Understanding Graffiti

I have a hard time looking at graffiti art and not thinking about gangs. I have spent a lot of time studying gangs/gang life in my major and have put no small amount of effort into looking at gang tags. However, once I actually started looking through Spraycan Art I was able to really differentiate between the two. When looking at gang tags it is almost always a warning about something. Whether or not it is telling someone that this is your turf or that other people aren’t wanted in the area, it is almost always something simple like a name or a symbol. Graffiti art, on the other hand, is really and truly something of beauty. I’m not entirely sure how so few people can look at some of the stuff these people do and not consider it art. I guess I just feel the same way about this as I do about hip-hop as a whole. I’ve never really understood how so few people can not see it as legitimate.
Since I love posting my favorite quote from a book or reading I will do the same this week. From Spraycan Art, “You ask someone, ‘Do you like birds singing in the morning, do you think it’s beautiful?’ and the person will most probably answer, ‘Yes.’ And then you ask the person, ‘Well, do you understand them?’ and the person will go, ‘Well, no.’ And then you say, ‘You don’t have to understand something for it to be beautiful.” I really do feel this about graffiti art, and actually art as a whole. I always have a hard time trying to figure out what an artist is ‘saying’ in one work or another, and the problem is only exacerbated in graffiti art where I sometimes cannot even make out what a work is even saying. And I mean that literally, as sometimes with all of the colors and things going on it is actually difficult to see. But just because I don’t really know what’s going on doesn’t mean that I can’t see that it is something special.