we have something kind of similar going on in the office, but with folders on shared drives… I was the first to start using exclamation marks to try to get to the top, but it escalated from there…
Like much so called street art this is fun or good so long as you don’t care about architecture. Even a flat brick wall is pretty beautiful, but when painted any color (or combination of colors) it loses something. It is like a good conversation being interrupted by raucous laughter over sophomoric humor. One can be glad someone is having fun. One can also wish to have heard the point being made by the thoughtful and articulate aging woman in the pearls. Alas, it is gone for good.
Call me a fuddy-duddy. It won’t be the first time.
Just cuz graffiti has aesthetic or conceptual value, doesn’t make it a victimless crime. Ya know buffalo bill in silence of the lambs was an artist too. This guy is kind of an asshole. Go paint on your own wall.
Maybe it was just considerate labelling for the benefit of the red-green colorblind.
part of the reason It annoys me is i like the look of brick and I dislike the look of painted brick. This graffiti artist has made it impractical to maintain the brick in it’s normal state. It’s all very clever, a funny joke, but in the end they’ve made the world an uglier place.
But when every street you walk down looks like this:
A wall with a bit of colour on starts to look much more appealing.
Not Support?
Quite a few people in communities where I have lived have expressed their dismay with regards to my vocal support of graffiti. I have never bought into the claims of it being destructive or costly. Paint is a protective substance. And the inflated costs which are usually claimed typically involve covering it with even more paint! And, gee, you just said that paint was equivalent to destruction of property…
We used to invite local artists to do pieces in our loft back in the day, and if I ever “own” a house again, would consider graffiti a more artful solution to painting it than the usual all-over wash. Same goes for vehicles as well. People are too averse to their environment having any personality.
I am 100 percent in favor of commissioned graffiti. But then it’s not really graffiti is it?
Depends upon who you ask. I don’t believe in property, so I see things as being as paintable by others as they are by me. And this certainly applies to public property, where the public shares an interest and duty in participating to shape the local psychogeography. How about commissioned graffiti such as corporate advertisement? Does a billboard placed there for the explicit purpose of creating a wall of graphics have a right or expectation to exclusivity? Should it not be augmented with more, less banal graphics? What are my rights as a “property owner” worth if/when the municipality complains that I let artists bomb my suburban home exterior? Do I obtain quantifiably more rights to avoid harassment by law enforcement if I make my car look boring, rather than artful?
People’s meddlesome attitudes are a large part of the reason why I have trouble taking the US propaganda about property and ownership seriously. They treat it as sacred - unless they cease to find it convenient.
It’s all very us vs them. It’s all well and good when it happens to someone you don’t like but not when they do it to you? I hate ugly billboards as much as the next person. Some counties prohibit them completely. That’s the answer to that. If you want to live in a utopia where no one own anything, you probably wouldn’t want anyone tagging stuff there either… Any more than you’d want coca cola tagging your car with their logo…
This is about the most bullshit snobbish metaphor I’ve ever heard in relation to the street-art debate. You know what there’s plenty of? Crap architecture, and boring ugly walls. This wall was never any “thoughtful and articulate aging woman in… pearls”. Clearly there are also millions of examples of terrible graffiti that does ruin the aesthetics of buildings, but there are also millions of examples where street art has vastly improved the aesthetics.
this.
most built structures have never been commissioned by an architect–they’re too expensive!
almost everything in the urban landscape is engineered to support X weight for the absolute least cost that will pass the local building codes.
there is nothing inherently beautiful about the urban landscape in terms of structure.
there is nothing inherently beautiful about graffiti, but sometimes a great notion.
given the above, I posit that it is more likely for graffiti to be beautiful, as it is simpler and orders-of-magnitude more cost-effective to create a “winner.” Hell, that’s including bail money.
to my mind, my theory is more than borne out by experience. but I admit a heavy bias.
You’re a fuddy duddy.
Sure, I’ll agree to that, as soon as rentier capitalism has been abolished.
Brick in its normal state has graffiti on it. It isn’t the artist precluding this.
It is nowhere near 50/50 however.
More like 99% crap, actually. And we all know it.
You’re that same kind of guy. Good news is the day will come when you have enough capital to rentier, and the kooky kids will be so full of new annoying ways to use your stuff. Especially once they find out which of your stuff is important to you. Oh the fun they will have, at your expense. Literally.
