Audra Spellman
Professor Denishia Harris

Barringer, Felicity. "As Vandals Deface U.S. Parks, Some Point to Online Show-Offs." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 04 June 2013. Web. 15 July 2013.

Sociology
15 July 2013
Graffiti
How does graffiti challenge the dominant notions of art? I chose to explore this topic because I wanted to show that there are many different thoughts as to what is beautiful or aesthetically pleasing to society. Art is defined as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.”(Mifflin, 1997).
What one may find a masterpiece another may feel it looks awful. Those are just people’s opinions. What are actually important are the talent, skill, and dedication that graffiti can display in it, despite what people think of it. There is a lot more to graffiti then the average “vandalism” that people portray it to be.
“To the untrained eye, graffiti is the defacement of public property, the end product of street-yahoos making their names known to anybody who walks by. It is unfocused and sprawling, totally unlike the framed works hung in the gallery two streets across the business district, and it ungraciously demands its audience to acknowledge some unknown figure with a taste for omnipresence.”(Charlotte, 2009)
In other words, Charlotte is saying that most people are very quick to judge graffiti. When they see it, it’s automatically vandalism and it isn’t worth anything. Charlotte also says in her article on graffiti, that “graffiti, however, is a largely misunderstood art form, if indeed the people will even accept it as one.”(2009). She is basically saying that graffiti is another type of art, even though society will never consider it as one. Why? It’s because graffiti is found in the less fortunate sides of places,