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Have you seen any Banksy? Do you consider his work graffiti?

Most of his work is graffiti’d onto public property without permission.

https://www.artsy.net/artist/banksy

I grant Banksy that he has some technical competency and is able to do something somewhat visually interesting (his use of color works quite well and makes his pieces stand out within the medium), but I really hate him as an artist.

There is basically no one who makes greater kitsch than him. Everything he makes is steeped in the middle class, liberal, mediocrity of someone who points out that things, which everyone agrees are bad, actually are bad. It seriously is something of the worst "art" I have ever seen and actually makes me quite sympathetic to the post modernists whose movement is a reaction to people like him.

The middle schooler, scribbling on canvas, is at least not trying desperately to impress the most bourgeois group of people the world has ever seen. That alone puts everything he does a serious step above Banksy.

Of course you can find stuff that's high quality, but that is rare. Rather than looking at outliers, it might be more sensible to look at the average and the reality is that the average graffiti does not have any artistic value.

> Have you seen any Banksy? Do you consider his work graffiti?

Yes and yes. Overhyped "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy.

Of course it’s graffiti and it’s still imposing on others against their will, regardless of whether it’s peak narcissist Banksy or someone else. Is very much about transgression and imposition and sadistic domination for personalities like Banksy and graffiti artists in general; it’s precisely why they put their “art” in other people’s things against their will.

So if I graffiti your car because I believe it improves your car; would that be ok with you? It’s art. You should be happy, right?

In what kind of city do graffiti happen on cars and households? mostly it's on public property

Certainly in the cities mentioned in the Article, e.g. Berlin and Hamburg.

There are a few here that are actually pretty good:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=40...

Ahh yeah, the typical reason people hate forums nowadays. Registration-wall/paywall. Amazing

"Nowadays", Something Awful has required paid registration since like 2001

I didn't realize that thread was totally paywalled. Here are direct links to two of the images:

https://lpix.org/4545647/IMG_8335.jpeg https://lpix.org/4545648/IMG_8336.jpeg

Defacing is your opinion, I think a city without graffiti is a dead city, it's an improvement.

Good for you. Keep it to your backyard.

>Are you an art major to be able to judge objectively?

There is precisely nothing about "being an art major" that gives you any more or less right to an opinion. Especially if you actually had read anything about current philosophy of art you would realize how dumb that sounds in this context. Since "postmodern" theories of art focus on the inner expression of the artist, contrasted with the subjective experience of the art by the viewer.

I am the one who has to suffer through this every day in the train. How am I not entitled to an opinion about that "art"?

The path to alleviate suffering involves letting go.

Are you suggesting most people enjoy graffiti? Because I don't know anyone irl who does so I'm a bit surprised by this perspective. I've personally always viewed it as equivalent to littering and assumed the ones doing it were just thrill seekers up until now...

I do. When I first moved to Berlin I was thinking the same, but now I prefer it when modern concrete buildings are touched up with graffity no matter if commissioned or "illegal" - the important part is to give the eyes something to stumble over.

Historical buildings is a different matter of course.

There are two types of graffiti: actual art, and tags which are akin to the forum signatures of yore.

The actual art is often a bit strange but can be beautiful, and is more interesting than a bare concrete wall or train hull. But I agree with you that virtually all tags are ugly. And not only that, tags represent an extreme concept of ego, where you subsume the art, spending your entire canvas on your signature.

What I despise the most are taggers who tag on top of a beautiful graffiti with lazily styled letters.

Yes, I used to view it like that as well, until a host of grafittis offering a different perspective appeared in my city. It turned out that the author was an art student and a neighbour of mine from the lower floor. Not Banksy level but still good. Sadly he moved or who knows but his grafittis are gone and the awful football related vandalism tags are here to stay.