Andrew Christensen
Professor Ramser 
English 1B
1 May 2019 
              Art Or Not Art...You Decide
In this essay I will identify the issues that graffiti cause in the communities as well as how we can solve this problem as well as provide the other side of the story that graffiti should be considered art and not a crime.I believe that graffiti should be illegal as it does damage to personal and private property that the victims have to pay to fix.In this essay I will identify the problems and suggest multiple solutions how to fix the issue including support from multiple sources.Graffiti is one of the most visual crimes of all times and often lead disorder problems that may occur in a today’s society. Other issues that arise that are often associated with graffiti include: public disorder, such as loitering. shoplifting materials used for graffiti, including paint and markers.I believe the graffiti is a major issues in the community.Art is the one of the biggest forms  of self expression. But, what constitutes an art? And, who decides? These very questions infects the public as it tries to decide and define the official status of graffiti,art or vandalism? Because it has traveled its way from the streets into art galleries and because of the community of artists who challenge and inspire each other, graffiti should be considered art and as a way to be a way express themself in a different way.The origin and history of graffiti is not what you might expect.Many cities view graffiti as ugly and worth nothing; for example, the city of San Antonio has arranged an anti-graffiti campaign in which the city boldly states “graffiti is ugly”. This attitude towards graffiti and the obsession with ridding cities of graffiti sparked the ever-present negative outlook on the craft, spoiling its artistic value, it also devalues those who want to become artist because of the way that “street art” is looked down upon in this time period.

This negative shadow on the art form of graffiti has caused the decline of the graffiti movement.As many have predicted, graffiti may all together eventually disappear. Graffiti has already begun to dwindle from what was once a flourishing art movement, to an almost disgraced hobby. However, a spoiled reputation is not the only culprit in the murder of authentic street graffiti. The occupation of the current generation with technology and social media has caused many artists to focus solely on selling their work and gaining attention through social networking platforms such as twitter and instagram leading to artist such as banksy and LushSux rising to popularity. Another, perhaps more common, reason for the decline is the improvement of police work and punishments for those indulging in the illegal form of graffiti. However artist such as LushSux in Australia have created new works of art that challenge these laws and challenge society’s way they look at graffiti.People always bring up many points like this,Anyone who glorifies graffiti needs to answer one question: If your home were tagged during the night without your consent, would you welcome the new addition to your decor  or would you immediately go to Home Depot and buy paint and become your own personal painter, or even call the the police? I believe that many people need to ask this question,When does graffiti become art? Is it meaningless to even try to attempt to fix the view on graffiti in the public eye.Graffiti is always vandalism. By definition it is committed without permission on another person's property, in an public eye display of entitlement. Whether particular viewers find any given piece of graffiti artistically compelling is irrelevant due to the fact that this is opinion there is no facts behind if art is “good looking”.Graffiti’s most salient characteristic is that it is a crime.John Lindsay, the progressive New York politician who served as mayor from 1966 to 1973, declared war on graffiti in 1972. He understood that graffiti signaled that informal social controls and law enforcement had broken down in New York’s public spaces, making them vulnerable to even greater levels of disorder and law-breaking.(Silwa) A 2008 study from the Netherlands has shown that physical disorder and vandalism have a contagious effect, confirming the "broken windows theory."There is nothing “progressive” about allowing public amenities to be defaced by graffiti; anyone who can avoid a graffiti-bombed park or commercial thoroughfare will do so, since tagging shows that an area is dominated by vandals who may be involved in other crimes as well.(Van Eijk)New York’s conquest of subway graffiti in the late 1980s was the first sign in decades that the city was still governable; that triumph over lawlessness paved the way for the urban renaissance that followed.


It’s a familiar scenario. Older person gets angry with modern world and rages against the visual white noise of graffiti that is, well, everywhere these days.Only this time the angry old man is film director David Lynch, whose surrealist pedigree and bizarre sense of style make his condemnation of graffiti difficult to dismiss as mere grey-haired grumpiness. Lynch says graffiti is ruining the world and making our planet ugly. He’s right, of course. The fame of street artists like Banksy and a general sense that graffiti is the natural art expression of the kids crushes dissent about this guttural art form. We are all subdued by it. We go along with it. But how much graffiti truly actually adds anything to the world? It takes someone as unshakably credentials such as Lynch to state the complete obvious, that scrawled and spray-painted adolescent messages on every corner of every city do not actually enrich our world.Graffiti is a pretentious subcultural backbeat that is replicated everywhere in much the same style, the same chunky lettering and coded messages,which often leads to violence and gang activities. It is boring and expresses a generalised contempt for community, kindness, and the weak.After all it is so blatantly masculine, aggressive and destructive of people’s devout desire for a healthy and peaceful environment. It is in fact proof that men are still in charge of the world in most civilized  countries including the United States. There is far more creativity and craft in, say, crochet but because that is traditionally seen as a “feminine” activity no one bends over backwards to praise it as art even though it seems to have more meaning then graffiti. But graffiti, associated as it is with alienated young men, is treated with absurd reverence by people who should know better and who should know the right from the wrong.Not only is graffiti sometimes ugly it’s also hurts business, often smaller businesses that can’t afford repairs.My mother owns a small grooming store I asked her “how would you feel if anyone graffiti the shop”. She replied to me saying “ I would be depressed cause all the hard work would be messed up due to one person actions”. 

