Posted on 04/21/2008 4:02:25 PM PDT by george76
Graffiti arrests and complaints are skyrocketing as so called "taggers" treat city walls as their personal canvases, new police statistics reveal.
The NYPD recorded and unprecedented 81.5 percent surge in graffiti-related complaints from 2006 to 2007.
During the same period, graffiti arrests spiked nearly 28 percent.
"We did an excellent job turning the tide against graffiti in the '90s and the beginning part of this century,"
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
....you ain't gonna make any headway against these vandals, unless you start shooting them on sight.
Putting them in jail is a badge of honor...kind of an acknowlegement of their "talent".
Use the Singapore method: caning.
Giuliani turned the corner on those kinds of crimes. Actually Bloomberg has done better than I expected. I thought NY would immediately revert to the pre-Giuliani years, but things are still better than they were under Dinkins. Give it time, I guess.
Here in Texas we made a young tagger a felon.
We put him in prison for 2 years for causing over $77,000 in damage with spray paint, markers and acid etching.
It used to be a badge of honor, he told of other busts on his mySpace account, which helped catch him and prove the damage. That and a sloppy job at a local skatepark which prompted closure of the park and thus turning in of the tagger.
He is not really wearing it as a badge of honor anymore. He is sad that 2 of the best years of his life are going to be wasted in prison. Williamson County recognizes this badge of honor doesn’t shine so bright from behind bars.
With local publicity of this case tagging is starting to grind to a halt.
An artist must come to terms with the fact that aesthetics is in the eye of society. A true artist must be willing to serve the consequences of his taste. Hence the term, the tortured artist.
Unfortunately for the “artists” here society in large recognizes tagging to art in as much as they recognize pissing on a tree to gardening. Perhaps more torture is in order.
— lates
— jrawk
I thought L.A. and Pomona were bad. Until I saw Sao Paulo.
If they really consider it ‘art’, why don’t they go find a legit mural project in their community, or work towards starting one, or something similar? I remember helping make the set for my school’s production of West Side Story, and we had volunteers who were the ‘so I know this person who knows this person’ kind of people come in to tag the set to make it look more realistic. They had artistic potential, but they usually used it in a destructive manner... I can imagine they’d be very happy if they had a chance at making a mural or something.
For graffiti.
Stop glamorizing the act and call it what it is........."Vandalism"
Bloomberg has merely been coasting on Giuliani’s successes. They’ll have to pay the piper before long.
I choose not to engage taggers or graffiti artists in the debate of whether it is art or not. I simply accept their premise that it is art prima facia, and then saddle them with the responsibility and consequences faced by true artists. Aesthetics, impact, intent, audience and environment.
For instance when Stravinsky was chased out of the Opera House in Paris and nearly jailed after his use of the “devil in music” minor third during the debut of the Rite of Spring. Had he debuted in Asia no one would have noticed, just as if a tagger paints a canvas and hangs in a gallery no one really cares. Environment matters. The audience matters.
Or how we jail sick old photographers who choose young children as their subjects. Just as if a tagger includes vanity or obsenity or uses the F-Word. Intent matters and impact matters.
If the tagger wants to say it is art, deal with the consequences, we after all torture artists. And we judge them on more than aesthetics.
If the tagger changes his mind decides it is not art, it is just vandalism in the name of vanity, even easier to deal with.
Either way, dudes going to jail. Either for his art, an honor I am willing to bestow upon him, or for his vandalism. His choice.
But before he does, as an artist I want to repeat to him that I consider his method to art and I do pissing on a tree to gardening. So why suffer in prison for such a poor execution of art?
— lates
— jrawk
btt
“Fine art” musuems are celebrating graffiti taggers and wheatpaste poster artists.
Even Obama contracted a guerilla artist (Shepherd Fairey of the Obey Giant/HOPE poster campaign) to tkae his campaign to the streets.
The culprits are KNOWN persons. They could be fined. They are a protected class.
Houston has gone nannystate and made it criminal to sell a marker to someone under 18.
The real artists are ADULTS. This only makes store clerks into procedural criminals. Goofy legislation that solves nothing.
And the city didn’t take down the Obama posters off traffic light boxes or Give Up’s suicidal poster campaign. This is on city property. As is stands, the city will fine you for not cleaning up such things on private party. Follow the money, the city lets SOME of it stand. That which THEY’D have to pay to clean.
The courts have already upheld that it is FREE SPEECH to burn someone ELSE’S US flag. To the Left, ALL property is theft.
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