Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Unintentional Abstract Art of Graffiti Removal










I've always been fascinated by the Rothko-like blocks and shapes left behind when people try to cover up graffiti by hastily painting over it. In fact, I like it better than most graffiti.

But isn't throwing your own paint over someone else's paint on a wall just another form of graffiti? The end result of whitewashing over it is still wide-scale defacement of property via paint, so why bother? In many cases, a property owner's inept attempt at a cover-up is even more of an eyesore than the tagging they tried to obliterate. It's almost become a childish game in which the property owner knows they're making an even bigger mess of it themselves, but ruining the work of the anonymous "artist" is the only recourse they have for revenge.

The real question is, what if this had been the graffiti to start with? What if graffiti artists deliberately started painting these very same kind of blocks and shapes in the first place? Would someone come out and cover them up with an even bigger set of blocks and shapes, just for tit-for-tat's sake? Probably.

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