Don't confuse tagging with urban art

Let me make it clear to those who wax on about urban art. Tagging, that ridiculous need to mark one's territory the same way your dog does, is NOT urban art and should not be defended as such. It doesn't take much (or any) talent to grab a spray can, deface the side of someone's home without permission and call it your right to free expression.

And it certainly doesn't make it art! In fact, it's called doodling and I outgrew it in high school. I also outgrew the boyfriend, whom I often doodled about on every cover of every binder I owned, but that's another story for another column…

The point I want to make is that spray painting unintelligible scribbles on a wall (or any other surface for that matter) is neither art nor a political statement. If at least these graffiti "artists" had something worthwhile, intelligent and observant to say about our world, a biting commentary on local or world politics, than maybe, just maybe, it would intrigue me, stop me in my tracks and make me think. I would then perhaps forgive them their transgressions and their need to use public and private property as their own personal canvas.

But the problem with tagging is that it offers nothing positive to our urban environment, other than expenditures which inevitably are passed down to hapless taxpayers who not only have to look at these unsightly scribbles, but also have to pay for their removal. It's nothing more than a spray painted version of the "I was here" message that people feel the need to leave in bathrooms, park benches and boulders alongside the highway.

It saddens me that real urban art, which is alive and well in Montreal, gets labelled under the same category as this silly attempt at provocation and self-promotion. Murals by urban artist The Phlash www.thephlash.com) are absolutely breathtaking. Organizations like dynamic avant-garde Café Graffiti do amazing work and the Under Pressure graffiti festival has been going strong in Montreal for over 12 years now, introducing the city to some phenomenal urban artists. There's legitimate urban art created out there every single day, but it's being overshadowed by the talentless hacks that deface public and private property and insist on tagging bus shelters, garages, mailboxes and the walls of our homes.

With Montreal spending $10 M a year on cleaning graffiti off public property, it's time we seriously crack down on the irrelevant and supply legal spaces for the artists with merit. I understand that teenagers and young adults feel the overwhelming need to "express" themselves, but if that wall they were spray painting on belonged to them, I guarantee you they would be the first ones with a bucket of solvent in their little tag-happy hands.