Art or Not?

I have a dilemma that I am hoping my friends can help me solve. Does spray painting the exterior walls of buildings and garbage cans and street posts and fences and anything that has a surface count as art? It seems like a certain number of people (and by the looks of it, it is not a small number) like this "art form." But it seems to go past like, some even have a sense of appreciation for it. Take for example the museum that displays grafiti. Sure it is a small building as compared to our art center in Rochester, but none the less, it is a place that promotes the use of spraypaint on concrete.

These pictures and not so picturesque drawings were one of the first things that popped out at me when I arrived in Granada. They are everywhere, you just can't escape them. Walking to school, I am greeted by at least ten different selfportraits of people in ski masks holding cans of spray paint. Most of them are good, well at least by my standards, and must have required more than one night of work, but at the same time I doubt that it did take more than one night. Imagine if you came back three nights in a row to complete a picture. By the third night the police should have figured out you were coming back and arrested/fined you.

Anyways, for your viewing enjoyment, I shall attempt to post photographs.

This first one is very creative. Using electical wires for the head, the grafitiers drew the body of a giraffe below. I see this one every day on my way home from school. The next one is also on my way to school. (I was a little bored walking to school before I discovered that listening to my Zune at the same time was an effective way to cut down on boredom and decrease the amount of time it took to get to school, depending on the song, of course.)

Oh, look at the cute little garbage gopher... That's a gopher, right?