How Canvas Prints Showed How the Public Really Do Love Graffiti
Graffiti has had a mixed press in the last few years. On the “good press” side, gifted artists such as Banksy have made graffiti an aesthetic pleasure, utilising stencils to produce difficult graphics with a subtle meaning attached. This type of graffiti was likely to grow fashionable with the masses and the art critics : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This type of graffiti is now even bought as graffiti prints, and hung on the walls of middle class homes and office reception areas.
Yet, when it comes to your down and dirty graffiti – the gangbanger, the tagger, the street urchin – this is just seen as vandalism, a crime committed by the untalented. But is graffiti merely art? To many individuals, it’s not only art, but a method to put your stamp on territory, or perhaps a rejection of society altogether : anti-establishment, anti-social, even anti-art.
Graffiti has forever been a secret activity, even though the results are very much public. The targeted market is frequently unbeknown. Is it for a rival crew? A message to an individual? To the public? Or….perhaps it’s just uncalled-for and out of boredom.
Whatever the reasons, there seems to be some kind of unremitting demand to spray graffiti on walls. Some towns have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t a fad, so they’ve designated areas where graffiti is permitted – usually uninhabited areas, but now and then more civic zones like temporary boarding surrounding urban buildings under construction.
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