August 18, 2009
When You Find Graffiti on Office Walls
Ask anybody their thoughts on graffiti, and you’ll get views of love and hatred : some people find it vandalism, others a nuanced artform. On the “good press” side, artists like Banksy have turned graffiti into an aesthetic pleasure, applying stencils to produce difficult graphics loaded with political messages attached. This type of graffiti was bound to get popular with the masses and the likes of The Guardian pressroom : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This sort of graffiti is now even acquired as graffiti prints on canvas, and hung in middle class homes and office reception areas.
Nonetheless, what of the usual kind - the scally, the tagger, the gangbanger sort - this is just seen as antisocial, an offence perpetrated by the untalented. But is graffiti only art? To many individuals, it’s not only an artform, but a means to put your stamp on a district, or even a rejection of society altogether : anti-art, anti-social, anti-establishment.
Spraying has forever been an underground pursuit, although the results are very much public. The targeted audience is often unknown. Is it for a rival gang? A communication to an individual? To the public at large? Perhaps it’s just gratuitous and out of boredom.
Whatever the causes, there seems to be some kind of permanent need to spray on walls. Some city councils have admitted that graffiti isn’t going to go away, so they’ve marked off areas where graffiti is permitted - normally unoccupied areas, but now and then more civic areas like temporary boarding around urban buildings under construction.
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