Back to category: Arts

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.

Art Crimes

Struggling through poor articulation, here’s an attempt to argue against the dominant view of society on the subject of street vandalism--which I like to call habitat re-decoration--expressed nicely by an anonymous conservative web-site: Graffiti is a crime. Graffiti is vandalism. Graffiti is not art. The same web-site went on to say that graffiti damages surfaces to the point of permanently changing the character of the surface and the character of the neighborhood. This restructuring of ones environment is at the heart of the appeal of graffiti. Without much of the usual, criminal anti-establishment rhetoric I’ll discuss street art, focusing mainly on stencils, and it’s validity as art. Of course how can one discuss illegal art without criticizing the system that makes it illegal? A good tag can be just as stimulating and moving as a Durer or Picasso and just as confusing as a Duchamp. And it’s really the wondering why that moves me when I look at a piece. Why did the...

Posted by: Arianna Escobar

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.