Arrrrh if only Robert Hughes could speak German and pass a law degree – he’d clear up the town!

yeah but great swathes of berlin are dreary post communist concrete hell holes

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/02/29/travel/1194817116596/graffiti-in-berlin.html

heres a vid about it

not sure if berlin grafiti obsession isnt related to the wall the ugliest bit of concrete ever!

Hmmm, depends how persistant offenders they were.
If i got hold of the little scrote who sprayed a nice red band along my families cars, prison would have been the least of their worries, walking again might have been.

You’d permanently disable someone for causing possibly rectifiable damage to a car? 😯

That would simply be criminal damage, anyway, as there’s no attempt to be creative at all. Not comparable to graffiti, really, other than the fact that paint is utilised.

Graffiti is a tricky issue. If it’s done with a degree of ‘responsibility’, I doubt anyone could argue against it’s validity as artistic expression; sadly, there is too much ‘vandalism’.

Any uninvited graffiti is unwelcome, antisocial and 9/10 times aweful quality. They broke the law, they damaged £70,000s worth of property. WTF shouldnt they be jailed? Want to paint? Do it officially, get permissions, if you cant get permissions find somewhere else. I’ve no idea why graffiti artists are considered outside the law somehow just because they’re a bit talented with a spray can? I dont think graffiti has a place anywhere, its permanent and most of the time makes the place look bloody horrible, a lot worse than the plain wall it was on.

FFS.

Happy to have designated areas for graffiti but in many cases it is just criminal damage (which anyone who does this is perfectly aware of).
Cant do the time dont do the crime …they knew the risks and are now suffering for their art as have many owners of property they have attacked/improved/ruined.

They had a brush with the law then ?

IGMC

miserable old stw codgers dislike grafiti shocker!

Any uninvited graffiti is unwelcome,

You’re seriously arguing that urban environments like the ones in Kimbers’ pictures are made worse by a bit of graf?

antisocial

Any more antisocial than endless adverts, rubbish planning decisions and general city grime and filth? Does their work actually harm anyone, aside from the cost of cleaning it up?

and 9/10 times aweful quality.

Maybe I’m just lucky with where I live, but it seems like most of the graf I see in Bristol is the product of people with a bit of talent, and some of it is outstanding.

Edit: Kimbers put it waaay better than me. 🙂

Yeah, I think the stuff on the photo I posted is just worthless vandalism, doesn’t show any originality, and barely any style or finesse. It’s just a scaled up and coloured in version of a marker pen tag. I chose that example because it’s supposedly one of the trains in the case.

The stuff in RudeBoy’s post above are great, but context matters especially around political art. Tags on a train are just lame, there are no end of spaces available to get stuff up legally if you’re half decent, and this large scale illegal work is more about forcing your ego onto a largely unappreciative public for vanity’s sake.

Kimbers did you have any pics of the good stuff you saw in Athens? Those are just copies of emo kid’s T shirts.

midlifecrashes your username implies that you are indeed the target demographic i was talking about

I think the stuff on the photo I posted is just worthless vandalism, doesn’t show any originality, and barely any style or finesse. It’s just a scaled up and coloured in version of a marker pen tag.

You seem to hate it cos it’s not a cartoony picture. It looks to me like the shape of every letter, its colour, internal and external outline and even its position on the train have all been really carefully considered. The fact that someone was able to do that at night in a train yard while beign chased by security guards is even more remarkable.

Mr Agreeable, have you ever been up that little lane just off St. Michael’s Hill (down at the Park Row end)…some wonderful stencils up there – including a fantastic multicoloured AK-47.

I sort of know in theory that it’s all very good and clever and daring and that I’m supposed to find that it brightens up the drab concrete world with little guerilla flashes of brilliance. But my actual reaction is “Oh. Someone has spray painted a word on a train/stencilled something profound and leftist on that wall”. It doesn’t upset me particularly, but the vanity of it is a bit tedious and the good stuff just seems to breed a mess of rubbish.

