I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.
Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.
Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.
I think there is a lot of nuance here. Just as councils and developers can construct ugly buildings artists can also add ugly work to walls.
I agree there is a spectrum. On one hand you've Banksy or Basquiat adding to a flat grey wall and creating art that has a political voice or some artistic merit and the other you've some twat scribbling hate symbols on a historic monument. I don't have on ideas on how we can ensure one and not the other though.
One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?
Graffiti on things like trees (e.g. in urban parks) is awful and trees are the opposite of artificial and antiseptic. The main problem with graffiti is that most of it is made without thought or consideration, and that never ends well.
I like that part of it too - but feel that if I owned a building and had people spraying paint all over its exterior whenever they felt like it...maybe not so much.
Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city. It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment. A city only has value because it's occupied by many people, and those people need to express their autonomy and quite literally "leave their mark."
Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia. Just as I scrawled onto a bathroom stall in 2005 "Cameron takes it up the bum," so too did Salvius write of his friend on a wall in the House of the Citharist in the year 79, "Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this."
>It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment.
So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly? It's like saying that defecating on the street is a form of self-expression and "leaving their mark". Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?
>Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia.
There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
> So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly?
The idea that the city is owned by the uppermost caste of that society.
> There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
Massive cathedrals to the rich would be erected and made holy, and individuals upon whose back society is build would demonstrate that though entrance is barred to them, they still can make the thing their own.
Nowadays there's plenty of such things in a city that closes its doors to many people that live in said city. San Francisco is a great example of this, where rising costs are pushing anyone not working in tech. Graffiti is an easy way to spit in the face of the rich that are trying to take a city away from you. Clearly, it has an outsized impact on their sensibilities.
Resisting the ideology that only people with money can alter the city environment.
When you see an impressive sculpture or skyscraper you know a lot of resources were spent, you know the rich people here are rich. When you see an area with lots of graffiti, there may be many good or bad things about it, but you know the citizens are free.
I would hope graffitiers have respect to only draw on the mundane parts of the city, not on cool sculptures. And in my experience, that is true. Also they should not obscure windows or information signs.
Sometimes tagging is that, sure, or just some person indicating that they exist there. For some taggers, it's an addiction. I knew one that would tag at people's houses when invited to parties. I was outside smoking a cigarette with him after the owner had threw him out on his ass, asking why he did shit like that, and he said "I just feel like if I can tag someone's house, it's like I've won."
I can kinda empathize since I'll have an addiction to getting the perfect photograph during a protest or whatever and will go to extreme lengths and burn through SD cards to get it.
In my experience the majority of graffiti is artists just putting up art. Privileged folk pass down the propaganda that graffiti is dirty and gangster and so any street art is viewed as dirty, but in the end it's just a matter of taste.
The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art
Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.
[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased
English does, and definitely invented it before the rest of the world caught on to this culture. Try watching “Wild Style” from 1983, documenting some of the earliest beefs between the types of graffiti artists. Portuguese speakers did not invent this distinction.
Throw ups are the quick ones and Pieces are the long ones.
We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.
Turn your phone to landscape, does it sitll work for you? Or are you stuck viewing only the top half of the images and unable to scroll down.
Side scrolling in portrait is not my opinion of working great. It does work to view them at least. Youre trapped in a vertical scroll, no way to get back to the beginning but scroll all the way back.
Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.
There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.
I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.
I'm probably the minority where I don't mind any graffiti, quality or not. As long as it isn't horribly offensive or impacting the functionality of something (over signs/glass/etc). Think I just prefer the look of a wall covered in even shitty tags and pasted posters over a completely blank slate.
I particularly love seeing peoples stickers about.
I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)
I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.
If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)
It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.
For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
If they're not covering windows, signs or art, what is being vandalized? A blank slab of concrete performs its function equally well no matter the color.
I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.
Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.
Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.
It's a shame.
I think there is a lot of nuance here. Just as councils and developers can construct ugly buildings artists can also add ugly work to walls.
I agree there is a spectrum. On one hand you've Banksy or Basquiat adding to a flat grey wall and creating art that has a political voice or some artistic merit and the other you've some twat scribbling hate symbols on a historic monument. I don't have on ideas on how we can ensure one and not the other though.
One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?
It’s explained by punishment.
If you execute everyone who commits a misdemeanor, crime rates are extremely low.
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I like graffiti - even random tags over blank walls because it’s a sign people are truly living and breathing in a space.
As long as there have been walls there has been graffiti. Spaces without graffiti are artificial and antiseptic.
Graffiti on things like trees (e.g. in urban parks) is awful and trees are the opposite of artificial and antiseptic. The main problem with graffiti is that most of it is made without thought or consideration, and that never ends well.
Yes, I think they should avoid covering other works of art, nature, information signs, and windows. But blank space should be fair game.
I like that part of it too - but feel that if I owned a building and had people spraying paint all over its exterior whenever they felt like it...maybe not so much.
I hate graffiti - it's an awful eyesore. But to each their own, I guess...
No accounting for taste, but, graffiti is important whether it's aesthetically pleasing or not.
https://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/
Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city. It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment. A city only has value because it's occupied by many people, and those people need to express their autonomy and quite literally "leave their mark."
Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia. Just as I scrawled onto a bathroom stall in 2005 "Cameron takes it up the bum," so too did Salvius write of his friend on a wall in the House of the Citharist in the year 79, "Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this."
>It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment.
So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly? It's like saying that defecating on the street is a form of self-expression and "leaving their mark". Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?
>Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia.
There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
> So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly?
The idea that the city is owned by the uppermost caste of that society.
> There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
Massive cathedrals to the rich would be erected and made holy, and individuals upon whose back society is build would demonstrate that though entrance is barred to them, they still can make the thing their own.
Nowadays there's plenty of such things in a city that closes its doors to many people that live in said city. San Francisco is a great example of this, where rising costs are pushing anyone not working in tech. Graffiti is an easy way to spit in the face of the rich that are trying to take a city away from you. Clearly, it has an outsized impact on their sensibilities.
Resisting the ideology that only people with money can alter the city environment.
When you see an impressive sculpture or skyscraper you know a lot of resources were spent, you know the rich people here are rich. When you see an area with lots of graffiti, there may be many good or bad things about it, but you know the citizens are free.
I would hope graffitiers have respect to only draw on the mundane parts of the city, not on cool sculptures. And in my experience, that is true. Also they should not obscure windows or information signs.
I think the cultural barrier preventing me from understanding this way of thinking is impenetrable to me. What a strange world, huh?
I suspect it's not the population's expression of ownership, but simply gangs marking their territory.
Sometimes tagging is that, sure, or just some person indicating that they exist there. For some taggers, it's an addiction. I knew one that would tag at people's houses when invited to parties. I was outside smoking a cigarette with him after the owner had threw him out on his ass, asking why he did shit like that, and he said "I just feel like if I can tag someone's house, it's like I've won."
I can kinda empathize since I'll have an addiction to getting the perfect photograph during a protest or whatever and will go to extreme lengths and burn through SD cards to get it.
In my experience the majority of graffiti is artists just putting up art. Privileged folk pass down the propaganda that graffiti is dirty and gangster and so any street art is viewed as dirty, but in the end it's just a matter of taste.
Why do you suspect that?
The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art
Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.
[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased
Is "street art" not the name? Like how "comics" are low but "graphic novels" are respectable.
English does, and definitely invented it before the rest of the world caught on to this culture. Try watching “Wild Style” from 1983, documenting some of the earliest beefs between the types of graffiti artists. Portuguese speakers did not invent this distinction.
Throw ups are the quick ones and Pieces are the long ones.
We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.
Cool, but why lay out the images in such an annoying way? Whatever happened to simple, functional photo galleries? I miss them.
It works great on mobile. That's more than I can say for most things.
Turn your phone to landscape, does it sitll work for you? Or are you stuck viewing only the top half of the images and unable to scroll down.
Side scrolling in portrait is not my opinion of working great. It does work to view them at least. Youre trapped in a vertical scroll, no way to get back to the beginning but scroll all the way back.
I’m the early 2000s I worked as an assistant producer on a San Francisco graffiti documentary featuring several of these artists
https://youtu.be/7Ub8uRFzUCQ
As an aside, the Financial Times (yes, that one) did a great interview a couple of years ago with prolific London graff artist 10FOOT.
The comments were predictably howling with rage and injustice ("he's a criminal!!", says employee of cartel laundry HSBC), but I enjoyed it a lot.
https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-b7d9-4c16-b1c2-71def32cc...
He is indeed incredibly prolific, anyone taking a train around london will recognise 10FOOT.
But he is not an artist, he literally just tags 10Foot in what could be described as looking like it was done with a marker pen.
something like this is very typical: https://ldngraffiti.co.uk/graffiti/writers/flash?pic=152931&...
I enjoy good graffiti, but 10FOOT does not fall into that category.
Lasercats that was briefly on the old theatre on Divisadero remains a favorite. This was like 15 years ago.
https://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/xndqw-full.jpg
Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.
I submit Irish Graffiti I see here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Graifiti/
Though I think displaying these things as a map is more useful: https://streetartcities.com/cities/sanfrancisco
There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.
I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.
I'm probably the minority where I don't mind any graffiti, quality or not. As long as it isn't horribly offensive or impacting the functionality of something (over signs/glass/etc). Think I just prefer the look of a wall covered in even shitty tags and pasted posters over a completely blank slate.
I particularly love seeing peoples stickers about.
I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)
As a suggestion,
* Orientation - some images are sideways,
* Option to walk through by date order, and by location ...
There is an audience for the time ordered flux of images on particular sites (at least in Australia).
I wish there were more of this: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/696...
I scrolled pretty far and didnt see Borf in there. Was that Web 2.0 ?
This collection is a bit ordinary and unremarkable. There are many great large format, new/used print books on street art
That is arguably the point. They are taken from the SF city website and are placed in arbitrary order. I personally love this unfiltered take.
There's more to get from these than just aesthetics, precisely because they're not curated.
Would have looked further, but scroll wheel finger cramped. Keyboard nav would be great.
Enabling the browser's scrollbar would also be good.
Some of these are great.
I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.
If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)
Beautiful and disgusting at the same time.
It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.
For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
If they're not covering windows, signs or art, what is being vandalized? A blank slab of concrete performs its function equally well no matter the color.
If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal.
It's ok
It is illegal. It gives the population the idea they have the right to alter their environment, and that's dangerous.
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