If you don't consider calligraphy art, think of Japanese or Arabic calligraphy, or even western medieval traditions. If you're willing to accept that calligraphy can be an art form (you take a number of predefined elements and arrange them aesthetically to create flow, contrast, texture, and style), then you'd certainly be willing to accept that "tagging", if it was done on paper, in notebooks, in public spaces provided for it, etc., can be appreciated as art.

So the only remaining criticism is the illegality of appropriating public space for purposes of artistic expression, which is what Chris is talking about: it can be, at times, somewhat nebulous. Sure, someone spray painting a tag on the front door of your house is obviously vandalism, but what about the concrete wall of a highway overpass? I think an important aspect of art is that it challenges existing aesthetic notions: if you only present art in private to people who already like it, it's essentially meaningless, right? I'm not necessarily trying to argue that graffiti is a "good thing", I'm just trying to open up the discussion a little.

And as for referring to graf tags as "gang-tags", that's just false. Tags are individual monikers that writers put up either to practice their style or to gain recognition. While their is some gang graffiti in large cities with significant gang activity, it's generally simple letters or symbols meant to mark territory. The vast majority of tags that you see (with highly stylized letters) are not gang graffiti.

My comments were directed to the ones who defend vandalism, which for some reason I still don't understand, seem to be the majority of the internet community. The "graffiti tagging" issue in Montreal is more serious than in almost any other city in North America. I think we would all agree that most tags we see on every downtown and le plateau building, lamp pole, mail box, etc are very polluting, and most of them are not meant to be art by their creators (I have confirmed this first hand). They considerably decrease the beauty of our neighborhoods and it takes a lot of money and effort from us tax-payers to remove them. Defending graffiti tags or other forms of vandalism under the name of "art" should be avoided, as it might contribute to strengthening the problem. There are plenty of legal ways to show your art, and if you are talented people are going to like it and support you. There is no reason for anybody to punish the city just because of their lack of talent.

I do not condone any type of vandalism (in which this ad campaign is included), my point is that we should stop blindly labeling any kind of urban defacing as "street art," and attacking these just because they are ads. Why would a blog that praises new urban developments and street furniture projects, would call "art" the scrawls that are not created with artistic purposes and that all they do is deface those same pieces of urban development and street furniture we like so much?

Christopher, there is no irony to this argument because they simply understand, as Andrew pointed out, that a line cannot be drawn between good illegal street "art" and bad illegal street "art." You cannot write in the law that beautiful or meaningful illegal "art" is allowed, but ugly or meaningless illegal "art" is not. It just cannot work that way. Most of what you call "street art" is polluting and not meant to be art, and the only way to stop the defacing of our city is to stop condoning any kind of illegal destruction, regardless of weather you think it's beautiful or not.

Would it be acceptable to any of the supporters of so-called "street art" like to have their cars be adorned with some punk's "art" because the "artist" felt it looked banal, represented the commodification of culture or whatever other justification can be dreamed up for vandalism? Or would you like to have dudes hanging outside your house "beautifying" it with their "artistic interpretations" using spray paint on your front door while you slept?

No one has the right in our society to ruin another's property simply because they have something to say or sell.

There is a slippery slope argument here. Either no unauthorized art is ok or all of it is otherwise who draws the line and with what rationale?

I highly doubt Vespa stores will fancy it cool if someone were to use their structures for "guerilla advertising" of some other product.

For some reason I think if these were not meant to be part of an advertising campaign, but simply illegal street art, you would all be praising them. Am I right?

This campaign represents blandness, it insults true artists (meaning anyone who seeks beauty through expression), and it insults people who care about their city by pretending to be a contribution to its texture. And worst of wall, it's just tacky.

Just look at the ads. If that isn't an encouragement to completely identify with - identify *as* - the products I consume, I don't know what it is. What can redeem that?

But who cares whether this is legal or not? There are plenty of wonderful illegal things and horrible legal things - like pollution, which these ads qualify as.

Chris, why would anyone refuse to call advertising of any form 'art'? When you study and are paid to create something, does it make you less of an artist? Would this imply that tags are art but beautiful legal pieces of graffiti are not? Am I missing something here?

The true genius of this ad campaign is that we are doing all the work for them. No where on their ads is the word "Vespa" written but in this post with its comments alone (not including mine) the word "Vespa" is written nine times. There are many other articles in the media and on the internet discussing this ad (two posts alone on this blog). They give us a posters plastered on a few walls in a couple cities and our arguments/discussions concerning them do the advertising for them.

Here in Toronto, The only real Vespa resller is part of a local BIA (biz association) that decries the spread of graffiti and street art. They pay people to tear down posters from the hydro poles. They appeal to city hall to ban postering and stiff vandalism penalties. They have anti-graffiti crews that scrubs alley walls.

Then they use the same medium and method to promote their own product.
2% of my problem with the campaign is whether the artist has sold out. Artists can debate that amongst themselves. My opposition is with the response from the powers that be: City Hall rarely, if ever, deals with corporations in the same manner as they do with prolific taggers.

A visually-dizzying city full of (half-decomposed) posters and graffiti is incompatible with middle-class consumers who (are made to) value the safe, the monotonous, the visually unchallenging (notice the superbland textures of a lot of recent urban developments?).

Street art also threatens the profitability of conventional advertising. Can't sell us Koodo if the women in the ads have handlebar mustaches can they?

I guess Montreal hasn't gotten around to using its power for full-on middle-class reconquest. If NYC really does set the example for other cities to follow, we can expect a crackdown on street art, vespa or no.

(ps. "Avenue du Parc")

The fact that they hired an urban artist to design their posters is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the artist himself. You are introducing "all sort of questions" that are interesting but don't exist.

A lot of great artists are hired and well paid by advertisers. Great. Fine. No question of integrity is involved. We know film directors who do tv ads, illustrators who do magazine or daily ads, musicians who do radio ads, etc. If advertisers then use this art in illegal ways, the artist is not at fault, only the advertiser is.

Vespa could have used Fauxreel's art in inventive legal ways (there are a lot of possibilities, they can phone me if their ad agency is too dumb). They have choosen instead to abuse public spaces and, I would add, to abuse the natural trust that we have for street artists.

Even worse, I think such kind of guerilla advertising is detrimental to street art. I love urban art, and I can tell you most of it is already short lived. We don't need to give another reason to home owners or law enforcement to have urban art scrapped from our city.

It isn't just the "illegality" of spraypainting someone's front door with gang-tags which people (or "many politicians") object to. It is the fact that it is an aggressive, invasive act.

99% of the graffiti is not art and has zero to do with any discussion of art.

It is destruction, vandalism, intimidation, territorial pissing -- not creation.