Taggers protest the commercialization of street art

In my opinion tagging is not art.... the destruction of other people's property is not being creative...it is not art and is disrespectful. I am all for rebellion and change,but in a positive and creative manner.
TAGGERS ARE NOT REAL ARTISTS

freedom of expression! more power to 'em!

In the city that I'm from Los Angeles, CA. Street art is considered a felony, and kids get up to 5 years for graffiti. Yet gallery's sales graffiti inspired paintings for thousands of dollars. Everyone needs a hustle. But until kids are not criminalized for natural self expression. Things like this must happen. Hip Hop culture is frowned upon, until some cultural vultures finds a way to make money off of it. Capitalism, and greed are pretty gross so good job Sao Paulo. If yuppies want to see art they can just go to the ghetto and not only see it, but see what inspires it. And Free SIGHT. Doing 8 years for graffiti in L.A. God bless the rebellious. Until kids stop going to prison for painting. Protest like this should happen. Oh, and one more thing there are tones of talented graffiti artist. But graff is not all about talent, that's elitist bullsh*t. It's about self expression.

I've been to the gallery & met one of the owners, he's a really cool & positive bloke, supporting young artists & creating opportunities for them. I agree with Valentin0o, they should target the corporations that are really exploiting street art.

More power to em'

TALK ABOUT GETTING UP.

hahahah.

It's time to take art back from corporations and high priced "legitimate" galleries. Think about David Wojnarowitz's first works in abandoned houses, the real art is fresh and raw, not a grasp for the big cash. Fuck the money, give me community, ideas, I'm thinking about going back to really low tech art myself.
Take it away from the goddamn greedy bastards who only see it as a way to get rich.
Fuck Jeff Koons may he rot in hell.

I have a hard time thinking of the destruction of other people's property as art. Creative vandalism is still vandalism. Creative destruction is still destruction. Creative disrespect is still disrespect.

Sorry but this is some fucked up shit here!

I'm reading all these responses and seeing how so many people are so willing to jump on the fucking bandwagon, in this case it's the so called 'street artists' you're clamoring to, when most of you were not even around to fully understand the history and progression of 'street art' or the art you are now advocating the destruction of in the name of 'street art'.

Last I checked, there weren't that many visual artists riding the fast track to fame and fortune, thus the term 'starving artist'. Art supplies aren't cheap. These folks not only made the effort and incurred the expense of going out and purchasing supplies, but then invested their time and energy to portray whatever manifestation of their artistic minds eye and then chose to present it to the universe by way of this particular venue where it will likely only be viewed and not purchased, only to have it defaced by a bunch of self entitled little haters.

Fuck that.

This is some ole bullshit.

While I understand that street artists might feel threatened or jealous that other artists are making a profit on a form of expression that some argue belongs outside of the commodity market, I don't support their going in to a place of business and vandalizing these pieces. Protest isn't effective if it's destructive to other people's property. It just makes you look like an ass.

This was nice decades ago when everything was Grey and ugly. Things are in most of places, no longer that way. I don't see why these fuckers should keep messing things up.

that's bull shit man. These kids arent doing anything productive for Graff. Tagging is NOT art. It's primarily used by gangs to mark territory, or unskilled kids trying to get there name up anywhere they can. These cat's are toys. I'd be pissed if that was my art. If you wanna make a statement, do it somewhere else, like maybe on the actual streets. NOT on other artists works. They give graff a bad name.

I like that they can make non-violent protest an art form, and they really only hurt the frames and walls of the studio. If it were my art studio I would let them do live painting shows.

do any of the taggers have murals or even blow ups to let people see their art

when i think back to tagging
you did it it to let people know you were there...
if you tagged (or spit) on someone else' piece you were looking for a fight...

kickass.
and bansky doesn't have shit to do with it.

i dont see the big deal...they tagged a graffiti gallery it makes it more real i think.

yes . hell yes .

I think it looks cool too, fuck commercialism. However, we should respect one anothers art.

okay to anyone whose talking down on the grafitti movement, youre either being totally naive or just plain ignorant. yes, i have to say what these people did was wrong and you should never vandalize someones store that ppl have worked hard for, but to say that "street art" is bad or commercialized is hella dumb. every kind of art is gonna have sell outs and grafitti art is no exception. there are always gonnabe vandals and poseurs in any kind of art , there are plenty in music that gets blasted on the radio everyday, but sadly theres no rebellion on that. all im trying to get at is that all you ppl talking bad on certain "artists" or whatever better open your eyes up because there are sell outs and fakes in all kinds of art. and if you havnt been around the grafitti scene for yourself you probably have no idea whats its all about. commericialization is gonna happen to everything creative and new and genuine. just look what happened to the punk scene in britain and whatnot. whatever sorry to all you guys who arnt knocking the grafitti scene, but to all others i just had to rant.

I can understand where the street artist is coming from. If you are risking life and limb to get your styles and scripts exposed from the moment you steal the paints to jumping in a train yard or roof, it shows one's passion and commitment. Naturally, if some art school hipster who steals the medium with no knowledge of the culture it came from or what it stands for then puts it in a gallery to make a bunch of money, there's resentment.

What's worse is some of these same gallery artists making all the money from graffiti, have probably voted for more strict vandal laws. Graffiti is one of the last pure elements of hip hop...no one wants to see it go to the corporate boardroom, but I fear it may be too late.