Graffiti can be seen everywhere in the United States and the whole world outside the United States such  shopping centre facilities, on the walls and doors of commercial businesses, factories and healthcare organizations and it is estimated that it costs the United States over 12 billion per year to clean up. This can be used to do other much more important issues but due to people actions they have to be spent to clean up the messes these “painters” leave behind.Graffiti is most common in cities, damaging the appearance of buildings and draining commercial resources.Graffiti can cause damage to decorative or delicate surfaces. Affected areas may also start to feel run down and appear threatening, putting off customers and prospects. Some graffiti can be very offensive, threatening to groups or individuals, or racially abusive.Local authorities are not responsible for clearing graffiti on private property, which includes business premises but will work with the community to prevent graffiti wherever they can.In the spring of 2008, the Tate Modern opened the world’s first major public museum display of graffiti and street art, inviting six international artists to decorate its facade with enormous, eye-catching murals.
 Meanwhile, just down the riverbank at Southwark crown court, eight members of London’s well-known DPM crew were tried for an estimated  1 million pounds in graffiti-related damages across the country, and sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison which is the biggest prosecution for graffiti that the UK has ever seen.The Anti Social Behaviour Act of 2003 defines graffiti as “painting, writing, soiling, marking or other defacing by whatever means”.(UK Government)Anything from a quickly executed tag to a detailed mural could be deemed illegal, and the artist subject to a £5,000 fine or prosecution. But despite this clear-cut definition, there are double standards in the way graffiti is perceived, and the law creates pockets of permission for some artists while penalising others.In December 2013, for instance, a magistrate glowingly used the phrase “the next Banksy” to describe a Manchester graffiti artist who ultimately avoided jail. But when sentencing London tagger Daniel “Tox” Halpin to a 27-month jail sentence in 2011.The prosecutor told the jury: “He is no Banksy. He doesn’t have the artistic skills.” A commemorative Tox mural by Banksy appeared in Camden soon after, and was quickly protected by Perspex casing. But this authoritative distinction between “good” and “bad” graffiti does not have a place in the rulebooks.Since its contemporary birth in 1960s Philadelphia, city leaders have tended to condemn graffiti as mindless vandalism. Policing later began leaning towards the “broken window” theory, which argues that if petty crime like graffiti is visibly ignored, suggesting general neglect, it could inspire more serious offences. The UK spends £1 billion on graffiti removal each year in the main cities. But as cities seek to “clean up”, could graffiti’s ephemeral role within the urban environment actually be good for cities?
 For Ben Eine, a graffiti artist whose work was gifted to Barack Obama by David Cameron, graffiti leads not to drug deals and robberies, as the broken windows theory suggests, but to something very different. “If they [councils] stopped painting over them, they would get tagged and then they’d do silver stuff over it. And then eventually, people would do nice paintings over it.The natural evolution of graffiti is that it will just turn out looking nice”, he told the recent Graffiti Sessions academic conference.(Henley). Although the success that Ben Enie he struggled a ton with the law. He had 15-20 arrest for graffiti and five convictions of criminal damage.Eine who is now 39 is best known in and around Shoreditch in the East End Area  of London, where he had worked for several years with his close friend, the elusive and most famous artist today,Banksy. “They're the best of mates, old friends," says Lindsay Alkin, manager of the Artrepublic gallery in Brighton, which also sells the artist's work. "Banksy would do one side of the street and Ben the other, and Ben did all Banksy's screenprints”.(Alkin) This just shows how they have to work together to create these works of art.Eine recently came to the media's attention when he persuaded the shopkeepers of a shop in  Middlesex Street in Spitalfields to allow him to paint the entire alphabet, in his trademark vibrant, cheerful colours, on their closed security shutters. Elsewhere in London, his letters spell out whole words "Exciting" or "Scary" or "Vandalism" on walls and buildings, or just stand on their own: a solitary "e" or "a" adorning a shopfront or telecomm box. There's a Google Map of his London work, but similar typographical totems can also be seen in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, as well as Newcastle and Hastings, where he now lives in 2019.
In conclusion in this research I learned a ton about graffiti and the culture that surrounds it. However my opinion on the topic has no changed throughout my research and my 15 week study that I did in the subject. Although some may consider graffiti my final opinion is that the graffiti is disrespectful and a sign of disobedience in modern times.
















Work cited page 
Banksy.” Google, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/www.biography.com/.amp/artist/banksy.
“Ben Eine: the Street Artist Who's Made It to the White House.” Google, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jul/21/ben-eine-artist-cameron-obama.
Morgan, Anthony, and Erin Louis. “Key Issues in Graffiti.” Australian Institute of Criminology, Australian Institute of Criminology, 9 Jan. 2018, aic.gov.au/publications/rip/rip06.

“Graffiti: Preserving New York's History of Street Art.” Time, Time, time.com/4743207/martha-cooper-subway-graffiti/.
Morgan, Anthony, and Erin Louis. “Key Issues in Graffiti.” Australian Institute of Criminology, Australian Institute of Criminology, 9 Jan. 2018, aic.gov.au/publications/rip/rip06.
Participation, Expert. “Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.” Legislation.gov.uk, Statute Law Database, www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/38/contents.
Why New York City Has to Beat the Cancer of Graffiti.” Google, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2016/04/07/why-new-york-city-has-to-beat-the-cancer-of-graffiti/amp/.
Vanderveen, Gabry, and Gwen van Eijk. “Criminal but Beautiful: A Study on Graffiti and the Role of Value Judgments and Context in Perceiving Disorder.” SpringerLink, Springer Netherlands, 10 Sept. 2015, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-015-9288-4.