Comments on: Graffiti Report Card, Critiquing the Taggers

By: person

person — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:10:31 +0000

judging by the comments, graffiti is way more serious than i ever imagined

By: DoNt TrIp1

DoNt TrIp1 — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:00:42 +0000

GRAFF LIVES!!!

By: ugly

ugly — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:33:38 +0000

your graffiti report card is toy

By: Christopher

Christopher — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:49:45 +0000

As a casual observer and the husband of a woman who really likes the backdrop of graffiti, I will have to chime in on the tagging thing. Three years ago I confronted some turkey in the alleyway Cedar writing his name with a black magic marker on everything and at two foot intervals. I told him that he should take the time to do sometihng creative and good to look at – not just put his name everywhere. And his tag looked like that bubbly shit I did when I was in sixth grade living in York, PA. The guy waited for me to turn around and then spray painted my back while I was on my motorcycle.

I drove up the street on Post along the sidewalk chasing him. When I caught him he swung his paint bag at me like a girl. After knocking his ass out, I was smashing his face in with his own paint cans when the cops pulled up.

Moral: You should paint some decent shit that takes a bit of planning and forethought or get the junk kicked out of you.

By: alex

alex — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:01:47 +0000

as an urban/street artist, i take offense when some pretentious wannabes that just found a sharpie tag up and down a street on every object in their path. i’m referring to the type of tagger with zero experience and has obviously not done this before. now, we have all seen it and heard someone say ‘my friend john, just started tagging and it looks like shit. he’s the ahole that tagged on that wall every 10 ft.’ i just request that they perfect their art (just like i perfect mine before i paste and try to mind other people’s work and shops/homes) at home on a board or paper before taking it to the streets. how many of you discussing the value of graffiti are actually graff writers or street artists? are u guys just bitching bc u can? bc all the best graff writers i know would be out tagging or sleeping rather than get all philosophical about what they do.

By: It gets a B+ « preserving machine

It gets a B+ « preserving machine — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:07:20 +0000

[...] It gets a B+ Well deserved. [...]

By: ceek

ceek — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:55:37 +0000

wow, talk about passive aggressive hipster bullshit. if you don’t like a particular piece of graffiti, you should just paint over it. but you know, its all rather derivative and uninspiring and should be buried in a fucking time capsule labeled 1982 because that’s the year it died.

By: hasimir44

hasimir44 — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:15:29 +0000

@ZF – you’ll just have to create report cards for the report cards.

By: J.R. Dobbs

J.R. Dobbs — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:49:17 +0000

Internet. Serious business.

By: Zonal Feathers

Zonal Feathers — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 20:00:50 +0000

Dear DW, why is it that people to talk a lot of tough talk (you, for example) often seem to issue vague threats in conjunction with rediculous suggestions? So you’re saying I’ll get an ultra-hardcore beatdown from some real muscular NYC street toughs if…IF I go to Brooklyn and try to discuss cultural theory with them? Well I’m not going to do that, so I’m safe. These kinds of exchanges seem to occur online so I suspect its rooted in a fantastic desire to defer arguments from the text of the internet to the real world where that intellectual bullshit isn’t tolerated! Say a word like ‘hypergraphic’ on my street and you get knocked the fuck out! Maybe I should get away from all this academic BS and move to Brooklyn where people communicate in gorilla sounds? ho ho!

By: Zonal Feathers

Zonal Feathers — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:27:16 +0000

