All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Graffiti is usually a protest - ink on walls - or has a reason for being naughty or aggressive.
Graffiti is linear, and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls.
Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that.
The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still - it's not something that a museum would really embrace.
Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off.
Many people decorate their homes with designer graffiti, even though most of them would probably have real graffiti scoured off the walls of their buildings.
For me, graffiti and the complexities with which it is either absorbed or expelled from what is going on, is a really good comparison to the way I see my work being similarly expelled or absorbed into different types of discourse.
For me, graffiti means making marks on surfaces using just about anything, be it markers, spray, paint, chalk, lipstick, varnish, ink. Or it can be the result of scratches and incisions. The aim is to maintain the energy created by disturbance or excitement in the street.
I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.