[HN Gopher] The Graffiti Question
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The Graffiti Question
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 12 points
Date : 2025-12-15 08:39 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.guernicamag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.guernicamag.com)
| nephihaha wrote:
| I've seen some graffiti I've really admired, but for every decent
| piece there are at least twenty which are just crap. "Every
| graffiti artist is a superhero." and "all graffiti is art" are
| questionable statements (the latter depends on how you define
| art).
|
| Most of the graffiti I see around is some garbage about football
| (soccer) clubs or someone's tag/signature. That stuff isn't
| usually entertaining or very artistic. It's usually monochrome.
|
| There is a very basic reason that graffiti tends to be in the
| city. It is where most people live and people don't usually go
| out into the countryside with hundreds of spray cans.
| mmooss wrote:
| There's lots of bad 'fine' art too. Though I wish more street
| art would take more advantage of the opportunity and express
| something.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > Every graffiti artist is a superhero.
|
| No, every Graffiti artist is a vandal. If you disagree, give me
| your address, I'll be happy to graffiti your car, your house,
| your TV, and your laptop and be a superhero!. If you don't like
| that you're a hypocrite!
|
| I always wish I had the guts to go into a museum showing off a
| graffiti artist's graffiti and graffiti it.
|
| Note: that's a separate question from whether or not the person
| is a talented artist.
| smallnix wrote:
| Well, I wouldn't love Batman in my apartment either.
| mmooss wrote:
| Someone on HN once pointed out that there's a lot more graffiti
| around: It's printed, in a typeface, well lit, scaled much
| larger, and pollutes the landscape far more the spraypainted
| kind.
|
| People call it 'advertising'. It's someone's or some company's
| tag and their design, and this graffiti is all over the place in
| the city (and some in the country too), and nobody likes it. I've
| never seen advertising that I would keep there if I had a choice,
| and it fills cities - just imagine a city without it.
|
| Why should the wealthy, already with enormously loud voices, get
| to 'graffiti' the city and kids trying to express themselves and
| have any voice at all get criticized and arrested? I know the
| literal answer is property rights. In this case, that system
| excludes 99.x% from any voice or public expression; the real
| question is about justice and public good. (It's a philosophical
| question to explore the issues, not a policy proposal.)
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Exactly. If "it's ugly and I don't want to see it" is
| ostensibly a valid argument, there's a much better target to
| aim for first. And easier to enforce, too.
| secretsatan wrote:
| Graffiti is often framed at taking back the space. I think i'm
| rather lucky to live in a place where advertising seems
| somewhat more limited, with considerable space given to more
| local events, although i do have a giant billboard outside my
| flat.
|
| There's also a lot of space given over to graffiti, some more
| industrial spaces have completely embraced it, with whole
| lengths of walls and buildings allowing it. sharing with
| communal spaces such as as music venues and skate parks.
|
| I think every underpass is also allowed, and fresh work appears
| every so often.
|
| All the street furniture throughout the city, electrical boxes
| etc, are all uniquely decorated and it still cheers me when i
| see a new one.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Oh I fully agree with you. I'd get rid of it all if it was up
| to me.
|
| Let's be honest: most graffiti we see every day is not art made
| in good faith. It's vandalism. And I'm not absolutist about it:
| I can appreciate a beautiful urban painting, just not when it's
| on the wall to someone's house or shop. Usually a few rude
| words scribbled in an emotional outburst, or - contrary to the
| article's point - somebody's literal signature. It's ugly, and
| its point is to annoy you, or at least annoy _someone_.
|
| At the same time, billboards and advertisements are a cancerous
| growth that we don't have the courage to excise. And where we
| do, such as in protected historic areas, the landscape becomes
| beautifully transformed. I guess most people don't care, they
| just eat it up and accept the reality as it is - or rather, as
| it is forcefully pushed down their throats by corporations and
| aesthetically bankrupt business owners.
| politelemon wrote:
| Not property rights, regulation. Advertising is limited to
| regulated areas. Graffiti is not. The comparison is well
| intentioned or meant to be thought provoking, and has some
| validity, but isn't the same thing.
| vslira wrote:
| > It's art that bursts the seams, demanding that the world bend
| to it and not the other way around, refusing to comply with the
| arbitrary bounds of property law--those meaningless slips of
| paper meant to legally confer ownership of land, buildings,
| bridges, trains, and anything else that might serve as the
| artist's canvas.
|
| I won't touch on the property issue because it's really tiresome
| - sometimes I wish there were working communists countries so
| these people could simply go there and we wouldn't have to suffer
| them.
|
| But it's really the first part of this quote that gets me: it's
| precisely the fact that graffitti is forced on us that makes me
| despise it so much. Imagine having to listen to anyone aspiring
| artist's bad poetry when you're on and about. It's not much
| better than appreciating strangers' music taste on the street or
| public transit. It's worse than advertisement: at least ads are
| bland and repetitive, you can easily filter them out.
|
| > When I see DEFUND BPD hovering above North Avenue in enormous,
| spray-painted letters, I don't see the opinion of one idealistic
| graffiti artist; I see someone expressing an increasingly common
| sentiment.
|
| There are many graffitis out there asking non-politely that
| refugees go back to their homeland or that certain kinds of
| people are not welcome. I suppose, maybe unfairly, that the
| author would consider these demonstrations a noisy hateful
| minority speaking for themselves and their little minds. That's
| the positive side of living in a democracy: we shouldn't need to
| trust that rogue public demostrations, due to the central limit
| theorem or something, converge on the public sentiment. We have
| elections for that.
|
| And I don't disagree that graffitti has artistic merit, however
| illegal or unpleasant to my eyes. I'm not that egocentric. I just
| think there are things more important than art.
| windowliker wrote:
| >inb4 banksy banksy banksy
|
| banksy can fuck off
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I still think graffiti is cool, but my enthusiasm has waned as
| I've aged.
|
| Not a chance I'm going to read this insanely long essay.
|
| As I grew up I read Subway Art, Spraycan Art and watched Style
| Wars. Played Jet Set Radio and Marc Ecko's Getting Up. As well as
| watching whatever AEROHOLiCS releases I could find uploaded to
| P2P sites.
|
| I would photograph the graffiti whenever I went on a holiday and
| took SLR photos in my city.
|
| I still get excited when I see bombed cargo trains on my commute
| to $DAYJOB. But sadly that rush of excitement is gone.
| chrismcb wrote:
| "Their work is, by nature, uncredited." Uhm... Most graffiti is
| actually just a tag, the artist's tag. So, most graffiti is
| literally just the artists credit. And, by definition, they are
| vandals, not heroes.
| diddid wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. It's all fun and games until they tag
| something you own.
| Puts wrote:
| To anyone here who expresses harsh feelings towards graffiti --
| here is a picture of the Berlin Wall:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#/media/File%3ABerl...
|
| Guess which side is which. :-) I know what side I would have
| rather lived on at least.
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