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I don't think that degree of permanency in a public or semi-private location affects my ability to appreciate a piece of interesting and highly creative graffiti as art.
I understand that it's public or even semi-private property, in any case not belonging to the person who "defaces" it, but I also think that sometimes the work is so striking, of such high conceptual and aesthetic quality, that it's a shame to have it removed. Some places that get work of this kind done to them are probably the better for it.
I don't much care for things that are more a defacing than anything else. Tagging for example, makes no statement other than, I was here and I wrote on your shit so I'm cool. It's not aesthetically interesting nor does it carry a meaningful message.
I totally disagree that art work should be confined to a museum. In fact, that is something I'm particularly interested in, access to art and how art work is presented by the artist to others. Art should not be put on a pedestal if it is to have any relevance to the lives of ordinary people. I believe that it should be a part of everyone's lives, and indeed it is, even though many times in less obvious ways. No-one can say they live without art in their life.
Art can be pleasurable, both visually and physically, and intellectually. It can make us think in new ways about new and old things, about things outside of our own small lives and concerns, about others. It can shock us into action. Some acts of subversion can be good for you. If you always conform, then some of your spirit withers and dies, because you become the same, with no differentiation. Variety is important.
Sure, some people may call art, or even street art, garbage. A nuisance getting in their daily path. But I think these people are definitely missing out.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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