Whether it’s thanks to Banksy or Basquiat or San Francisco’s Balmy Street murals, graffiti has become transgressively cool, and it can be a vibrant expression of urban energy and our multicultural heritage. But when it’s in our national parks? Not such a great idea, perhaps.
According to an article we read in the L.A. Times, one graffiti artist, Andre Saraiva, who’d tagged a boulder in Joshua Tree to much outcry, claimed (mistakenly) on Instagram that the work had been “made with love at friends privet back yard and not your national park! [sic].” True, Mr. Saraiva hails from France, but don’t the world’s parks belong to us all? Maybe that’s the uncomfortable subtext here—maybe taggers don’t feel like the parks are theirs too…