Tags and Street Art – what is what?

For some years I have been noticing the walls of my city invaded by random scribbles providing visual pollution.

Let us not confuse random tags with street art.

A tag can simply be an elaborate signature used to sign a graffiti or spray-painted messages in one colour or multi-coloured. The sad part is that some messages or signatures have no artistic relevance.

Tags such as these:

are nothing but visual nasty noise.

This is not what sometimes we find in our cities walls, pseudo-art made by vandals, it is all, sadly.

We may say that Art may also be every form of expression that raises emotion in others. In me, the emotion that it raises is… disgust.

Little of order would be nice, please!

Tags as:

are perfectly acceptable. Unreadable… but acceptable, as part of an artistic expression.

However, I do consider graffiti an art form, and there are amazing artists, known or unknown.

In this sequence I must mention a name that has been raising a lot of praise internationally: Vihls, or Alexandre Farto, a Portuguese street artist who decorates walls with portraits. He was recently distinguished in Portugal as the Personality of the Years, an award given by the foreign press in Portugal.

I will leave you with a little samples of his work, for more just check his website in:

www.vhils.com, it is worth the time.

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#photo #life #street #art #Tagsvsstreetart #vhils