Graffiti: Between vandalism and art

Abstract

The author raises the question of relation between graffiti making (graffitism) and vandalism. Graffiti is the expression of reaction of primarily young population to dominating social values. Graffiti is a suitable means used by certain subcultures to make public announcements and draw attention to themselves and their experience of the world, life or society. Graffiti making is the exponent or indicator of great social and cultural changes. Having vandalistic or artistic character graffiti making is often a form of visualization of social changes or reaction of subculture groups or individual wish for expressing personal and social feelings. Writing graffiti is also an indicator of democratic and pluralistic orientation of society and social presence of free-thinking aesthete, but at the same time one part of graffiti making is undoubtedly a visible form of human destructiveness and vandalism. Graffiti is a phenomenon spanning two extreme poles: vandalism and art. One part of graffiti has gained recognition as having artistic, visual and expressive value. Therefore graffiti is mentioned as "the art of spraying" and a part of avant-garde art. The other, big part of graffiti is directed to damaging material, cultural and religious values and has a clear vandalistic and destructive character. Where to classify graffiti (destruction or aesthetics) creates a problem which is derived from a more general issue of relation of freedom of expression of individuals and groups and the destruction of material values. On account for that the article analysis the concept and characteristics of vandalism. The conclusion is that it takes a number of criteria, namely motivation, type of message, place of message, language of message, symbol of message and social consequences that may be induced by certain graffiti to evaluate whether graffiti can be characterized as deviant and vandalistic.