The power of visual art stems in part from the fact that as a communication medium, it is closed, direct and a monologue.  Unlike writing or speaking, socially we are less likely able to respond to it in kind.  Not all do us have learnt to draw.

Graffiti seeks to overcome this loss of voice with it appropriation and re-appropriation of the tag wall.  None the less, it doesn't achieve dialogue. It's means ova conversing is more like an overlapping of serial monologues.
There is no interchange nor development of ideas.  It achieves only a yelling scenario, one voice trying to overpower the former.

Since most of us are fluent in visual interpretations, we get the visual art, but may not be able to find an adequate way to respond to it.  Hence on occasion the response may be physical and violent. 

On the best of occasions, art spawns a response of eddying conversations around it or internally within the viewer.  These conversations may last years, or may be occasioned only in the present of the art work. The key in all cases, is they occur outside of the artwork, within a different medium. 

Art speaks, and the picture may be worth a thousand words, but interchange & developmental arcs of communication art not necessarily embodied within itself.

© GAMcCullough      2015