You all must live in some pretty pretty bubble if "everyone you know" spray paints as a type of art form that everyone else must somehow, for some reason, respect and acknowledge as art. Using that argument, "everyone I know" who did public "spray art" were either art-major pals at my fancy university or angsty 14 year olds trying to express themselves. So, the "I know" vs "You know" evidence does not hold - we can always find individual examples to trump each others.

If you tried running your own business in an urban area, you might feel differently. Also, does it matter that the original graffiti artist is not intentionally drawing connections to gangs if everyone else does? Can you tell customers "Oh don't mind the writing because I assure you, the spray painter was just a frustrated youth crafting his art form on my business wall"?

Sometimes I REALLY tire of the contrariness on Jezebel. It is as though people assume anything "against" the norms of society is automatically good, liberal, honest, real, etc etc. Well sometimes it is just annoying, expensive, predatory, and yes, ugly.

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There's a huge difference between gang tagging and actual art. The above is most definitely the latter.

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In general I think graffiti AND tagging gets a bad rap as "not real art", or that people see an admittedly very talented guy like Banksy putting shit up and figure he's "different". I wrote an entire article about the disfavored status of graffiti, "craft" art and other forms of outsider art in the law. Tagging can be beautiful and creative, or it can suck (just like everything else). I happen to dig even the stuff that doesn't rise to Banksy or Eine levels. And no, I'm not glamorizing it because it's "real", but thanks for the side of patronizining.

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You're so angry. Are you a graffiti artist? Why is it so offensive, so wrong to point out that not all street art is "art"? Why do you contest my blanket statement with your own? I'm glad that your experience with NYC taggers do not mirror my marginalized, clearly unremarkable, quite out of the norm experiences in LA.

Jesus Christ.

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The defense of street art is valid but tagging extends way beyond someone's art history thesis. When people jump to defend the art, they do so against a much smaller world of discourse (how people talk about the definition of art). How can this discursive definition of art stand if dismissing the world of those not involved in this quite privileged meta-discussion?!

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most of the time it isn't art, political statement, or anything worth praising. It is just ugly, cost businesses tons of money painting and repainting, and is affiliated with gang warfare.

... yeeeeah. OK well, in any case, what was my blanket statement? Saying graffiti was art? Are you the one who decides what art is and isn't? My statement was opinion, that much I can acknowledge. You, however, fail to see the other side of the issue and are happy saying trite things about a topic you deem "new" and "trendy." It's neither of those things.

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Of course it's an academic mindfuck and there's no way that, say, a court would validate random tagging over your property rights, but I just like to put it out there that people like to differentiate tagging from Banksy, Invader et al. because it looks more like what we think of as "typical" art and tagging gets classified as junk. Which some of it is (I tend to really like tagging, though) but we should be more, not less, inclusive when it comes to definitions of art.

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As would this man, shot when confronting a tagger: [articles.latimes.com]

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I also carry Play-Doh everywhere. This has come in handy twice in the last month: once for a late night/early morning Cranium game in which the Cranium clay was missing, and on New Year's Eve when some woman showed up to the party with children in tow.

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[www.thinkgeek.com]

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