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The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that nearly $12 billion a year is spent on graffiti clean up: is this money misspent?
Two of Los Angeles’ most famous streets — La Brea and Beverly — intersect near a black and tan stencil of a Neanderthal holding a tray of fast food. The 6-foot-tall painting, located next to the New Beverly Cinema, was created by Banksy, the artist whose controversial stencils and nicely concealed identity have catapulted him into the art mainstream. In 1982, graffitied canvases were worth about $5,000; by 2008, a life-sized canvas by Banksy pulled in $400,000.
When did graffiti, scourge of the urban landscape, become one of the hottest trends in art, fashion and architecture? Over the past 25 years, street credibility has been embraced by commercial culture. In the ’80s, hip-hop music and films such as Beat Street, the dramatized response to the West Coast film Breakin’ — which encompassed the hiphop culture of music, dance and graffiti — made the art form an idealized activity.
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