Tag Archives: Alternate Culture

To know why graffiti is so vilified by the powers that as mere “vandalism” one must know what vandalism really is. Painter Gustave Courbet (a well-known vandal himself,) considered it to be the “destruction of monuments symbolizing war and conquest,” a perhaps romanticised view I find hard to agree with; since when did a bunch of chavs ever justify overtly the arson, for example of a bus shelter in terms of the shelter’s socio-economic significance? I’ve yet to hear one. A more apt descriptor is that of vandalism being the expression of an alternate culture, in this case the “criminal” one.

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