I CAN’T stand to see graffiti. Much like littering, fly tipping, dog poo abandonment and even fly-posting, it’s one of those crimes that are often seen as small and insignificant, but they make such a dramatic difference to the places we live.
So why do they do it?! Are they making a statement, marking their territory or do they genuinely think it’s art?
This week some clever images of three spies snooping on a telephone box have been graffitied onto a wall in Cheltenham, just down the road from GCHQ.
I can see what someone was thinking, it’s a crummy looking wall, in what looks like a dodgy area, and the phone box itself leaves little to be desired. So the perpetrator has decided to make art out of it - and I say this while choking on my own words, as I don’t like to ever consider graffiti as art.
Now I’m not someone who understands art, not unless it’s a nice picture that’s been painted or drawn, or at a push a sculpture that actually looks like something, and isn’t too abstract.
I’m sure all art lovers are now spitting feathers at this awful heathen woman who is so ignorant to not get it. But I’m admitting it here and now - I’m an art simpleton.
Back to that telephone box in Cheltenham. The damn thing has made national news, with people questioning whether it was created by the ever-illusive Banksy.
As highly valued as some of his work apparently is, surely it’s just actually something that should just be on the other end of a council worker’s industrial jet washer, and erased in exactly the same way as some local hooligan’s name tag? Is there some sort of artistic review carried out before graffiti is removed?
Having worked in councils, I know there are normally strict deadlines on removing graffiti once it is reported. So why should one person’s ‘art’ be treated differently to another’s?
If this Banksy chap just started drawing on paper, I’m sure he’d make a few quid.
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