8 ms·
There is exactly nothing about defacing public infrastructure which elicits the tiniest spark of "admiration" or "interest" in me. If you want to live out your
by constantcrying 2y ago
There is exactly nothing about defacing public infrastructure which elicits the tiniest spark of "admiration" or "interest" in me.
If you want to live out your "artistic ambitions" do it somewhere away from public property.
- brnt 2y agoCan't tell if you speak about architecture of graffiti artists...
- oaiey 2y agoUnfortunately, life is not black and white. Even without knowing anything about graffiti culture, there is a border between defacing and improving. And graffiti artists are moving over that border back and forth. Some of the most beautiful art I have seen are graffiti
- constantcrying 2y agoI have never seen a good looking graffiti which was defacing public property. Granted, I have seen competent images which obviously were commissioned by building owners. All of it was bad art though and immensely displeasing.
- petre 2y ago[flagged]
- constantcrying 2y ago>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"?
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]
- joquarky 2y agoThe path to alleviate suffering involves letting go.
- yesco 2y agoAre 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...
- jorvi 2y agoThere 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.
- nicolas_t 2y agoWhat I despise the most are taggers who tag on top of a beautiful graffiti with lazily styled letters.
- flohofwoe 2y agoI 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]
- petre 2y agoYes, 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.
- kichimi 2y agoDefacing is your opinion, I think a city without graffiti is a dead city, it's an improvement.
- wiseowise 2y agoGood for you. Keep it to your backyard.
- yardstick 2y agoHave 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 https://www.artsy.net/artist/banksy
- kmmlng 2y agoOf 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.
- constantcrying 2y agoI 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.
- wiseowise 2y ago> Have you seen any Banksy? Do you consider his work graffiti? Yes and yes. Overhyped "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy.
- highcountess 2y agoOf 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?
- TapamN 2y agoThere are a few here that are actually pretty good: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4032118&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post532948460 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=40...
- carstenhag 2y agoAhh yeah, the typical reason people hate forums nowadays. Registration-wall/paywall. Amazing
- kalleboo 2y ago"Nowadays", Something Awful has required paid registration since like 2001
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TapamN 2y agoI 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/4545647/IMG_8335.jpeg https://lpix.org/4545648/IMG_8336.jpeg https://lpix.org/4545648/IMG_8336.jpeg
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago[flagged]
- charamis 2y agoLife would be meaningless if it was just black and white. Fortunately there are times that we're reminded that people do live in cities and do stuff other than just minding their own.
- z500 2y ago> Life would be meaningless if it was just black and white. Someone should probably tell that to the graffiti "artists" in my town
- rangestransform 2y agoI really wish people minded their own more, then my ears wouldn’t be assaulted by boomboxes on the subway and I wouldn’t be accosted at an atm vestibule
- 72deluxe 2y agoWhat a strange argument that seems to romanticise this "border" called "the law". It is black and white: someone is defacing something that doesn't belong to them. You can call the result whatever you want ("art","expression" etc) but the fundamental issue doesn't change. Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you see this as an "improvement" too?
- nicolas_t 2y agoI think I’d be relatively happy if I woke up one day and saw a banksy or an invader mosaic on my wall. I’ve seen graffiti art that definitely improved grey ugly walls and barriers. I’ve also seen ugly tags that are nothing more than letters. It’s relative
- LoganDark 2y agoHonestly, I would too. Illegal or not, whether it's "defacing" is definitely subjective.
- highcountess 2y agoIs not relative at all to rational people. Let me just put it this way, do I get to just move into your home and take it over simply because I believe that I can make it a better home than you can? Do I get to steal your car/property because I believe I can make better use of it? Stop rationalizing narcissistic behavior and people trying to impose themselves on others. It’s not relative at all. You or the narcissistic graffiti vandals have no right to impose themselves on others.
- nicolas_t 2y agoThe nice thing is that in democracies you can influence what is done against graffitis. Don't like graffitis? try to push your local representatives etc to be stricter on them or move to a country that has no graffiti like Singapore. One of the most sterile, boring city in the world. For whatever reasons, Germany is rather lenient towards graffiti artists which, in my eyes, makes Berlin more enjoyable than it would be otherwise. I've lived in a lot of places and I've learned that I hate grey boring walls a lot, I much prefer it when they're covered by colorful graffitis. It seems I'm not the only one so some localities tend to be rather lenient towards graffiti artists and even invite them, other places are much stricter and so you can enjoy bleak concrete walls unblemished by any graffitis. As to your example about homes, well, in France and in some other European countries, in the 90s there was a bit of a left leaning political push for "right to lodgings". This movement made squatting much easier (in France, it was extremely difficult to get rid of squatters if they moved in past 48 hours). I've always personally thought those laws were stupid and they were eventually repealed and amended recently. But that's the way it is with governments, you don't get to agree with all the decisions made. If it's a democracy you have some measures of influence.
