Personal Comment: Graffiti- Art or
vandalism?
You go through the streets. Then you come to a house, which
was rebuilt two weeks ago. And then you see spells like 'Kurze Lederhosen
sind geil' in contrast to the white walls of the house. You go on and you
see a wonderful graffiti on an old wall. You ask yourself now: Is graffiti art
or vandalism?
In my opinion graffiti is art and vandalism. On the one
hand some graffitis are looking very good, and graffers are really talented, on
the other hand those people damage private or public property. Especially those
graffers, if you can say graffers to them, who only spray their name or a silly
spell on a wall, are vandalists. Real graffiti, like a nice picture is art and
it embellishes the town if you don't find it on the walls of 'Specks
Hof' or 'Grönländer'. If somebody sprayed something at one of
these buildings he wouldn' t embellish the face of the town, he would destroy
this look. But the bigger problems are guys, who only spray little, silly
things on walls and new houses. Those people harm the reputation of the
graffiti scene and give a negative touch to it.
The real graffers can't identify with them, because that
silly fools spray everywhere, and have no respect for their works. Vandalists
think they are cool when spraying 'Vfb- Hools' or the name of a group
on a wall. That form of graffiti is not art- it's vandalism. But on the other
hand those sprayers, whose pictures are art, spray at night, because they know,
that it is illegal. These guys mostly spray on old walls and not on new houses
and there is the different to the other groups of sprayers. They plan the
pictures and make sketches like an artist.
Concluding you can say that the town must provide places
where the artists are allowed to spray, so that they can show what is possible
to do with talent. One of thoses places you can find at the main station, but
this is not enough. The vandalists must be forced to clean all the ugly
graffitis.
