Is graffiti art?
Youth sound off on whether graffiti is art. w/ graffiti photo gallery.
"Who," 16, posed by the piece he made on the legal wall at Venice Beach. Piecing is the most elaborate and artistic graffiti, using a lot of color and planning, he said, displaying a recent pieces with red, gray and white interlacing shapes. "Everyone enjoys good piecing. Whether you’re five years old or 80 years old, it catches your eye."
"People look down upon graffiti. Socially, it’s a scapegoat. They look at it as thousands of dollars worth of damage. But every act of creation is a destruction. When I’m gone, they’ll never get the howl out of their ears," said Howl1, 19, who said he has written graffiti throughout Los Angeles.
It’s not well mannered-It shouldn’t be in certain places, like on the freeway, I don’t like that. It is art-but it needs to be well-placed," said Olga Rapoport, 18, from Maryland.
"It’s like visual poetry. It’s an expression. People have a lot of s— they gotta get out without
violence. If you wanna know about a city, just read the writing on the walls," said Torch, 19, who did a piece recently at Venice Beach.
