Style Wars

Style Wars

Style wars is a film that documents a number of young graffiti artists who were transforming the city with their unique art. They used the city's subway system as a canvas and let their work be seen in all five boroughs of New York. This film is a great film that documents that time in history. It is difficult for me to side with them or be against them. I am also an artist and I know how it feels when you have to feed that hunger and the only way to do it is to perform it.

I do also understand the legal side of it. Graffiti artist put their markings on private or public property without permission which is considered vandalism and that is against the law. I do feel the movie is so biased towards the artists. It is seen as a marvelous visual catalog of their work, as opposed to a rigorous debate there on. Style wars also tries to weave together threads of rap and break-dancing with the main theme of graffiti, but I think the film just didn’t spend enough time in my opinion with the rap and break-dancing to give a good sense of those scenes.

Style wars to me provides a glimpse into the artistic process with its beautiful, criminal, and competitive aspects. Style Wars also preserves public art from NYC that no longer exists today. I think graffiti is an art; it has form, color, and other base properties as well as an arrangement of these elements into structures that qualify it aesthetically as being art.