Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?
Many cities are beefing up laws to fight graffiti. In San Francisco, California for example, property owners are now given 30 days to clean up graffiti on their properties, or face paying the city to do it for them. Inevitably the question will come up, when does graffiti become art?
Some notorious graffiti taggers have been welcomed by the art world. The most famous being Keith Haring, whose works have sold for upward of $100,000. More recently, taggers such as "Neck Face" have begun selling their work in art galleries, and have been featured in newspapers and on T.V., often with masks covering their faces.
In San Francisco, where the D.A.'s office is well-known for being soft on graffiti vandals, and property owners rather than law enforcement agencies bear the brunt of graffiti abatement efforts, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently proposed a pilot art program that would have artists paint utility boxes with their artistic work. Read more about this San Francisco art project.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, "Police Department officer Christopher Putz, who works expressly on graffiti issues, argued that putting public art on boxes owned by SBC Communications and the Department of Parking and Traffic could lead to a bureaucratic mess where no one takes responsibility for the vandalism."
While property owners are legally required by city law to clean the vandalism, under state law, an artist's work can not be touched without permission. Invevitably, questions about art, vandalism, and property rights will need to be addressed more fully.
To give an idea of how prolific graffiti has become, as of today, the photo sharing website Flickr contains 350,000 tagged graffiti pictures.
