your opinion on graffiti artists?

Some people go out at night wearing all black hoodie and pants with a bag full of spray paint and rollers.
Are they criminals? or artists?

It really depends on what it is they drew with the spray paint cans. If it's something like obvious tagging then it will be viewed as vandalising property. But if it's some elaborate work, then in most cases it will be viewed as art. So it's really hard to say.

Depends on the property that they tag. If it's private property where the owner consented to the painting then it's fine. If it's private property and the owner of that property did not consent to having their property painted it's vandalism. Same goes for public property, it's vandalism and therefore they are criminals.

That is true, there is no arguing with that logic but there are sometimes really good graffiti artists that will paint right over all the BS tags and paint something really cool.

Man its art and sometimes vandalism. Someone should tag an entire train row. That'll separate the real artists from the artistic thrills

Both, doesn't matter what they paint.

Vladmir Putin supports it so ya...

It is considered art if the work is clean and neat to look at..... it also depends on WHERE the graffiti is situated in....

in my case i consider simple scribbling in residential areas and alleys to be vandalism...

If they spray public or private property without the consent of the owner it's vandalism and that makes them criminals no matter how good the graffiti is.
I fail to see that there has to be two sides in this since illegal art is still art, and legal crappy tags are still just crappy tags. Art/crime doesn't really rule eachother out here.

Well put, regardless of how pretty or ugly the end result is without proper consent from the owners its still vandalism one way or another.

An artist is a title for a person who does artistic works. Being a criminal means breaking the law. Spraying paint on your own wall is not a bad thing but not on other people's wall or in public places. My point is even if you are an artist you would still be considered as a criminal by disobeying a law.

I admire graffiti art when it's been commissioned but if you go around with a spray can and spray someone else's property, you sir are a criminal despite how nice your art is.

I especially hate people who can't do graffiti and draw some crap on my dad's garage. Pisses me off as I am the one who has to paint the garage door. Then after wards, it'll probably get tagged by some punk ass kid a few weeks later. I mean if you painted something nice, I wouldn't have minded that much but the man/woman drew some fucked up looking skull thing that looked terrible and colored it in.

That sure is damn irritating alright.

If it isn't yours, don't fuck with it. No matter how good the artwork, if the owner doesn't want it on their wall, you have no right putting it there.

I have mixed feelings about it.
A lot of graffiti is amazing and artistic, but for every one of those there are fifteen other graffiti that are just rude or eyesores.

Tagging things or just writing a name on public property? Wrong, and should be punished.
But as a community art initiative or done with temporary/washable mediums, I think it should be allowed.

i saw a thing awhile ago about some little kid in NYC getting hit with vanadlism charge for playing with chalk on the sidewalk. in most places the laws are so vague, it can go either way.

They ought to be licking clean the surfaces they defile. One of the countless reasons I am so happy to have moved out of metropolis into more rural regions is that THERE IS NO GRAFFITI HERE PERIOD.
I detest how these retards turn every clean surface into a zero-skill-junction of retarded tags, hip hop tough-guy-isms and marijuana-laden humour. No artistic value in it, whatsoever.

Like I said in my first post, crappy tags just suck, but there are some wicked street-artists out there. For you who just discard it as trash, you should check out this guy's art.

Not only is it well made, it is also often strategically put to be very provocative.

For example

This was painted in a slum in Bethlehem 2005.

And this was drawn on the Israeli West Bank Barrier the same year. (Enlarge to see what it says)


This guy is good enough so that a number of his drawings have been deemed so good, and "important"(Can't find a better word atm) to be allowed to remain.