To be quite honest, I think there are far too few good artists in the street nowadays to give the galleries a run for their money. The crackdowns in cities to paint over even good stuff and the lack of public walls make the outlet all but disappear. Eventually, the graff kids will have to adopt an "If you can't beat em, join em" attitude.

does vandalizing vandalism tickle anyone else?

Idiots. Period.

so, unfortunately most "taggers" are those who really have no talent and are not the ones who are producing the beautiful works you see on a day to day basis. What happened to the day when you would see a tag and it would make you think of that dope piece you saw across town! These Days a tag is just that, a tag. Most of those tags were not even artistic.

Not all the paintings were framed, and the Choque gallery is a legitimate gallery, born of the culture. Pixacao is a specifically Brazilian form of tagging, and is a culture with it's own set of rules. For people to generalize about 'taggers' and 'graffiti artists' here is naive and unfair.
I think defacing someone else's art, especially artists like Titi Freak who devote their lives to their work, is disgusting. It would be much more profound to challenge the artist to something in the street.
To me, this looks like a bunch of kids who decided the only way to get their own tags in the best gallery showing street art in town, was to go in and do it by force. Smell us some jealous? I think so.

I think this was a publicity stunt, like pettigrew suggests. if it wasn't, they should have done it, cause they are getting a lot of press from this...

Throw me in with the sheep and commercialize me! Pathetically, I admit I wouldn't mind taking home a defaced Speto or Titi Freak, now that anger and degraded talent invaded its space. Honestly, before this fab publicity I knew nothing of the gallery and now I want some more.

all the paintings were framed, this is just a publicity stunt

The raw emotion comes through in the act, but is what they did really graffitti art, or just tagging over pictures. I would say there is a difference, both in style and intent.

I'm a graf artist myself and while I understand their statement, I completely disagree with how they made it, and the responses left by most of the above people.

True, the roots of graf were closely tied to rebellion, but I hope everyone can begin to see that all graf artist are not the same. In fact, I would venture to say that it is one of the most diverse subcultures in the world. Not all graf artist are the same, nor do they do it for the same reasons. I know graf artists who are unemployed, and employed, poor and wealthy, no name artists, designers, activists, teachers, mechanics, doctors, hell even lawyers. Some do it just to "f**k sh*t up", while others are college grads with prestigious degrees expressing themselves in real art with no intention of being seen as a vandal. there are people who are in middle school, gangbangers, older people who've been bombing since the 70's. This is a medium of communication just like music and film. Each artist approaches it for their own reasons with their own expectations.

as for the commercialization.. if you want to see someone who has really made an impact on the whole world with graf please do yourself a favor and lookup "SABER". call it selling out if you must, but he's got pieces in some of the worlds most amazing museums. Stuff that isn't just going to be buffed away and cleaned off the streets. He's making his art in forms so that it may last. Permanent pieces, fashion, museums, digital design.. now that's really what you really have to call bombing worldwide.

Some of these street punk taggers just haven't lived long enough to realize that no matter how much they 'get up' for years on end... they're going to be soon forgotten when their tags all get buffed off the streets. When or if they ever mature and start doing pieces for galleries I can only hope there is another younger generation behind them to come and blow sh*t all over their work. What goes around comes around. It's truer in graf than anything else in the world.

peace.
MOKA ONE / ATL

Super Lame!!!

They just destroyed peoples work, that's not cool. It's not like they were big-earning artists either.

I'm not a huge fan of "street art", it tends be quite predictable, but tagging is hardly art, it's not interesting or provocative. Just a glorified scribble, repeated - boring.

Just as "low-brow art" became "pop art" or "pop surrealism" so too has "tagging" become "street art." The art world follows the underground for new trends and ideas that will "freak out the squares" and inject new life into an old world (art world that is).
I like the rebellion in this, but what about the few artists who did work hard to produce those works? I think the coverage will only further the "street art" movement and the taggers will be left behind.

Is it not commercialization that keeps a lot of art forms alive?

That's not a protest or rebellion, that's just hate.

The Pixadores should be attacking corporate advertisements if they are really interested in protesting the marketing of street art.
Instead, these guys entered private property, ruined some artists' artworks, and damaged a local business.
The so called protest was ultimately counterproductive; it's just going to be good publicity for the gallery and the artists who's works were vandalized.

Attacking individual artists who have there shit together enough to show at a gallery is just spiteful.

Unfortunately, even artists need cash!
Their just trying to make a living, I could understand the ones that sell out to big companies, but this is just lack of respect.

Sucks for all of the artists.

What happened to "imitation is the highest form of flattery"?

Not a big fan of graffiti. Not a big fan of the people who do it.
I think all of that was unnecessary, and it doesn't make me think any better of it all.

With that said... they still made one hell of a statement.

Vandals vandalize pictures of vandalism.
How post-modern.

I hope street art wont end the same fate as hiphop and rap- straying from it's original roots and marketible crap.

Absolutely no one should be reminded that violence lurks.

Haha! Fuck them fake ass artist-chic-ass wannabes.

THAT SHI? LOOKS BETER LIKE THAT,WHEN WILL THE REAL ART GET RESPECT,PEOPLE TALK ABOUT GRAFF ART BUT YET THEY TRY TO BOTLEG IT, THATS WHAT THAT STORE GETS!!!!!!!!GO TO WWW.50MMLOSANGELES.COM

The gallery looks even better now.

Pretty awesome tbh

the shit that people write illegally, and the music thats made w/o money in mind... thats the raw shit

Wow. That is impressive!