How Is Graffiti Art?

I see this question get asked quite a lot online, and it confuses me because I can't see why people ask this. I think the question comes from people who are used to just seeing marker pen tagging / bombing, which to the untrained eye, can look terrible, and be considered as vandalism. I can see the argument. Just like anyone else, I wouldn't want a load of tagging right outside my front door. But then you have a whole other side to Graffiti, the piece side of things. You know, like a full on piece, most of the time with a combination of letters, characters and beautiful colour combinations drawn (or these days, some of the time stencilled) by someone who is obviously very good at what they do. So how can that not be considered as Art?

Some of it can be an eye sore

Have you seen some of the things these days that are classed as "ART". Most of which are drawn by adults but look like they were designed by a 5 year old.. One example: Have you seen the painting that sold for $81.9 million within the last few years. It's by Mark Rothko, called “No. 10,”. It looks like a brick wall. Or what about the Mark Rothko's, “Untitled (Yellow and Blue),” which sold for $46.5 million. It's basically two colours, Yellow at the top and Blue at the bottom.

 

It gets way too much of this..

If those are considered as art, and sell for millions of dollars, then anything can be considered as art. Some of the Graffiti pieces out there, even some of the ones that are just OK, blow "art" like the two mentioned above out the water. There is literally no competition what so ever. It seems like all the buyer is really paying for is to own a work of art that was created by a well "renowned" painter. Either that or they buy it for investment purposes. Maybe a mix of both.

Art in 2017 / 2018 is whatever someone wants it to be. Take a photograph of an old door with paint peeling off and it can be classed as art. Take a dump on a step and call it art. Create a nice plate of food, take a thousand pictures, like so many people do these days, and its art. I've seen some of the silliest things that are worshipped as unbelievable works of art that its ridiculous to even ask the question of whether Graffiti is art or not. Bottom line, all of it, whatever the subject matter, has the same things in common. Expression and perception.