If they’re so good at “art” why are they going round causing tens of thousands of pounds of criminal damage by vandalising property which usually means councils spending tax payer’s money to clean up?

As to the “brightening up urban hellhole” idea – why then do immature taggers scrawl their daubs all over otherwise attractive stone walls in the parks where I live? Or tag all over the mural that local kids had done?

I think it might be that they are idiots.

the vanity of it is a bit tedious and the good stuff just seems to breed a mess of rubbish.

You’ve not been to the Tat Modern lately, I take it? 🙂

I am not going to have bad graffiti outside art galleries justified by what goes on inside art galleries. 🙂

Not fussed about the demographic, just saying a lot of the art harks back slavishly to the 80s subway scene and folk like fab5 and The Death Squad. That was a long long time ago. I remember seeing Keith Haring stuff back then as he moved the form on, and he’s been dead nearly twenty years now. Yeah I’m on the way to being an old codger (44) but my point is that the first time an artform arrives it has impact, but if it the same old stuff is being churned out by younger artists, there’s nothing in it. Banksy works by posing a question or being very topical, and I don’t see much of that in street work. Not saying they haven’t got the craft element to the work sorted, they have, I just don’t see the originality they think they have. Maybe you need to be the old codger to see it’s been done before.

I’m with midlifecrashes – that posted train graffiti isn’t up to much.

This isn’t bad, though:

i would say the stuff going on outside the tate modern was quite good actually

and i rather enjoy going round the inside too

Graffiti No, Art Yes,

Graffiti = an attack on other peoples property/lives/space

Art = something which enhances other peoples property/lives/space.

The person whose property it is defines whether it is art or not.

Simples

What a lovely little ray of sunshine yo are, G… 🙂

Midlife; The example you posted is a bit cliched and derivative, praps, but still fairly well executed. I don’t think people should graffiti up trains, really, although boring grey Tube trains are sometimes jazzed up nicely with a bit of good graffiti.

Graffiti has moved on a bit, though, from the 80’s hip-Hop style, although it’s nice to se homage to that era, if it’s done well.

Sickboy and Sweet Toof are two contemporary artists who’s work you will see around London:

Maybe they could all just do their own [or parents] houses & cars & be done with it?
No need to then ruin other peoples property

It’s a win/win – they get to do their stuff, no one else has to pay, they don’t have to be some big fat nonces pillow biting bitch

miserable old stw codgers dislike grafiti shocker!

Actually i think you’ll find most of the “old codgers” have in fact said, in it’s place graffiti art is cool, random acts of vandalism with a spray can isn’t…

Any uninvited graffiti is unwelcome,

You’re seriously arguing that urban environments like the ones in Kimbers’ pictures are made worse by a bit of graf?

Yes. That’s part of what makes them unpleasant places to be.

antisocial

Any more antisocial than endless adverts, rubbish planning decisions and general city grime and filth? Does their work actually harm anyone, aside from the cost of cleaning it up?

Yes. Does their work harm anyone? Yes, its not very pleasant to look at so makes anyone who lives or works near it have a less appealing place to work, though no it might not jump up and smack them in the fact with a baseball bat. Someone recently decided to improve a wall near my work, it was noted by several clients that the area was going downhill, and noted again when the council cleaned it up.

and 9/10 times aweful quality.

Maybe I’m just lucky with where I live, but it seems like most of the graf I see in Bristol is the product of people with a bit of talent, and some of it is outstanding.

Maybe it’s just a difference in taste, most (if not all) of the graffiti I have seen in Bristol makes the place look like a dirty, scrote-filled mess.

Ultimately it is only attractive to those who find it attractive, and I don’t. All these “Banksy Art” items, look like a **** mess, barely above the scrawlings of a teenager. I’ve yet to see any graffiti that improved the place.

i think my stw old codgers comment is proving itself time and again!!

kimbers, I’m 27 and very definitely not “old fashioned”. Just because someone disagrees with something it doesnt mean they’re automatically the embodiment of the exact opposite point of view. If following your example I could say “oh christ, here come the angst ridden teenagers wanting to be “creative”” but that would be a strange thing to say about someone I dont know at all.

i know i think im trolling a bit now

but i just have this mental image of “stw old codgers” quivering with rage at out of control hoodies daubing obscenities over this countries great buildings, probably the same youths who trampled his prize winning begonias last summer and exactly the reason that the british empire fell apart!!!

