Taggers protest the commercialization of street art

Wow. That is impressive!

Pretty awesome tbh

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

The gallery looks even better now.

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

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

Absolutely no one should be reminded that violence lurks.

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

Vandals vandalize pictures of vandalism.
How post-modern.

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.

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

Sucks for all of the artists.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

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.