Just as I've seen a lot of it here, I saw a lot of graffiti in Europe. Some of it is ugly, and some of it is beautiful. While I've touched on this before, naturally, this subject always makes me wonder about the definition of art.

According to this expert, it comes down to consent:

The legal distinction between graffiti and art is permission. With permission, it’s considered art on a legal wall. Those who paint without permission commit vandalism, she said, whether it’s public or private property.

Permitted or not, the argument is often made that grafitti is art.

And what about grafitti on murals?

Or murals and signs as commercial speech? Murals are protected by federal legislation restricting the rights of the property owner to remove them, while commercial art is considered undeserving of protection. Owners who deface or remove murals on their own buildings have repeatedly been held liable.

Sheesh!

Suppose I own a building, and someone paints on it. Some painting that we would call "grafitti" is attractive. Some is not.

Some might be considered art:

Other forms of painting, which many people would consider art, might be considered to be something else by others who disliked the message.

Example:

A good case could be made that the above (featuring Che Guevara, Rachel Corrie, and Mumia abu Jamal) could be found offensive. I'd find it offensive if I owned a building and someone painted it there.

But would that give me the right to paint over it? According to Indymedia, vandalizing a mural of Rachel Corrie is a hate crime. But what's hate? If Che, Rachel and Mumia are hateful people in the first place, that might make the mural just as much of a "hate crime" as its deliberate defacement.

How is anyone supposed to judge art? If pictures of communist heroes are art, then why not pictures of Hitler? Is the swastika hateful, but not the hammer and sickle? Are esthetic considerations to be dictated by the morality of politics, and if so, whose?

I hate it when nothing is clear.

(Must be the jet lag.)