I read of a guy who got an indefinite sentence (IPP) because the police pinned him with conspiracy and he got caught up in immigration hell because one of his parents wasn’t British. He’d arranged to meet people over his mobile to do graffiti. No violence, no previous, respectable employment.
A few years ago the sentencing policies went to crap with novel sentencing devices and the concentration on “nuisance” crimes, as well the new powers brought in to answer terrorist threats and sex crime but misused by police and prosecutors to inflate arrests for petty crime to the status of grand villainy. It’s calmed down a bit now, thank goodness.
That doesn’t mean I sympathise with breaking the law, but I just think a sense of proportion is an important element of justice.

Kimbers – I can see the annoyance at trampled begonias (despite the fact that I dont grow any plants other than food ones!) 🙂 I am, however, sat in a hoody at work 😀

trailmonkey – yes but we have moved on a bit since then…

danceswithcats – proportion is a two-way thing, maybe we’re too lenient at the other end and that makes this look too little?

the point is once these guys leave prison they will be more likely to commit serious crimes than when they went in

torygraph
The number of prisoners re-offending has increased, the frequency of that re-offending is rising and the most serious re-offending has shot up by over 10 per cent in a single year.

Ray of Sunshine? Moi? Not bloody likely, I am indeed that personifaction of a grumpy oold man that kimbers is wattling on about. One of those who would most willingly grass up ANY graffiti “artist” and do a wee jig when they go down.

Like I said I have no problem whatsoever with them performing their “art” wherever it enhances other peoples lives/space/property. There is no argument whatsoever available in support of a contrary position, apart from “its not effecting me and I like the pretty colours/patterns so the fact its costing you (and indirectly everyone else) thousands is irrelevant next to my own selfishness”

kimbers, thats their own fault. Its our problem, but they caused it. “letting them off lightly” would not work as a deterrant. What we need to address is why they feel the need to spray rubbish paintings all over everything in the strange and ill-founded belief that everyone thinks they’re making the place nicer! 😀

Recidivism is not of itself a reason to decriminalise something. It is however a reasonable indicator that the current approach isn’t working. So how about poking their eyes out with a sharp stick? Brail graffiti isn’t anywhere near as offensive to the eye…. 😉

G makes the best suggestion of the thread.

I thank you ….

So now we’ve cleared that up whats next?

Mr Agreeable, have you ever been up that little lane just off St. Michael’s Hill (down at the Park Row end)…some wonderful stencils up there – including a fantastic multicoloured AK-47.

Just saw that the other day! Quite an otherworldly place.

a lot of the art harks back slavishly to the 80s subway scene and folk like fab5 and The Death Squad

Yeah a lot of it is a bit “traditional” and the progression isn’t really evident from stuff like that photo – but really who cares, it’s an OK piece, it’s not a straight rip-off of something from Subway Art, and it would probably get their peers excited. You can say the same about a lot of art.

Banksy works by posing a question or being very topical, and I don’t see much of that in street work.

You have to read between the lines a bit – for example some people use their tags to comment on gentrification or development. There’s a really nice piece in Stokes Croft here that kind of sums up the way the city centre is currently being raped by greedy developers (or at least was, until the money ran out). A lot of this stuff poses interesting questions by its very existence.

Banksy’s stuff is just repackaged Situationism anyway, and as for Keith Bloody Haring, IMO a more shallow and tedious artist you could not hope to find – but I’d still rather look at either’s work than a bit of dirty concrete!

but I’d still rather look at either’s work than a bit of dirty concrete!

I’m an engineer, I’d rather look at the concrete 😀 Bloody “artists” 🙂