To anyone who asked who I am to judge Thomas B’s idea, I think that given the context of this discussion that is a rediculous question – furthermore it suggests that unless someone is going to respond to an idea with anything but platitudes they require credentials – I’m confident that my arguments are sound and I continue to stand by them – the graffiti report card idea is dumb. For one thing I doubt that any graffiti guy would take them seriously, for another it pretends that all graffiti practitioners want is to be acknowledged as great artists – another problem is that it assumes that there is a canon of graffiti that all work should aspire to be like, and the people who know it best are who? boing boing readers?! – this project ignores how graffiti functions culturally and tries to force it into the model of high art – which is stupid and if anyone thinks that graffiti writers are going to conform to the expectations of some goofball hipsters, they’re wrong. To Fred Barks, the graffiti artist is not beyond criticism but the kind of criticism being proposed by this stupid report card idea is rooted in ignorance, and this is true regardless of whether or not Thomas himself takes graffiti seriously – this is a useless effort to make something he clearly doesn’t understand very well to conform to a personal set of standards – incidentally you’re use of the terms ‘primitive’ and ‘native’ although obviously used derisively, was actually very apt because historically ‘primitive’ art has been judged by the standards of people of more ‘civilized’ cultures, and by such standards ‘primitive’ art has been deemed inferior when it is in fact not understood. It’s also apt in another way, in the sense that many ‘primitive’ cultures do not consider their cultural objects to be art at all, which may be the case with much graffiti.

By: DW

DW — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:47:15 +0000

It should be noted that ( in New York City at least), any dumass who puts his illegible, crappy tags on top of somebody else’s piece gets a beatdown if they get caught–how’s that for a report card?

Perhaps ZF should go to Brooklyn and educate the taggers there in the error of their ways, chastising their lack of respect for the ‘overall hypergraphic system’–I ‘m sure he’d receive a proper street response to his academic b.s.

By: Eric Vigo

Eric Vigo — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 16:17:48 +0000

Jim, who the pharke are you to believe that you can bland down society with illogical and misplaced scrawlings?
Am I, along with hundreds of thousands of other non-subcultured people, supposed to be impressed or care or support your important scribblings across cities around the world?
Oooooo KZ57 hates DarioX…wow, this must be put across a train carriage.
Oh no! Mazuz has a thing for 44AAAA, wow, please no, ruin some activist graffiti or a mural, but painting it on top. Make sure that those you hate also ruin the mural.
Yeah, your cause is more important than spending that same amount of time helping end global warming.
Thanks Jim
btw this is not a judgement. Its a neutral culture jam to allow people to critique in the open, rather than their minds.
Your support for tagging is not superior than this sticker, and vice versa.

By: Fred Barnes

Fred Barnes — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:08:01 +0000

“who the fuck are you to judge”

The graffiti artist judged the surface to be ugly or at least useless…why can’t other community members have their say on what replaced it? Is the tag sacred? Why is someone with a spraycan better than the rest of us?

By: Kyle Armbruster

Kyle Armbruster — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 10:00:52 +0000

Yeah, and where I grew up, you’d get shot in the face for fucking up someone else’s wall in the first place.

I cannot believe we are supposed to react to graffiti with anything other than utter and total contempt.

By: jim

jim — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 06:32:24 +0000

who the fuck are you to judge? what a pretentious project.

By: Harley

Harley — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:12:15 +0000

I think anyone can determine if a piece of graffiti is a well done piece of art or an unstylized scrawl done by drunk teenagers (which litter my neighborhood). Something like this which can encourage those with talent and let the toys know they need to either improve or give it up is a great idea.

By: EH

EH — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:31:05 +0000

Excellent. I’ve had an idea like this for awhile now, to start tagging pieces with grades and comments like at the top of grade-school papers: “A-: Great 3D” or “D: Try sampling someone besides Vaughan Bode”

By: Fred Barnes

Fred Barnes — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:26:59 +0000

So the graffiti artist is by definition “authentic” and beyond criticism (and the less skill the better, apparently). But Thomas, who actually takes graffiti seriously, and who is himself adding to the “hypergraphic” system of the city (of which he is a part, too, you know) is somehow a “moron” for adding his own comments?

What incredibly pompous pomo jackassery.

So Zonal likes the talentless scrawl? Well, Thomas doesn’t. Who the hell is Zonal to tell him to shut up? Oh, that’s right, he’s a patronizing pseudoanthropologist trying to protect the “primitive” work of the “natives” from criticism from the class of people he doesn’t like….those who don’t draw on other peoples’ property.

I’m printing up some report cards now.

By: voiceofreason

voiceofreason — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:23:38 +0000

Where I grew up… you put one of these report cards or call someone a toy… chances are they would walk up to you and shoot you in the face.