Graffitti art, like all art, includes the good and the bad. One cannot ban the bad without also banning the good. Just go to any museum and gallery, depending on one's taste, social/political attitude, most of the content are bad by definition. Still, it is a price worth paying to be able to see the good. Henry C.K. Liu Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > At 08:08 PM 4/26/99 -0700, Jim Devive wrote: > >I don't think so. Grafitti is ugly, especially in a nice neighborhood of > >residential apartments; in LA it's associated with gangs, who almost noone > >likes. There must be better tactics, especially since graffitti encourages > > the use of simplistic slogans such as "NATO swastika". > > Well, my son was active on the grafitti scene here in Baltimore and he says > that the alleged "gang connection" is a lame excuse cops use to crack on > the grafitti artists. Most of the grafitti art is not done by "gangs" but > by "crews" - that is, groups of young people who do mainly grafitti (as > opposed to other "gang business"). > > Grafitti is a form of public art, and is actually very popular in Europe; > see for example: > > http://www.graffiti.org/ > > which contains links to various grafitti sites across the world. > > I think the opposition to grafitti in the US comes mainly from two sources: > > - grafitti involves an act of 'reclaiming" of a 'private' space for the > display of public art; and since the USers tend to be fearful of anything > public (where they cound encounter people different than themselves) they > distrust an art form that is anti-thetical to the idea of 'private.' > > - the adult USers tend to be violently anti-youth, they are afraid of the > young people, hate their culture, and are very passionate about > disciplining the them (cf. the nauseating exuberance that caning of an US > teenagager in Singapore provoked in this country) - so they naturally > despise grafitti as an expression of the youth culture. > > Wojtek
