The double illegality of graffiti

August, 17; 2024. By Arscodex

Grafitti with a modified silhouette of Mickey Mouse on the outskirts of Madrid

In this space today we come to emphasize the fact that graffiti is currently doubly illegal as we will see and is a symbol of decadence as we will also see. In essence all this comes from the establishment of "everything is valid" in art by Picasso, taken in this case to the extreme, as if the colors of an oil painting, from mixing so much, melted into gray.

First of all, let's go back to what we have already discussed. Graffiti is doubly illegal for these two reasons: the first is that it is painted on unauthorized walls (or other things); that is, the graffiti artist does not have permission to paint on said wall normally. Therefore we are already dealing with something illegal. The second reason is that the graffiti artist sometimes paints motifs that contain trademarks or copyrighted drawings as can be seen in the graffiti in the photograph accompanying this text (a kind of evil Mickey Mouse, an unauthorized modification of Walt Disney's creation). This is a symptom of decadence, as it conveys a very marked aura of neglect in every sense. We can also imagine what it would mean if some monuments were "defaced" in this way; to give an extreme example, let's imagine that someone decides to do graffiti on one of the palaces of the Alhambra...

Given this, the only two options we can suggest to redirect this naturally illicit art are either to use what is suggested in Portugal: that the graffiti be done on the graffiti artist's property (or that of his parents), if he has one; or to convert this art to mural or trompe l'oeil art in which the work is authorized in the two senses indicated above (on a permitted surface and with a permitted drawing), as is already being done in some towns around Spain.

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