In Art Across Time, Laurie Schneider Adams considers and explores an art world far removed from snobby galleries and high price tags. By looking at the artistic achievements of the past several centuries, she is able to make high art more accessible to the masses, and the more recent and popular art movements to seem more worthy of appearing in the same book with older classics. Her history of art begins in the fifteenth century and ends in the twentieth, thus making it completely feasible to understand the motive of the artists behind the work by studying that which came before them.
Modern graffiti is still in rather premature stages as an art form. Unfortunately, it is often seen by the masses as a crime, rather than a true work of art. In come instances, this is still the case, but when you truly look at a work of graffiti art for what it is, rather than for what crime the artist may or may not have committed, you can see that it requires skill, and truly garners merit as a reputable art form.
Much of modern graffiti tends to be simple in nature: ironic words splayed feverishly on the side of a boxcar, or a pair of gigantic eyes staring back at you from the bricks of an alley. But, as Laurie Adams seems to argue, if art is meant to be a commentary on society, then we should be led to believe that there is really no purer art form. The voice of the graffiti artist cannot be heard inside an air-conditioned art gallery, but on the streets, among real people who do not live their lives for art, but in some cases, continue doing so because of it.
Still, the fact remains that graffiti is highly misunderstood. While academia seems to have hundreds of ways to interpret conventional art·many of which, Adams covers in her book·these interpretations for the most part, cannot be imposed upon graffiti, as it is art without boundaries. This misinterpretation leads to the persecution of such art, and thereby it is not fully appr...