Graffiti is for Daredevils

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

Graffiti is for daredevils. Stalkers at night seizing space and employing criminal means to achieve an end which is little more than the blasting of ego at the expense of property. It may be artistic in the way that you negotiate a for-profit business with the aim of liberating your preferred tools or in the way you scale a rooftop or invade a municipal yard but it is not an art because you used bumblebee yellow to outline your letters.

Graffiti as a school of humanity can be justified on many levels. It can stand independent of other schools of thought such as Art, Music and Literature, etc. Acknowledging Graffiti as sui generis, a thing unto itself, is the first step on the path toward release. It is insulting to justify the piggybacking of graffiti on other institutions and canons of thought.

There is no such thing as artistic graffiti or graffiti art. It is an oxymoron. Graffiti is the crime of freedom. It is the willful disregard for criminal codes not artistic ones. In a society filled with rules and conformity, graffiti writers are a dangerous element. Enjoy the crime of graffiti. Civilization depends on it.


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