graffiti in the gallery - continued

It's Our Wall
Haaretz
By Tahel Frosh
10 March 2008
"Ame72 calls the heightened interest in recent years in this art form in Israel "the Banksy effect," in reference to the British underground artist whose works sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have purchased work by Banksy, who painted on the West Bank separation fence a few months ago."
"Dr. Yochai Rosen of the Art History department of Haifa University agrees that graffiti art is a new phenomenon in Israel and that it was imported only in recent years. He believes that "because graffiti originated in marginal groups, it is sterile and lacks content when it becomes established.""

SPOTHUNTERS @ THE NEW ART CENTER
Big RED and Shiny
by MICAH J. MALONE
March 5, 2006
"Graffiti art has been infiltrating its way into the “official” art world for more than two decades now. With artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, to name only two of the most well known, paving the way for more contemporaries like Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, the art of graffiti now seems to reside quite comfortably in the gallery world. Perhaps one of the most pressing questions about this phenomena, at least for this writer, is once graffiti leaves the street, is it really graffiti anymore?"