Ask anyone their opinion on graffiti, and you’ll get opinions right across the board : some individuals see it as a nuisance, others a nuanced artform. On the “good press” side, creatives like Banksy have turned graffiti into an aesthetic pleasure, employing stencils to produce difficult graphics loaded with political messages attached. This kind of graffiti was bound to become popular with both the masses and the likes of The Guardian pressroom : pleasing to the eye, and the intellect. This kind of graffiti is even bought as graffiti printed onto canvas, and placed in suburban households and office reception areas.
However, when it comes to your down and dirty graffiti - the gangbanger, the tagger, the street urchin - this is just seen as antisocial, a crime perpetrated by the untalented. However this is to misinterpret graffiti as purely an art form. To many people, it’s not just an artform, but a means to mark territory, or even a two finger salute : anti-establishment, anti-social, even anti-art.
Spraying has invariably been an undercover pursuit, although the effects are very much public. The targeted audience is often unidentified. Is it for a rival gang? A message to a single person? To the public at large? Or….maybe it’s simply gratuitous and out of nothing else to do.
Whatever the causes may be, there appears to be some kind of continuous need to spray graffiti. Some city councils have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t a short-term craze, so they’ve marked off zones where graffiti is permitted - usually uninhabited areas, but occasionally busier areas like boarding that surrounds urban buildings under construction.
