Originally Posted by Matthew Vita (Post 2618487)

I don't quite understand what you are saying.. graffiti is okay and is "art" if it is on a legal wall... and anything else that is not on a legal wall.. is not "art"?

-MV

Originally Posted by dlish (Post 2618369)

i knew you were going to say that manic. and i agree.

illegal graffiti and the risks involved in terms of not only getting caught, but risk to life and limb make it what it is.

i say illegal graffiti of legal walls too. on legal walls, it becomes a piece of art. on illegal walls its a statement, irrespective of how it looks

Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2619315)

obviously, the idea that this street art is strictly outside the gallery system or outside the more uptight world of "legit" art is naive at this point. there's a fluidity of boundaries and it's pretty clear that at least some of what you see amounts to public auditions, stuff for portfolios that are sent around with proper artist statements and such. it's been like this for years. so i don't see in street art a necessarily anarchist politics or a rejection of the Man---but i do like it. even the relatively crappy stuff that's around tiny town.

Originally Posted by spindles (Post 2620424)

Well done graffiti can be quite good, but a lot of it ends up just being scribbles - I'm not so keen on that type.

Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2624784)

i stumbled across this remarkably stupid column in the guardian just now and it reminded me of this thread (the association did not work as that sentence made it sound..bear with me)...

Should Banksy be nominated for the Turner prize? | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

the central paragraph that caught my attention is:



now first off, while i like the guardian as a news source, when it comes to art commentary there's a whole lot of stupid in it. sometimes it comes from people who like new music that sounds like old music because that way they don't have to work too hard and apparently asking something of an audience is elitist...
now this.

so the article is obviously about banksy, whose work i quite like, even as his way of playing (while "manipulating" and so "not playing") the gallery system game is irritating because it's so obviously what it is. and it's because he has been one of the latest and highest profile street artists to make this shift into that system, he's attracted stuff like this.

the opening line of the paragraph above: how is that not a non-sequitor?
the distinction between the aesthetic and the social: what the hell that mean?
the assumption that street art has an appeal only because it scares old people--where does that come from?

i'm wondering if this represents more than the musings of some tool and tracks something of a boundary between "high" and "street" art that makes of the musings of this tool something maybe interesting sociologically. what do you think?