Graffiti: Art or Just Vandalism?

Graffiti seems to be a common appearance in Ireland, be it the writing of random words and phrases on the back of toilet doors, or elaborate artistic features on the sides of buildings, it’s everywhere we go. Of course, some graffiti ‘artists’ are better than others. Some aren’t even artists at all, merely teenagers with a permanent marker in their pocket with some sort of sentence bouncing around in their head, yearning to be written on the back of a door or on a school desk.

However, whether or not it can be considered art is a different story. These scribbles and doodles that are found in schools and public buildings probably wouldn’t do an artist’s portfolio much good, especially with how terrible the grammar tends to be. If you ask me this kind of ‘graffiti’, so to speak, done with markers, pens and other objects from a student’s pencil case, is more often than not the subject or boredom in class, or a teenager feeling rebellious. Usually, they’re nothing more than mere doodles.

However, some graffiti, in my opinion, shouldn’t even be considered as graffiti. It should just be considered as art. Take some of Banksy’s work, for example. If you’re not familiar with Banksy, he’s a British street artist whose identity is yet to be uncovered. That kind of art couldn’t possibly be considered vandalism, at least, not in my eyes. He tries to send out messages through his work- messages I think we all need to see every now and again. In other circumstances, graffiti can be used to broadcast positive messages. Be it to express yourself, to spread hope, to make people smile, or maybe even just to promote the idea of something the artist is passionate about.

Some of this art is more elaborate than others, and some is quite simple. Some has very little colour if any at all, and others may look like a rainbow exploding. Some may be easy to read and to understand, other images of graffiti may leave you baffled, wondering what was going through the person’s mind when they created it.
Either way, I find it incredibly hard to label something as beautiful as self-expression, as vandalism. That word seems much too harsh for something so positive. If you ask me; the better suited term for these images would be art.