Graffiti in Charlton

A fallacious justification of modern (or is it post-modern? Post-post-modern? Alter-modern?) art, perhaps as an attempt to excuse a history of pretentious extravagances that came after the Impressionists, is that "anything can be art".

As such, you could violently yoke together Caravaggio and Tracey Emin as artists without anyone raising objection to this act of violence.

Which makes me fearful of making an criticism of street-level graffiti in case someone chimes in with the admonition of "Banksy!"

Yet I hope I am on safe ground when I say I find nothing redeemable about the graffiti on the walls around Charlton.

Tagging - that is, spray-painting a pseudonym in sharply angular fonts - an export from the US, became popular here in the 1980s. (The underpass that links Bramshot Avenue to Invicta Road has long been a site for graffitists).

I expected that tagging would fade in popularity eventually, but it has been stubborn in its longevity.

So what can be done about it? As a short-term solution Cleansweep have a facility for removing graffiti from public property (and I know that devoted residential committees get together to remove graffiti from walls) but there is a Sisyphean element to removing graffiti - rolling a boulder up a hill over-and-over for the rest of eternity.

In the long-term we need to find exhaustive and definitive ways of making the act of graffitying uneconomical or too troublesome for the offender.

The photograph in the top-right corner is of a wall in Lansdowne Lane which leads to the Fairfield Clinic. The Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman Spencer Drury and Louis, Richard & myself have asked Cleansweep to deal with the graffiti in Lansdowne Lane.