Display Full Text | Download Full Text
1.90 MB PDF file

Degree

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Art/Art History, 2007.

Abstract

I used primary and secondary interviews with graffiti writers in this thesis. My art historical approach differed from previous writers who have used mainly anthropological and popular culture methods to examine graffiti. First, I briefly addressed the extremely limited critical literature on graffiti. In the body of the thesis, I used interviews to examine the importance of getting up to graffiti writers compared to the relative unimportance of style and form in illegal graffiti. This analysis enabled me to demonstrate that illegal graffiti is not art. Lastly, I probed the public’s reception to legal graffiti art used in galleries, public and private murals, and advertising. Although these legal modes of production are art, the public balks at full acceptance due to its associations with the problematic nature of illegal graffiti.

Keywords

Graffiti; Art; Getting Up; Illegal; Legal; Graffiti is not Art

Advisor

Andrew E. Hershberger

Pages

68p.

Document number: bgsu1174896719
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1174896719

This ETD has been downloaded 3796 times (through March 2013)