Graffiti: The New Impressionism

As a Millennial influenced incessantly by pop culture (whether I want to be or not), I find it very difficult to understand the viewpoint that graffiti is not art - yet, at the same time, I can see to an extent where the other side is coming from. By this I mean that I understand a property owner's concern for their own property's safety. If I lived on Bay State Road, I would surely not want a tagger to spray "Sploog" or some other nonsense on my wall. However, if a tagger created a piece that looked even half as cool as the above incarnation of the beloved Boston Terrier (I prefer to think that he's Rhett, and not anybody's random dog), I would probably feel obligated to pay the person. It seems very difficult to deny that Rhett is art.
In the history of any artistic craft, be it architecture, painting, or sculpting, one can readily discern the competition between innovation and tradition; this is the tectonic region in which new forms of expression are born, mixing a little of both. It is very often that the artist who intuitively melds these competing desires (the desire of the artist versus the desire of all the other artists) is considered to be a seminal one.
So can graffiti really become a seminal form of expression, having as large an impact on culture as Impressionism, as my title suggests? I think so.
 In my view, the debate over whether or not street art can be called such has arisen because of the way that the artists themselves do their work. I would seek to more clearly define the terms "graffiti" and "tag". Such a method might not eliminate the question at hand, but then again, will we ever have a perennial definition of what art is? Probably not.
First, we must define these terms; but in order to do that, we must look at the art that covers the urban landscape that we inhabit for purposes of discerning the intent behind the work. From observation, it seems logical to conclude that there are three main reasons why an artist makes the decision to break the law and "vandalize" a piece of property that they do not own, namely: aesthetic preference, attention seeking, and message communication.
Obviously, any piece of graffiti is born of any combination of the three, but we can use this idea that all graffiti is based on one of these three ideas to help define the word "graffiti" itself. By my definition, graffiti is street art that favors aesthetic preference and/or message communication over attention seeking, whereas tags are street art that favor message communication and/or attention seeking over aesthetic preference.

This image is a perfect representation of all three of these desires, and helps to visually explain what I mean by "aesthetic preference". In the above shot from Google Images, there are tags and graffiti commingled. Obviously, the only piece of graffiti on this wall is the Banksy piece in the middle, the image of "FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS" and the workman who pasted "CANCELLED" over the message. All the others are tags. It would be very difficult to argue that graffiti is not art: it has a composition, a message, a subject, etc., all hallmarks of a real piece of art.

However, the tags are a different story. Whether it reads "ORGA", "Mo Fuck", or is simply a heart shape, the trait that makes tags, tags is the lack of composition, which is to say lack of aesthetic preference. Tags are floating images without context, the tagger wants the viewer to appreciate the art for its own sake - the problem is, tags often cause the viewer to say, "I could do that."

This is, I think, the real way to split the umbrella of street art into two categories. In fact, it is from this distinction that I coined the aforementioned traits of street art. The taggers, among other reasons like having to move quickly to avoid patrols of pigs waiting to bust them for vandalism, do not favor aesthetic preference because they do not have one, or at least not one strong enough to form the basis of an entire composition. Although this sounds like a somewhat foolish way to divide graffiti and tag on the surface, it becomes more intuitive the more it is thought over. We do not call a child's drawings "art" because the child has no conception of "art", whereas we do call an adult's drawings that look like a child's "art" because the artist who drew them has at least some conception of "art". In the same way, most people could perform a tag, but very few can call themselves a street artist.

Abstract art is a prime example of this. Upon viewing, many who do not understand art say, "I could do that. It looks like he dribbled paint on a white canvas." From experience, I can say that these do not know what they're talking about. Abstract art seems simple, but in the end it all comes down to formatting. You can tell an abstract piece done by an artist from one done by a person dribbling paint on a canvas because the former displays composition whereas the latter does not.

Ultimately, I think that graffiti (not tags) can be considered the Impressionism of our era: it breaks social norms, it breaks artistic norms, it has influenced the way an entire generation perceives art. One need look no further than the success of Shepard Fairey's "Hope" campaign poster for Barrack Obama in 2008, or the wild rise to prominence of his OBEY clothing line. His style is firmly rooted in graffiti, and is prime example that not every street artist is a street rat.

Shepard Fairey's mural in Northeastern dorm International Village. The mural was created in 2009 for the front entrance of the building. Notice the blend of aesthetic preference and message communication... and the fact that Fairey's name appears in the composition not once.