Street Art - Banksy and Graffiti

Recently our family has gotten Netflix, and needless to say I have been watching a number of documentaries over the past few weeks, the skyrocketing amount of bandwidth being used a minor concern. I watched a documentary recently called Exit Through the Gift Shop, a 2010 production about the street art movement, mainly focusing on a French immigrant turned filmmaker and his obsession with the art form, as well as the mysterious street artist Banksy, who has achieved fame as a result of his satirical or unique graffiti work throughout several major cities around the world.

I've never thought much for/about graffiti. I live Burlington, the city usually rated as the number one or number two place to live in Canada, and the most graffiti I see is when a train is passing by my house and some of the train cars have been vandalized. And that's what it is. It's vandalism, and it's stupid. A scribble here or a sketch there, but for the most part it is nothing worth looking at twice. 

But the street work done by Banksy is mesmerizing for me to look at for some reason, like it is a form of elevated graffiti and important to be seen. I don't want to write a lengthy post on why or how he does it, because I just like his art, and I wanted to share some of it. Is it still vandalism? I would think so, but I'm not so sure it matters, and perhaps making gray and dull cities a little more interesting isn't so bad after all.