On Street Graffiti Prints on Canvas

The public has had a love/hate relationship with graffiti. On the one hand, talented artists such as Banksy have made walls a place to put a political point across, employing stencils to produce challenging artworks with political messages attached. This type of graffiti was bound to get trendy with the masses and the art critics : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This kind of graffiti is even bought as graffiti prints, and hung on the walls of middleclass homes and office reception areas.

All the same, when it comes to your down and dirty graffiti - the gangbanger, the tagger, the street urchin - this is just seen as vandalism, an offence perpetrated by the untalented. But is graffiti merely art? To lots of individuals, it’s not just art, but a means to put your stamp on territory, or perhaps a two finger salute : anti-social, anti-art, anti-establishment.

Spraying has always been an undercover activity, although the results are very much public facing. The targeted audience is frequently unknown. Is it for a competing crew? A message to an individual? To the public at large? Or….perhaps it’s merely uncalled-for and out of nothing else to do.

Whatever the causes, there seems to be some kind of enduring need to spray graffiti on walls. Some cities have conceded that graffiti isn’t a short-term craze, so they’ve marked off areas where graffiti is permitted - usually unoccupied areas, but now and again more civic zones like boarding around inner city construction sites.