Week 7: Graffiti

    In this week’s reading, “Graffiti is Art” by Charles “Chaz” Bojorquez from Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthropology, tackles the concept of Graffiti as something less controversial, associated with vandalism, and regards it as an art form. I really enjoyed this piece because I grew up in a neighborhood that had different kinds of graffiti. I previously associated territorial gang tagging as graffiti, but this reading made me rethink my thinking. This is especially true when it came to the idea of identity. I previously thought that everything I saw was about territory, but in the reading, the author talks about how writing your name alone can give you this sense of immortality, and therefore you’re representing yourself as someone who has power and therefore a voice; it’s not about proving anything to anybody else, except yourself . It’s about strength and pride; nobody else needs to understand what you’re writing because you yourself know. 

    Something else that really caught my attention was the discussion about Graffiti not really seen as “art”, in fact, they go on to see that it is considered “low” art. It may not look like “fine art”, but considering the classes I’ve taken on art history, modern art isn’t the definition of fine art exactly. For example, one could consider Banksy. Their art is praised like no other (there’s very little people who don’t know who Banksy is), but in a sense, out of all art forms, it’s closest to Graffiti. It makes me question why that is praised, but Graffiti is not. It’s especially questionable considering how a lot of graffiti details and represents culturally significant aspects of a place, neighborhood, and its people. One could also consider how a group such as Asco was not taken very seriously at the beginning of their art careers either; they didn’t fit the mold.