The world is our canvas

People say that life imitates art, and if we apply this ideal to our word in it’s entirety then land would be our country’s canvas, the buildings our paint. Our entire world is what we as a species make it to be we build mountains of towers and monuments, that just sit there. Not all buildings are used, and some are kept bland, empty and forgotten. And that’s where graffiti comes in, keeping an area active, and looking a lot more interesting. With a whole world of artists we don’t have much space to make for our canvas, and that goes for graffiti artists too. These are people who don’t have a canvas, and need to express their artwork in some way. This leads a lot of people to deface private property, which is of course a crime. An easy way to combat this is to, as Steve Dolan in “Is Graffiti Art?” said, train these artists and “Cooperate” with them, we could have them use abandoned buildings as a sort of, training grounds, a practice canvas.

Another question that is raised is whether it’s even an art form or not? Some people see merely just tags or words in a font format saying somebody’s name, or the word hope. While this is a very common form of graffiti art, it is not the only form of graffiti art. Much of the art uses the buildings dimensions or materials to it’s advantage, which is able to develop a style and change as well. In “Graffiti as art”, the author states that: “Like all other artistic forms, graffiti has experienced movements or changes in style. From the first tag scribbled on a subway train to the large, complex mural on a billboard”. Over time people have practiced their art and changed their style to make thing more complex, neater, or just interesting, offering a variety of things to see that you may not see in other forms of art. This is proof that it is an art form due to the fact that it has a moving style.

The one issue though, is quality of life. Graffiti has often been associated with “Bad neighborhoods” and can often decrease the value of property in it’s area, so how do we combat this? How do we allow these people to express themselves the only way they know how, while keeping all of it away from crime?

Simple answer: Abandoned buildings. In the many states of America there are buildings that are occupied by nobody, if either because of it being destroyed or it being out of date with state code. These are places that are a great canvas for those who do graffiti art, they are able to express what they need to and nobody is really affected. That being said I think that graffiti is considered art, the canvas should not change that. Much like how our monuments are in themselves art. Without graffiti there could go a lot unsaid and we may be lost without it.

“Graffiti Art” by Bytemarks is licensed under CC BY 2.0