A Question of the Art

With the city's graffiti artists targeted for extinction, beauty is in the eye of the Bostonian.

By Jason Schwartz, Photos by Lisa Richov

Boston police detective Bill Kelley estimates that 10 percent of the city's graffiti is sprayed by gang members. The rest is done by graffiti "crews." His unit has cracked down on these crews lately, and judges have followed suit (one tagger was held on $10,000 bail). But what's Boston losing in the process? We asked Kelley to weigh in—and got second opinions from Emerson College art history professor Cher Krause Knight and MFA School faculty member Jennifer Schmidt.

Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester

KNIGHT: It's accomplished in terms of technical skill, yet the artist probably had to paint quickly. This is a graphic image with deliberately clean lines meant to be legible across space.
SCHMIDT: "XSM"—a great play on language that uses abbreviation as a pun. "X" equals an end to "ism"s, like sexism.
KELLEY: XSM is a problematic crew, currently under investigation. They are a work in progress and I honestly don't know what the name means yet.