“Graffiti is not art…

Graffiti is not just an isolated nuisance but linked to other forms of enviro-crime that demean and spoil our streets, town centres and open spaces. Graffiti is a costly and annoying expression of anti-social behavior that can undermine our sense of well-being, making us feel uncomfortable in our own neighbourhoods…

Graffiti can be defined as any informal or illegal marks, drawings or paintings that have been deliberately made by a person or persons on any physical structure in the outdoor environment, usually with a view to communicating some message or symbol, etc. to others. The terms ‘graffiti’ and ‘sign’ are used interchangeably in the Code of Practice…

A ‘graffiti removal notice’ is served on the occupier, or, if there appears, through reasonable enquiry, to be no occupied, it is fixed to the surface of the offending premises, apparatus or plant. The notice requires the occupier (or alternatively, the occupier or owner where a notice is affixed) to remove or obliterate the sign within a period specified in the notice…If this is not done within the specified time the council has the power to remove or obliterate the sign themselves and recover the reasonable costs of doing so…

References to ‘owners and occupiers’ in this CoP refers to those persons who legally own or occupy premises, apparatus or plant, and includes undertakers and statutory undertakers…

‘Offensive’ applies where graffiti is racially offensive, sexually offensive, homophobic, depicts a sexual or violent act or is defamatory…”

Code of Practice for Graffiti RemovalCode of Practice for exercising the powers set out in Sections 12 and 13 of the London Local Authorities Act 1995 (as amended) Published by the Association of London Government, Transport and Environment Committee

21 July 2005

Photo above, Banksy. For more see  http://www.banksy.co.uk/

 ”But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required by us to express the image of good in their works, on pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State? Or is the same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him?”

Plato, Republic Bk. III, 401.

Are there conditions that justify the ban or censorship of works of art?
If so, what are they?   If not, why not?

Un Chien Andalou (1929) –a sixteen-minute surrealist film made in France in 1929 by Spanish writer and director Luis Buñuel and Spanish artist Salvador Dalí– one of the best-known surrealist films of the French avant-garde film movement of the 1920s. It is also considered one of the most prominent films in Spanish Surrealism. Buñuel said that the only rule for the writing of the script was that “no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted… Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything.” (Buñuel, Luis (1983). My Last Sigh, Abigail Israel (trans), New York: Knopf.) (Un Chien Andalou-note) This film is in the public domain, and freely available on the Internet Archives.

” ‘Art’ disappears as society thrashes in reproducible culture.”
Baudrilliard, Beyond the Vanishing Point of Art

Patti Smith sings Cobain