Your thoughts on Graffitti or 'Street Art'

[Tripitaka]

Just to stir the pot we are way past Post-modernism in terms of relating to the present trends in the artworld.

[BlackDragon]

True, wasnt modernism 50's? Geez i cant remeber my art history anymore..

[ergoamide]

Dam wish i found this thread sooner, well seeing as i didn't i'm goin to rant anyway.

First off i must wholy agree with andyamine and blackdragon. Graff is great. It really brightens up lots of shit that otherwise looks boring and drab. Frieghts, coalies and white tops are all especially drab looking without some graff. Like andy said there is a code of honour which most artists abide by, one of those rules is that you don't destroy private property. It's very frowned upon by other artists because it brings a bad name to the rest of us who have done nothing wrong, well not destroyed any private property anyway. Mostly tagging is done by young teens or other wannabe writers who give up eventually coz the majority of the tags they put up will get crossed out to show they ave earned only disrespect by doing what they have done.

Secondly I'm not a huge fan of stenciling and stickers. I do respect the artists, such as zodiac, whose majority of there work is that. I find stencils however lacking creativity generally. Both stickers and stencils take away one of the main points to graff, that is to get the piece up before your seen. That's the biggest challenge with graff, using stickers or stencils they can be done in seconds. Doing a full colour piece however takes an hr or more generally unless your doing a small short lay up where ya normally don't have more 10mins max to do ya panel.

Lastly the deal with tagging and why so many artists do it is to get known. Panels get cleaned very quickly and it's lucky if they even run sometimes. There's often not enough time to do a big full colour piece in a public area so tagging and throw ups are done because they still have style and are quick. Tagging is also a 'competition' in a way. To see which writer can tag the best spot in town.

That's the end of my rant, graffiti is art, some people might not like tags but i do, so long as thier in the right place.

[Kenny Blister]

Hey BD, I love a good story. Someone's gotta tell us about our foundations.

Tripi, I guess I was saying stencil art was post-modern in relation to graf and street art in general. Even then that's probably not correct, but we're getting beyond my scope now. Anyway, care to explain?

[Coschi]

Took some pictures of the local artwork on the weekend,

fitzroy and collingwood area, enjoy!

[Coschi]

[Ace]

Wow Sphinx! There are a few really cool paintings there! Love that one with the cristals and the mushroom under the tree. Lots of religious deities there - is this a trend, or is there a lot more open minded people down that way?

[Coschi]

umm open minded hippies i think