At 04:21 PM 12/7/96 -0500, you wrote:
> >>In my opinion, individuals who react negatively to graffiti (as well as
>art that they call "bad") either do not understand it, or are afraid of its
>implications. Just my opinion.
>
>I am stunned, and horrified, and appalled. The intent is kind, and the writer
>clearly doesn't want to be judgmental. But graffiti is not "art," not even
>Basquiet's graffiti, and to even consider it in the same category as the work
>of the Old Masters and the Impressionists and, yes, even the Abstract
>Expressionists -- pace, Jackson Pollock -- shows a serious and dangerous
>lapse. Not everything done by the hand of man (or boy!!) is "Art" -- not even
>Low Art. This post lends credence to "the dumbing of America."
>
>Well, If I can put in my two hap'orth from this side of the pond, it seems
that there is a middle course between the two points expressed here. The
majority of graffiti has no artistic merit and is a form of environmental
pollution which also signifies the thin end of the loss of control wedge,
which is why the Zero Tolerance advocates go for graffiti first - it signals
that a degree of lawbreaking is acceptable and encourages escalation. But it
is not as simple as that, in contemporary society, people of real artistic
talent will indulge in graffiti as a creative outlet, especially if they
come from a background with little access to formal artistic outlets, ie
there is a minority of graffiti producers out there who might be viewed as
artists in another context. Dismissing this particular strand of artistic
expression entirely is not good, after all, the Impressionists were
initially reviled as bestial polluters of the artistic purity embodied by
the old masters. I am not sure the idea of "dangerous lapses" is a useful
one in this argument, dangerous to what in what context ?
IAN SIMMONS

- A mind stretched by new ideas never returns to the same shape

                                        - RALPH WALDO EMERSON