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Snort -> RE: graffiti (1/6/2012 12:39:50 PM)
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Lol, like many on this thread, I'm for and against...
On the negative, I genuinely resent taggers who turn public places and transportation into a sad mockery of a third world experience. Looking at random scrawls does not expand my experience of the world but instead makes me shake my head and ask, "Is this really the best we can do?"
On the positive, there is real street art. It is a rare find, but it does exist. It becomes art because of the medium and the history of the medium, and it truly does make me think and feel and experience life a little differently - more so than a lot of traditional art.
My beliefs? Tagging shows another fascinating facet of humanity. It begins as a crude expression of our base impulses: marking territory or a pathetically shallow cry for identity. Like a child pointing to an enormous crap in the toilet and proudly proclaiming, "Look what I did, Mommy!" And as often happens with our convoluted species, out of this horror came abstraction and form and color and gravitas. And finally art.
Tagging is a part of our cultural experience now, as ubiquitous as TV and chat boards. Tagging simply "is". Crap and art swirled together. For this but against that, our opinions are strong, unyielding, like politics and religion... So think about it: isn't that controversy by itself enough to stamp "art" on a medium born to give voice to the voiceless?
Just my two cents for a great thread.
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