Art or Vandalism
- By Natasha Kates
- Jun 1, 2018
- 2 min read
Graffiti is the Italian word graffiato it means scratched. Art historians believe the term arose from the fact that the earliest forms of graffiti were carved on walls with sharp objects. Graffiti has been around a very long time. In Philadelphia the first known graffiti writer was Darryl Mccray aka Cornbread. While he was in high school in 1967 he liked a girl so he started tagging walls in the city to get her attention. But it was only in the 1980’s when graffiti was seen as art to some people.
Diamond Brown a New Yorker believes graffiti is “a banned art form to express yourself or opinion that most of society real doesn’t pay attention to.”
According to New York Times journalist, Heather MacDonald, “The question ‘When does graffiti become art?’ is meaningless. Graffiti is always vandalism.” There are people who see graffiti as art even celebrities like Zayn Malik he actually covered the walls in the first house he bought with graffiti.
There are even graffiti artist that have become famous from their graffiti paintings, like TAKI 183 a local New York artist. According to the NY Times article, Celebrating Forefather of Graffiti, “TAKI 183 ... in the summer of 1971 combined to transform him into a kind of shadowy folk hero, inspiring hundreds of emulators and, by general agreement among urban historians, making him responsible for starting the modern graffiti movement.”
People who see graffiti as more than just vandalism, but as art, are not meaningless. Diamond believes that no, graffiti is not always vandalism, but it can be if it was used in a corrupt way to spread negativity inside of positivity.
Diamond made a final comment saying that she doesn’t think that society can handle graffiti as just art.
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