Bombing

June 26, 2018 7:19 AM

After three are killed by a train in London, graffiti artists on why they risk their lives. Also Vandalism or art?
posted by fearfulsymmetry (12 comments total)

Eh. Frankly, there are a lot of places that are improved by high quality graffiti. When I used to commute up to SF on Caltrain, there was a bunch of old plywood fencing running along the tracks that had been covered with graffiti, and it was certainly more attractive than rotting plywood. And I've seen some quite clever or cute graphic tags on highway abutments.

However, my limited sympathy for graffiti artists has been more or less exhausted by the ones around here that have decide to take up painting over highway signs. I have to admit to at least a temporary savage desire that those guys fall into traffic upon seeing yet another exit list made unreadable.
posted by tavella at 8:01 AM on June 26, 2018

"Mr Cooke, a former Transport for London board member and mayor of Bromley, tweeted: “They are no such thing they are common scum and criminals who cost the railway millions and keep fares high.”"

Wow, a very deep "fuck you" from the bottom of my heart. The animosity people have towards graffiti is baffling. What frustrates me though is when those same folks who will rail against graffiti will venerate some cave paintings or whatever other ancient graffiti done somewhere. If those folks had been around back then, they'd be fussing over some early human smearing pigment on rocks like they were going to ruin the planet by coloring it. There are obviously some places where art can be obstructive or dangerous, it isn't good to paint on someone's window or something important, but the vast majority of graffiti is done on spaces where even the worst, laziest, artless gang tag is still an improvement.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:33 AM on June 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

I feel like the last question is a stupid one. It is both vandalism and art.

Now, it's a reasonable question 'does this vandalism improve the thing', and your opinion may differ on that. It's also reasonable to question if it's good art or not, and reasonable people may differ on that (obviously it depends on the graffiti).

Also, 'is tagging' art? Probably not, but graffiti artists don't label it graffiti, they label it a tag, so even they don't think so.

I agree, Mr Cooke can fuck off... But if graffiti is appreciated and approved by The Man, where's the fun in that? That sounds like parental approved Rock and Roll (I'm side-eyeing you, PMRC).
posted by el io at 10:14 AM on June 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

To me the biggest argument against graffiti is the current state of NYC subways. Every image I see of those covered in graffiti from the past is absolutely hideous.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:38 AM on June 26, 2018

UK public transport has a fairly low tolerance of graffiti. I think trains that are tagged are taken out of service until cleaned. Similarly, most buildings are too. Some places have designated walls and tunnels for graffiti - there's a cool one near London Waterloo. The theory is I think that leaving it up encourages more. Seems to work anyway, and far better than most major European cities (especially Berlin) which are covered in the most basic and unimaginative scrawls. Street art is great, but with emphasis on the art!
posted by JonB at 10:42 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

kalessin: "On art and death: Artists have always paid for art with their lives. How are trains different? Are they more modern?"

Hitting even artists tends to traumatize rail workers.
posted by Mitheral at 11:43 AM on June 26, 2018 [8 favorites]

Everything around me gets tagged by wannabe Banksys, to the extent of being a problem, and a kid was killed by a train a couple of years ago as well. It has been interesting to watch a couple of them improve dramatically over the last couple of years. This leads to the thought that with most artists we never see their scratch pads and failed attempts, but with graffiti we see all the first takes and juvenile doodles.
posted by sfred at 11:48 AM on June 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Love decent graffiti - big pieces and good street art. But there's a bridge a train I occasionally catch goes under that's got the worse black only scrawl imaginable including a massive cock and balls (that's not even drawn that well). Much rather have plain concrete than that.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:06 PM on June 26, 2018

Poor guys. It would be an awful way to die. I knew a guy a long time ago who died on tracks doing a silly stunt (attempting a backflip at a Queens subway station, said the paper) and it's terrible to think about how his stupid, happy night must have turned in a second. (Awful for the driver, too, to have poor, harmless Gordie mangled beneath his wheels.)

Each instance of paint on a wall obviously has to be judged on its merits: some are good art, some are bad art, and most are just someone signing a wall and aren't intended to be art at all. They're saying some combination of I existed, I exist, I will exist, I was here, I belong here, I'll be back, you can't stop me, this is my territory at least as much as it is yours, hello to my fellow initialers, we exist, and fuck you to the corporations and governments who own these walls and wish us all gone. I can get behind some of that, depending on who it is and how they live.

When some random dick initials my front door on the way home from a night out, however, I scrub it off, because I live here, I exist, and fuck you to any asshole who scribbles on my tenement. Go mark your own front door. But I don't wish them death.
posted by pracowity at 12:16 PM on June 26, 2018 [5 favorites]

Mostly vandalism. Fuck off and scribble on your own property.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:15 PM on June 26, 2018

Mod note: A couple deleted. Let's steer away from making this "If you, other commenter, do/don't feel X, then you're a bad person." Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:18 AM on June 27, 2018

The theory is I think that leaving it up encourages more.

Yeah, this is the case.
Apparently when graffiti was really big, in the 80's New York and London took two diverging approaches.
New York went cheap, hard plastic. Make stuff hard to damage and utilitarian.

London decided to make their trains as nice as they could, with upholstered seating and regular aggressive cleaning with the theory that if something is already a bit banged up you're less reticent to mess with it yourself, but if a place is quite nice it feels more transgressive to be the person who damages it.

I don't know if that held up, but certainly, the New York Subway in the 80s and 90s was a lot less appealing than the London Underground in the same period.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:51 AM on June 27, 2018 [1 favorite]