ALEX Brandon-Davies letter in defence of graffiti artist Alan Crosby (March 23) was interesting but somewhat spurious.
He mentioned York doing well to support a thriving hip-hop scene and many people appreciating graffiti as an art form that enhances an urban landscape.
An interesting argument for artistic endeavour, considering graffiti emerged from places such as urban New York in the Sixties and Seventies.
Graffiti may certainly enhance the urban landscape of Seventies downtown New York but repeating it 30 years later in essentially rural old York is about as artistic as a colouring-in book and does nothing to improve our environment.
Emulating artists from that period is no more artistic or adding to culture than me being an Elvis impersonator would be to rock'n'roll.
British youth culture has for sometime cloned urban black culture but the youth of York do not live in that environment and (sadly for York) are mono-culturally white.
If the "enthusiastic and creative artists" of York need to express themselves in public then I would like to think they created a new culture of their own, a culture related to their environment.
Not copying black US gangster drug culture marketed to us by the US media conglomerates.
Aaron Ward,
St Clements Grove,
York.
Updated: 10:26 Friday, April 01, 2005
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