From the North Andover Eagle Tribune: "Mike Rich, aka Too Rich, create a graffiti-style mural just outside the school's McQuade Library. He was at the school demonstrating his art as part of a self-titled exhibit inside the library."

"'I don't do so much bombing,' said the 34-year-old Rich, referring to the practice of 'tagging' a building illegally."

-FYI, Eagle Tribune, the term bombing, according to Subway Art (by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper), the writer's bible, defines bombing as "prolific painting or marking with ink." It could be considered, on the scale of graf prolifics, in between a "throw-up" and a "burner."

I also like the quote from the Art professor, David Raymond: "The graffiti artist is a bandit, but that is not a reason to not call it art. It almost completely lacks pretense. It has a history of forbiddenness. I think that appeals to people. It's not like the art stuff they are studying in class."

"One Person’s Vandalism Is Another One’s Art"

Gotham Gazette editorial by Lenore Costello

Worth a read!

topics covered:

The Eye of the Beholder
see post's title.

The Official View
"[New York City's] City Council, though, does not share that view or distinguish much between street art and graffiti."

Into the Mainstream
"Some artists have stopped limiting themselves using the streets as a canvas and begun using actual canvases, which then sell in galleries for thousands of dollars."

Artists vs. Street Art
"As street art move more into the mainstream, some critics fear it will lose its essential edginess." - among other things...

priggishness or preserving the revolution?

A fashion blogger laments the appropriation of graffiti styles into mainstream graphic design . . .

while two art critics in Washington D.C. argue about graffiti's place in the gallery.

graffiti in the gallery - complete with Magritte reference

This is not graffiti?

Perhaps not if it's in the gallery, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. According to Pixnit, "Defining graffiti solely by its illegality cripples its artistic value."

Maybe that's what graffiti needs - more appreciation as a fine art and to be in galleries. Who knows, maybe in a decade or so, white people will start to like it.

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?"

The National Portrait Gallery has 'Recognized' graffiti

Now through October 26, 2008, hip-hop art at the National Portrait Gallery.

RECOGNIZE! Hip-hop and Contemporary Portraiture