- wiseowise 2y agoMost of the time this is a black and white matter.
- highcountess 2y ago[flagged]
- latentcall 2y agoYour reply is way out of whack compared to that persons comment. You seem to have taken it quite personally which I find strange but interesting. Also please refrain from name calling, it isn’t in the spirit of this site.
- mkmk3 2y agoGood username for this kind of talk...
- agumonkey 2y agoThen let us buy them some large white boards so they can paint on it and move them somewhere else later
- p_l 2y agoSome areas had, if not fully formally, dedicated areas for graffiti. As in, "we will leave this unadorned wall, and we won't clean up the graffiti unless it's truly an eyesore, and we won't chase you for it". The wall I most recall was close to quite utilized road, so yes it was very "public facing". The end result was that it was the one place where I would see actually impressive graffiti, with competition to make better stuff, instead of random vandal tags.
- flohofwoe 2y agoBah, sorry, but most modern concrete buildings do indeed look better with graffity, no matter whether you see it as art or not. Every bit of color helps on those grey/dirty glass and concrete monstrosities. (the OPs photo is actually a perfect example of that, without graffity it would just be a depressing grey wall, I much prefer the colorful "defaced" version)
- krona 2y agoEverything has been vandalized but we shouldn't blame the vandals. [They were] built by vandals and those who added the graffiti merely finished the job. - Scruton.
- 331c8c71 2y ago[flagged]
- muditsahni 2y agoIt’s always a struggle for me to accept that many people actually like graffiti. Maybe graffiti can add flavour to a city if it’s really drab and ugly (although I’m not too sure about this), but it only defiles cities which are aesthetically pleasing and beautiful. The technicality of graffiti has little to do with its appeal or it’s appropriateness. Something can be hard to make but still be garbage and/or misplaced w.r.t it’s surroundings.
- microtonal 2y agoMost so-called ‘pleasing’ cities are full of advertisement pollution. If I have to choose one of them, I’d choose art over advertising. I wish people would be as much against advertising as they are against graffiti.
- helboi4 2y agoFr. Its so wierd for me when people get super mad about graffiti like they own any of these walls and could choose what was on them. If the graffiti wasn't there it would just be an ad, but I guess we're okay with that because consumerism is good because the our overlords tell us to like it.
- kalaksi 2y agoMost graffitis I've seen are on empty walls or buildings with no ads. Brick wall looks way better without them. And to me it looks more like it's the graffiti maker that thinks that they own the wall and can choose what should be on it.
- helboi4 2y agoProperty that is used by the public should be owned by the public. By that logic, graffiti artists as regular people who use public infrastructure in the area should as much right to paint on the wall as you do to paint the wall in your house. And you can paint over it if you hate it so much. But its all down to the community. It should not be a crime enforced by a ruling class who nominally owns the wall but doesn't use it, so is totally not actually inconvenienced by it being painted. You are part of the community. So is the artist. The person who owns the wall is mostly likely not. Stop pretending you're on the same side because you think you may also become a millionare by osmosis.
- atoav 2y agoAs someone with an art degree (with no great admiration for street art per sé) I have to ask one question: Could you imagine that one person's "defaced" is another person's "finally some colors"? The destruction of property, trespassing etc. is obviously on the wrong side of the law, but on purely aesthetical terms this could be argued either way making it for that narrow category a subjective thing. Proponents of graffiti could argue you cannot deface a faceless thing, opponents would argue they like their lawn short, their fence white, the sky blue. One persons order is another persons prison. Note that I tried to look at the aesthetic question while ignoring the legal question — mainly because you made an aesthetic argument. For many people the two would be entangled however: Something being illegal makes them look at the result unfavourable, even if a similar legal wall mural would strike them as aesthetically superior to the 10 years weathered white wall that it was before. As an art person I really see truly good graffiti, yet I have to notice that heavily graffitied parts of my city are tourist magnets — so many people tend to like those "defaced" walls.
- soco 2y agoLet's be honest, 99.999% of graffiti is smeared black lines barely recognizable as tags, over more smeared tags and curse words and just dirt. If that is aesthetic, we might have a very different definition of aesthetic than the art schools you mention. Do I see sometimes street art? Yes, but almost never on such places - the real street art is one done on commission (I assume) on some private house walls, while the rest is at best ignored. There's a reason you never see trains stations on Instagram.
- carlosjobim 2y agoThere is a word missing in the English language that confuses this discussion. Graffiti has come to mean air brush, whether it's art or vandalism. Other languages have separate words for these things.
