you how much they like it and share their thoughts and opinions. The artists are no longer making art for themselves.

The last reason why graffiti is an art is because of its uniqueness. Graffiti can be made with many different materials, but its most common form is made by applying paint to a building’s wall. Grafiti is made by someone utterly other than the artist, which means no two pieces are the same. Graffiti is a form of expression because it gives the reader or viewer the chance to see something different from their everyday life. Graffiti art is not meant to be understood by everyone, but everyone is meant to be appreciated.

Thus, as part of the existing society, every person must strive to educate themselves of the origins of graffiti and how it has evolved to this very day. A stock of knowledge doesn’t hurt; instead, it is a door that leads to understanding and more positivity. 

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Graffiti is Always Vandalism

Anyone who glorifies graffiti needs to answer one question: If your home were tagged during the night without your consent, would you welcome the new addition to your decoration or would you immediately call a painter, if not the police?

First of all, graffiti is something that one celebrates, if one is juvenile enough to do so, when it shows up on someone else’s property but never on one’s own. No institution that has celebrated graffiti in recent years — like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles or the Museum of the City of New York — would allow its own premises to be defaced for even one minute.

Next, the question “When does graffiti become art?” is meaningless. Graffiti is always vandalism. By definition, it is committed without permission on another person’s property, in an adolescent display of entitlement. Whether particular viewers find any given piece of graffiti artistically compelling is irrelevant. Graffiti’s most salient characteristic is that it is a crime.

Furthermore, John Lindsay, the progressive New York politician who served as mayor from 1966 to 1973, declared war on graffiti in 1972. He understood that graffiti signaled that informal social controls and law enforcement had broken down in New York’s public spaces, making them vulnerable to even greater levels of disorder and law­breaking. A 2008 study from the Netherlands has shown that physical disorder and vandalism have a contagious effect, confirming the “broken windows theory.”

In conclusion, there is nothing “progressive” about allowing public amenities to be defaced by graffiti; anyone who can avoid a graffiti-bombed park or commercial thoroughfare will do so, since tagging shows that an area is dominated by vandals who may be involved in other crimes as well.