POLL: Are these murals art or vandalism?
The next phase in Rob Ford’s extended bid to tackle graffiti will begin this Friday, when a five-member board of city bureaucrats will meet to do what city bureaucrats apparently do best: decide what constitutes art. That is, they’ll look at photos of murals and deem whether each is art or vandalism that must be removed at the property owner’s expense. The panel, which has been in the works for more than a year, will make its judgments based on the city’s definitions of ”graffiti art” and ”graffiti vandalism”:
• Graffiti art is approved by the property owner, “aesthetically enhances the surface” and respects ”the community character and standards.”
• Graffiti vandalism is not approved by the owner, is a tag, is discriminatory or contains vulgar or offensive language.
The definitions are pretty subjective. While vulgar language is cut and dry, we imagine Ford’s view of “aesthetically enhancing the surface” would differ significantly from that of Joel Richardson or other street artists. To that end, we wanted to know how you’d vote on the following examples.
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