Graffiti and the Difference Between Street Art and Vandalism

Graffiti is a term with many associations, some of which lean toward the world of legitimate art and some toward ideas of obnoxious, unimaginative crime, i.e., vandalism.

My own views of spray-painted expression have changed over the years. I have met graffiti artists making street art with great skill and with the approach to the craft legitimate artists bring. I don't see all graffiti as vandalism or mere pithy rebellion, but I do still see quite a bit of the unimaginative graffiti that falls under vandalism.

When I saw a nicely painted phrase a few days ago, I began to wonder where the line is between street art and vandalism..

What makes street art an art?

Street art has not always been considered art by many and has instead been considered vandalism and property defacement. "Street art" has developed into a legitimized (or nearly legitimized) form of expression in our world today to the point where it is exhibited in museums and has celebrities who transcend the genre.

This trend toward legitimacy for street art doesn't mean that all carriers of spray paint are artists, but there are significant indications of a growing acceptance of spray paint on cement as an accepted artistic medium.

The film Exit through the Gift Shop was an independent film sensation in 2009 making one street-art extraordinaire, Bansky, a household name in some circles.

Following the success of Exit through the Gift Shop, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (the MOCA) in Los Angeles held a well-publicized multi-month exhibit featuring the work of dozens of street artists.

The graffiti featured both in this film and at the MOCA is a far cry from the scraggly "tags" of juvenile rebels. I can't show you in this medium what the art looks like, but actual street art and mere vandalism compare like foie gras and hot dogs.

Both of the examples here of the mainstreaming of street art provide perhaps the clearest indication of legitimacy that can be given to anything in America: people are spending money on street art.

This alone may be enough to define street art as an art. But it is the pictorial nature of street art, for me, that sets it apart from vandalism, even if both are ultimately graffiti.

What makes vandalism an ugly crime and not art?

Vandalism is defined as a destructive act in the dictionary but for the purposes of distinguishing vandalism from street art, we should go a little further and also say that graffiti vandalism almost always consists of lettering made with spray paint, made with a single color.

Street art often features images, shapes, and a creative use of color. Vandalism has no features, per se. Vandalism is just letters that are hard to read which are supposed to spell out someone's name or moniker. With vandalism there is no attempt at expression and there is very little, if any, sense of craft. Street art does depict letters too, but in that case you will find shape, color and craft that goes well beyond writing. When simple writing is present in street art, it accompanies an image.

When traveling through Los Angeles, I have very little trouble deciding if something is street art or vandalism. This is especially true of good street art because it bears no resemblance to the scrawled lettering of vandalism.

Yet there is a murky middle ground. There are graffiti artists who are either not very talented or not very experienced who produce work with an artistic intention, but no artistic value. They make bad art, in other words, but it's art none-the-less.

For my definition, I will allow for poor execution of artistic ideas, but without an intention to stand as meaningful expression, it's not street art. It's just vandalism.