Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?


Jo Mattock 14 February 2005 (Issue 168)
We are all artists, they cried in the sixties. "Now, for the price of an aerosol it's true. Pick your view and sign it." So says Iain Sinclair about 'taggers' in Lights out for the Territory.
Tagging is generally considered vandalism, a more complex version of 'I woz here' to be erased by town councils and other authorities. More complex graffiti is slowly being accepted as an art form, with recent exhibitions and sales of 'street art'. Graffiti is often used to decorate the outside of shops and clubs. It sends a certain message, and attracts a certain customer. It can be seen in Bristol on the Lakota nightclub in Upper York Street and on shop fronts on Gloucester Road. This is graffiti art that has been sanctioned though; graffiti with permission, unlike tagging which remains on the fringes of acceptability.
It's easy to see why authorities consider taggers a pest. Their canvasses include streets, signs and buildings, all in public areas and all without consent - obviously. There wouldn't really be any point in tagging if it was allowed. Part of its appeal is the rush of doing something illegal, of asserting your own identity against an anonymous authority. The images and stylized words left are considered ugly and aggressive - they lay
claim to the city, to the streets, to the buildings. Tagging embodies a certain culture, a certain destructive, angry contempt for society. "Remember, crime against property is not real crime," says Banksy, a Bristol graffiti artist, on his website. It is a challenge and threat to authorities.
But isn't that the point of art? It is meant to challenge us, to take away our complacency, perhaps to threaten us, and tagging does. It gives us no choice but to see it. Art confined to museums is fairly safe; we can go to view it if we wish, we can turn away and leave if it disturbs us, but this is not true of graffiti.
The discussion of whether tagging is art was recently played out when Banksy left his tag on the Thekla, a floating theatre and arts venue in Bristol docks. After posting a picture on their website and getting positive feedback from customers, the Thekla decided to keep their artwork, feeling that it "went with the industrial setting." Harbour manager Mr Smith, of Bristol City Council disagreed and ordered it to be painted over as it was detrimental to the docks and the city. "Setting aside any legal issues," say the Thekla on their website, "who is the vandal - Banksy or Smithy?"
It's personal opinion as to whether the tags themselves
have artistic merit, and this may vary between tags. A local tagger, known as Paws, leaves his personal motif of a cartoonish teddy bear paw. The symbol has progressively mutated and abstracted, breaking into its component parts in a radical analysis of space and form. Like Banksy's, the essence of Paws's art resides in its fused elements of repetition and experimentation: a fluid dualism that underlies all expressions of graffiti art. For this reason, erasure of the works by cruder spray-can vandals and, of course, officialdom, is as basic to the form as its initial creation.
Some may say that in its transient, shifting and self-referential nature, graffiti art epitomises, in both product and process, the flux and, arguably, futility of city life. However, this analysis is, I believe, crap. Criticising tagging and deconstructing it in the language of the art establishment is absurd. The nature of tagging resists it. For the tagger, nothing should be taken seriously, least of all tagging. Banksy's flippant view of what he is doing can be seen on his website. "People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at graffiti painting and admire the use of a drain pipe to gain access," he says.
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