1. From graffiti to street art
The graffiti movement started in Philadelphia in the 1960’s. This did not start as vandalism at
first and it also wasn’t a activity having a bad reputation. It all started when the famous jazz
musician Charlie Parker also called bird or birdman. The graffiti was on walls and said “bird
lives” around the city. This was put to commemorate his life in the city he was most known in.
This then started going around the city of Philadelphia vandalising properties and places of
interest around the city, this was then named as tagging. This consisted of people's names then
a number usually a gang related number an example of this was “Taki 182” who was a well
known tagger in Philadelphia. This then transported from the birthplace of tagging what
escalated throughout America rapidly. The next destination for it was NYC. It then progressed to
the subway cars that travelled all around the city. Taggers used the subway cars so everyone
could see there name and gang number around the city this increased their street reputation
making them more well known. They ended up using the system of the subway as then
everyone needs to see it and doesn’t have a choice, they also used this as it is the most well
used use of transportation. After this the council and police got involved to get the taggers or
bombers off the street, to do this they cleaned off all of the graffiti off the carts across the city.
This caused a massive uproar between all of the taggers and they had an attitude of not being
beaten so they took their tagging to the streets and tagged places around the city. They tagged
places like walls, statues and public areas, generally anywhere they can get to and get their
hand on. The police noticed this and then took it into their own hands by once again cleaning all
of the graffiti off the walls etc. They then took a bigger impact than last time to truly get the
taggers off the street. They done this by making it against the law and having a fine and
imprisonment to all who was caught doing this around the city. This made taggers have caution
and most to stop as the police were checking the city on a regular basis. The taggers yet again
didn't want to be beaten and wanted to carry on increasing their street cred, so the tagging went
under the city in subway tunnels beneath the surface. This craze then went worldwide and was
happening all over the world. The police started arresting taggers to stop the city being
destroyed what it was in their eyes. Once they saw that people were getting caught the taggers
decided to go underground and bomb the underground tunnels so their name was still over the
city but they just weren't getting caught. This was bad as they were getting away with this what
caused more crime to be committed underground. The police then got onto this and caught all
of the taggers underground, by this time graffiti was already all over the world as it was the new
craze. However it was all over the world but not as tagging all of the time most people were
using different techniques to get their opinion across through street art. This brought out the
good and the bad artists. All though most art was very opinionated and good it was still illegal
and still can cause imprisonment or fines. This has caused a big debate in society in whether it
is vandalism or not. In my opinion it is not vandalism if used correctly so no tagging. There are
good reasons for and against graffiti. We will start with the negatives behind graffiti.
Criminal damage: this is the first negative behind graffiti. This is a negative because the main
argument for people who are against graffiti what is vandalism. This argument has been going
on for years by many people debating weather graffiti is or isn’t vandalism. In my opinion it is
vandalism to an extreme as if you don’t have permission to do anything it is against the law as
you don’t have permission, this is the same for graffiti as if you don’t have permission to do it
2. and you do it anyway it is vandalism no matter how good it looks. There is other arguments
saying if it is a good picture of art it isn’t vandalism but if it is bad or not a piece of art such as
tagging it is vandalism. In my opinion it is stupid as no matter how good something is if you don’t
have permission it is against the law full stop. Another disadvantage to do with criminal damage
is if the offensive graffiti. In this day and age a lot of things offend many people. If this is the
case the graffiti would cause a fuss and would need to be taken down straight away or worse
consequences could occur. The main types of offensive graffiti is religion, race, sexuality or
gang related things and these things are what will gain bad publicity to the area what
communities don’t want so will call it vandalism and will want someone to do something about it.
Another disadvantage is that it influences other, for example if people start doing it in a
community and get away with it they could think i could do this too and make a bad name from it
to try and be cool and be included etc. on the other hand this could also be an advantage if it
influences people in a positive way. This would be a positive if a person is influenced to bring
out their artistic talents, to make something for themselves or to get their opinion across etc.
This could also be called the knock on effect as it starts with one person then somebody else is
influenced by them making them do that same thing and it keeps knocking on like that. This
could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the context as stated above.
