About the street art/graffiti divide

I’m not going to get sucked into the whole Mear One/Corbyn mural saga, except to observe that the guys around the table do have noses that are rather larger than necessary and to suggest that if you want to defend yourself against charges of anti-semitism, there are better platforms on which to do it than David Icke’s website.

It does, however, add another layer to the whole debate about the dividing line between officially sanctioned street art and verboten graffiti, which I touched on here and here. I wrote a term essay about this in January, touching on the speed with which subversive, dangerous art can become officially recuperated in a relatively short space of time; one example was my local council’s attitude to the hoary punk combo The Damned, who were excoriated in the 1970s and are now lauded as favourite sons. Which, of course, means that the street art that celebrates them is falling victim to the spray cans of those (currently) beyond the pale. As is entirely right and proper, surely?