- atoav 2y agoI am not sure what you think the word aesthetic means. Aesthetic as a concept is about the style and the visual makeup of a thing — this means the aesthetic of a thing can also be ugly, dirty, distorted, weird, childish, funny, fucked up, silly, as many things in the canon of art history have been. Aesthetic as an adjective as it is used in daily life is somewhat linked to the idea of beauty, but the ideas of what is beautiful vary wildy not only throughout history, but between individuals as well. But I did not use the latter. Everything has an aesthetic. Yeah even cheap, consumerist, trash nobody seems to like. I am not arguing I personally think tag smeared walls are aesthetical, but I argue that there are people who do indeed do. But most noise-protection-wall-graffiti where I live isn't tagged smearing. If we go by area easily 80% are big colorful motives. Having known people who do these things I also know that for them the "where" is sometimes more important than the precise what and while the aesthetics won't convince me personally I can't say that I never asked myself the question: "How the hell did they manage to paint this thing in that location?" And I don't see train stations on instagram, because I don't follow people who post them. But I also don't see couples posting their vacation photos or influencers selfies for the same reason. If I did follow them I would see them.
- flakyfilibuster 2y agocall it whataboutism (not directed towards your comment, but related): every time i'm in a discussion involving graffiti and people complain about it i ask about advertisements plastered though the city - people just shrug
- JW_00000 2y agoThis is pretty ironic to read on a forum called "Hacker" News, which also originated as a counter-culture that considered itself creative but was regarded as criminal by the general public.
- waihtis 2y agolol, the hacker in hacker news is not in reference to the blackhat, but a tinkerer
- helboi4 2y agoFr. God you have to be so boring and pro-authoritarian to really be offended by buildings you don't own and will never have the power to own, being drawn on by the public. Sometimes I think graffiti is nice looking. Sometimes I think its ugly as shit. I would never begrudge someone doing it though, since I appreciate the spirit of reclaiming public spaces by the people who actually live there, who will often never be able to own spaces of their own. I am not offended for the ruling classes when their property, that they do not use, gets some paint on it. That's some crazy bootlicking behaviour.
- constantcrying 2y agoThis website is literally run by a venture capital corporation. "Hacker" can have different meanings, but certainly in this case it isn't meant to reference the tech enthusuast anarcho communist subculture.
- mejutoco 2y agoI found an example of graffiti that both sides of this conversation can agree on. As always, reality has some nuance, and we need to be careful about assumptions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_graffiti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_graffiti
- bondarchuk 2y agoMeanwhile in non-defaced public property: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/1_times_square_night_2013.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/1_times_... The thing about a big city is it's not just about the people who own the stuff you look at, it's about all the other people who have to look at it. I'll take graffiti over advertising any day. At least graffiti isn't trying to sell me anything or make me depressed or addicted or whatever.
- d0gsg0w00f 2y agoEverybody is selling something, especially graffiti artists. You just aren't the target demographic.
- Loughla 2y agoWhat are they selling
- d0gsg0w00f 2y agoUsually their personal brand or gang affiliation.
- sureIy 2y agoApples to oranges. The issue with graffiti is not that there are too many, it’s that they’re illegal. I doubt you’d admire an unrequested graffiti war over every wall and window of your house.
- wolverine876 2y agoPeople do lots of illegal things. When some tech titan does it, many on HN decry the laws, the government, etc. Painting graffiti is relatively, completely, harmless.
- close04 2y agoMaybe it just boils down to the right to property and having your own stuff just the (legal) way you want it. It's all great until your stuff gets destroyed because someone thinks it's better a different way. And when the graffiti is truly spectacular you can find some consolation in the result, maybe truly appreciate it. But that's not the case 99.99% of the time. Most graffiti is just trash, some rando spraying their name somewhere. Takes 10 seconds and 0 talent. It causes extra expense for people or the city to clean up, or it stays there as an eye sore for everyone.
- stuffinmyhand 2y agoBerlin is colorful, live with it. If you place a gray wall somewhere, it will first be sprayed by some noobie. Then later by a better artist and a few years later, no one even dares to cross it because someone put a beautiful piece there. Every shitty graffiti is about to be replaced by a better one!
- tichiian 2y agoBerlin is also trying to improve it's standard of living, social structure, economic outlook and overall cleanliness. Graffiti vandalism will have less and less of a place there, and have a lessening acceptance.
- wolverine876 2y ago> exactly nothing ... tiniest ... I know it's commonplace, but let's consider whether extreme expression has any rational substance to it, whether it's somehow more meaningful than an argument with actual reasons. Outrage is a weapon. Do we want it to be? I think (apologies to the parent comment) it should be disqualifying, shunned, excluded. It's a demonstration that they have no reasoned basis and will not contribute.