Graff Report

“Are we vandals or smarter than you’d ever hope to be?”

Banksy in Israel has got a whole lot of publicity, but not everybody likes the idea of a celebrity graffiti artist…

Old Man (to Banksy): You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.

Bansky: Thanks

Old Man: We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.

see Banksy’s holiday snaps here.

As Stephen Paynter writes: “Derived from the Italian sgraffio, meaning to scratch, graffiti has been around since the beginnings of mankind. Paintings such as those found at the Lascaux caves in France were normally made by scratching the cave wall with flint or pieces of bone, however prehistoric man also used a form of spray paint created by blowing coloured powder through a hollow bone; this method was used to create silhouettes of hands and other objects.”

Yeah well absolutely.

It's a shame to have one guy as the media focus and there's a lot more than Bansky going on. There’s the growing problem of people pretending to be graffiti artists when they are actually companies flogging you stuff (see pictured passed this morning) and this American guy seems to be encouraging a lot of it here too.

Also see Latrinalia here, and closer to home our own Duncan Cumming is very good here.