Graffiti artist 'Revok' sentenced to 180 days in jail

Wall Street Journal cover page, May 26, 2011 Read the WSJ article here.

"You can make a case that graffiti and street art is the most influential art movement since the great innovations of the '60s," says Jeffrey Deitch, director of the L.A. museum, known as MOCA. "Before this show ('Art in the Streets'), no American museum had ever done an ambitious historical exhibition."

This WSJ commentor, Laird Wilcox, pretty much sums up my take on street art/graffiti:

Perhaps we need to look at a contrarian view of graffiti. As we can see from the comments here there's a huge disconnect between artistic free spirits and the property rights constituency. Both have good arguments that largely depend upon their own interests. Part of what hurts artists is the association of graffiti with gangs, a stereotype that they will find hard to shake. Part of what hurts the property rights people is the association with authoritarian law and order fundamentalism and they, too, will find that hard to shake. Some of the really good graffiti is far more attractive than what it is painted on. There are parts of many towns that could use some talented graffiti artists and I've often wondered why cities didn't commission some of these people to spruce things up. A lot of properties could use a good paint job anyway. The idea that all graffiti is bad is largely a social construction that could use some reworking. I recall seeing an overpass that was far more appealing as the result of skilled artists that it was as bare concrete. There will always be a tension between free-spirited artists and the agencies of the state who work on behalf of property owners. Conservatives don't like it described this way but that's exactly what it is. Police love the opportunity to crack down on the wierdo artsy-craftsy nonconformists who write on walls. These guys don't pay taxes to fund their pensions, refuse to respect the interests of those who do and have a sense of independence that otherwise interferes with the big business/big government axis. Communist governments made graffiti artists public enemies, and in North Korea getting caught can mean the rest of your life in a prison camp. Both the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Republic of Massachusetts hunt down graffiti subversives and even offer rewards for tips. The East German Stasi had a special squad that tracked them and punishments were severe. When the Soviet empire fell graffiti artists play no small part. Is there is a lesson here that conservatives are missing? What you should be worried about is governments who want to take money and property away from you and not artists who want to take advantage of unused space. What this antagonism does is prevent alliances between artists and businesses from forming -- something deeply feared by the democratic left. It’s no accident that the get tough and zero-tolerance policies that exist in most cities are championed by bureaucrats and social planners who belong to public unions. This is job security for them. It’s understood that if you don’t want somebody painting on your house they shouldn’t do it. Very little artistic graffiti is painted on homes and gang tagging – something else altogether -- means that gangs and the people who make them up are the real issue. Instead of ruthlessly prosecuting graffiti artists, why not pick good ones to do their work on your business property so that they develop a proprietary interest in their skills and get a sense of what free enterprise is about? How would you feel about this if graffiti artists were ridiculing Obama, big government and the welfare state? This might also free up a few hundred police officers and pencil pushers from desk jobs harassing artists around the country to fighting violent crime, drug smugglers, illegal aliens, terrorists and human traffickers. You need to get your priorities straight here, guys.

To me, it seems that what most people dislike graffiti and street art is the uncontrollable aspect of people doing things without any authority to watch over when they 'overstep' their boundaries... but what should be taught to these people is that graffiti and street 'artists' do have boundaries, only that their boundaries are significantly more liberal than those of the average conservative-leaning person, and is this really a bad thing? This brings to mind the Austrian dude 'Luxus', who had to go to jail for 13 months for tagging everywhere...