Cost of clean up:
Cost of cleanup is a major disadvantage for graffiti and street art. There is many ways that this
is an disadvantage, starting at the cost. In 2002 it cost the government £100 million and that
was just in London alone. This is bad as it isn’t just costing the government a lot of money it is
coming out of the tax payers money from when we pay tax. This is bad as it isn’t causing a
consequence and they keep on doing it once cleaned so money keeps on coming out of our
pockets to pay to get the walls cleaned as they offenders aren’t getting caught or are just getting
away with it what is wrong. Another disadvantage of this is that the money could be going on
something useful instead, this is because the government only have a certain amount of money
allocated for them to spend so they could be using it for something for the future such as
hospitals, schools, housing, etc but instead they are spending some of that money on cleaning
the cities what isn’t beneficial especially with no consequences what even if it was fines and
imprisonment for repeat offences as the fines would help pay for the cleanup of the graffiti. As
well as this it takes time to clean it all up and yet again costs money for labour costs from
machine hire/usage and getting or paying people to do it. This could take a matter of hours to
clean up each piece what is bad and wasting time what could be used for other things such as
cleaning up littering, helping others, building or other council jobs. The only sort of advantage i
can think from this is that it gives some people some community service instead of everyone
cleaning up litter there is some sort of service people can do so the government won’t run out of
things for inmates to do for community service, however this is only a small advantage what
doesn’t make much of a difference so isn’t the best.
Makes area look intimidating:
Overall this section is all disadvantages. Graffiti can make an area look intimidating what overall
gives the area a bad image. This is bad as this area could be the talk of the country for all the
bad reasons, if the area is given a bad image it can reduce tourism what makes that place have
3. a decrease in money income in the town what means the town won’t use the money income on
needed things such as buildings and places of interest such as schools or hospitals etc. Another
disadvantage is the broken window theory. This theory is that if you see a house that is well
cleaned and is always up to standard you would feel safe in that place however if you go to an
area with a broken window you would feel intimidated but then if the window has been broke for
ages you wouldn’t go back as you would see the home owners don’t care about their property
and don’t want to fix it or people just keep on smashing windows over and over again for the
sake of it what would make the area look intimidating making people not wanting to visit there
and losing tourism leading to all of my points above. As well as this if a area has a lot of graffiti
especially tagging people wouldn’t want to go to the area as tagging is linked to gangs showing
it is a heavy gang related area making people scared and not visit the area and yet again lose
tourism, so overall graffiti can change an opinion and effect on an area quickly so is important
that it is unharmful and art or that there is none at all.
Personal hurt and upset:
Graffiti can cause personal hurt and could also upset people that can be done by damaging
certain meaningful objects. This is usually done by tagging but can be done by street art but on
the rare occasion. The meaningful objects usually affected is graves or monuments. This is
disrespectful and can hurt people. The things usually put on these is if a person doesn’t agree
or finds out a past experience on a grave for example there was an image i saw that had a nazi
symbol on a grave as he was a former nazi what is disrespectful and rude. Another way to
cause personal hurt is if the graffiti to be offensive. This could be done by having racist remarks,
religious beliefs or other things like that. This could be expressed in images, words or a slogan.
This also decreases values in houses in the area as it causes stereotypes and nobody would
want to live in an area when the houses always get vandalised or have graffiti already on them.
This would decrease value and make people not want to buy houses from that area. The
stereotypes are usually bad and if people see graffiti they usually just think gangs or bad people
what is not always correct as most graffiti shows opinion and a personal message. Personal
hurt could also be dealt by personal damage to properties through vandalism. This could be
done on any object a person owns from any part of the house to the car. This would make the
homeowner have to clean for the clean up and also this could make them be scared or afraid of
the area as they don’t know who did it and why or if it would happen again. This makes them
live in a world of paranoia and want them to sell their house what could not be as easy because
of the history of the area and this is everything that could happen from vandalism on personal
property.
Bibliography:
Bomb It, 2007 movie directed by Jon Reiss
Exit through the gift shop 2010 movie directed by banksy
Trespass a history of uncommissioned urban art 2010 book authored by Carlo McCormick
Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents 2007 book authored by Anthony
Smyrski, Caleb Neelon, and Roger Gastman.
