Note: This post was originally made on June 7, 2016 on Facebook, and I thought it was worth memorializing here as well three years later on June 7, 2019.

Me and my friend Saskia at a petroglyph site in Utah. I call them the Square Sheep, which seems perfectly logical but may not be an official name.  😉

A couple of days ago, I shared a post from the National Park Service at the Grand Canyon, trying to identify a pair of suspects who might have been responsible for spray painting the phrase “Evans 16” on a rock outcrop in the park. I don’t know whether the people have been identified and held accountable yet, but the comments inspired a discussion about what was acceptable art and what was not. I wanted to address this issue in a separate post, as far as I have thought about it to date.

There are about 200 different petroglyphs at this Utah site.

The topic of “What is art?” is a complex one, about which many books have been written and movies made. There’s no one answer and the topic is way too big to tackle in a single Facebook post, and to everyone’s satisfaction. But I wanted to paint a few broad outlines and maybe define some terms that got thrown around in the prior post about “Evans 16”. So here goes….

What is art? This. This qualifies. It is also without question the most valid form of art too. 😉

The original photo shared on social media of the “Evans 16” Grand Canyon graffiti, and the two suspects as photographed by a witness.

(2019 note: The original inspiration for this post was regarding an incident of vandalism on a rock face at the Grand Canyon National Park near the Yavapai Geology Museum on May 22, 2016. The culprits were observed by another visitor spray painting “Evans 16”, and then photographed as they exited the trailhead. The NPS posted this photo on social media, where it was shared over 16,000 times, including by me, and eventually the suspects were apprehended on June 9, 2016. The NPS did not release their names and I was unable to follow up on what their punishment was, but I would think they won’t be doing this again.)

Rock art is fragile and very vulnerable to ruination. This site in Baja California, Mexico is remarkably intact given its age and the potential for vandalism that can readily befall any such feature. After all, it takes only one, single, solitary bad actor to forever wreck something beautiful and historical like this art panel.

There is a distinction between art and graffiti, and since we were discussing it in the other thread there are some differences between graffiti and tagging. These differences are contextual and often subtle. My opinion is that if you are merely tagging places with your arrogant ego, taking a few seconds to furtively piss on some terrain with some spray paint like a dog marking its territory (only less brave because at least a dog shamelessly pees in public for all to see), then you are committing a social violation that rightfully should get you in trouble. The “Evans 16” example falls into this category.

A Spanish language sign warns people to not touch the rock art at the Baja grotto. Touching such art can quickly wear off the paints and pigments, damage the colors, and irreparably destroy it. Just DON’T touch it! Don’t be selfish. There’s no need or justification to do so when it’s this fragile.

If you are a “street artist” who maybe takes some time to create artwork that is more interesting and requires some talent on a blank or ugly surface in an urban area, then maybe, possibly, your art can have value, although it’s really dicey if you’re doing it surreptitiously. And finally there is actual art, which like or or hate it or indifferent to it, is not vandalism of public property because there is a name attached to it and some public accountability. There is some sort of official sanction and social acceptability to it, even if you despise the art that was created. Art is not a criminal act, while tagging is, and graffiti mostly is too save for some possible exceptions where it represents civil disobedience or social messaging.

Petroglyphs are rock art that has been chipped manually into a rock surface, while pictographs are painted or drawn upon the rock with pigments such as charcoal, chalk, or colored clay. By their nature, petroglyphs are more durable and not as prone to weathering since they won’t wash off in rain and snow. Pictographs survive over the long-term only in protected sites such as alcoves, caves, and grottoes where water and weather can’t reach them.

My current analysis and expanded definitions of this is as follows:

1. Tagging = vandalism, pretty much no matter where it’s done and who does it. It’s worthless, destructive, and selfish behavior that should be discouraged. It should generally be treated as a crime, and depending upon the context should be handled with minor or occasionally significant repercussions for the person convicted of it. I wouldn’t want to wreck someone’s life over spray painting “Evans 16” on a rock face, but they should be held accountable for this stupid and trashy act with a fine and community service.

2. Graffiti = morally gray area, frequently vandalistic, but occasionally can have social value in certain contexts, especially when the message is one about something larger than the ego of the creator. Graffiti is commonly over the line of social appropriateness, but not always. Better to not engage in it, but sometimes civil disobedience and social messaging reasons can override the generally undesirable nature of this behavior.

3. Art = art, which whether you like it or hate it or don’t care about it, is different from the above two because it is traceable to an individual or a group, who have a constitutionally-recognized right to freedom of expression within certain bounds of legality. Art might provoke or offend or annoy, but it’s not criminal and it doesn’t deface or destroy public or private property. The value of art is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s not illegal and needs to be defended from prosecution from overzealous ideologues, which is why courts frequently rule on it as a First Amendment matter even when it is widely opposed by or offends many people. Tagging by contrast does not and should not have any such rights since it is usually done on either public or private property, and almost always without the knowledge or consent of the owner. Graffiti usually falls into this category too, as noted above.

4. Petroglyphs, pictographs, friezes, temple mosaics, etc = historical artifacts. We do not and frequently cannot know the individual creators of these ancient features, nor can we know their precise motives in most cases either. But they provide an important cultural resource and a link to the past. They help provide understanding of who we are as humans and where we came from, where we might be heading, and how much we have changed and in what ways. Plus they are usually beautiful or intriguing on their own merits. But all ancient artifacts are a fragile and limited resource, and by definition no one is making any more of it, so we need to preserve those old links to the past with respect and the full force of law and social conditioning. So whether these historical pieces were in their day considered “tagging” or “art” is secondary to their advanced age, rarity, and irreplaceability.

This is the name of a pioneer, possibly a Mormon from somewhere between the late 1800s and early 1900s, added to a Utah petroglyph site. It, too, is a petroglyph since it was chipped into the rock surface alongside the Native American ones, although it is probably hundreds of years younger.

Given enough time and distance and rarity, even today’s cheap spray painted scribblings professing undying love between probably-pregnant teenagers will have historical value by the year 2300 and beyond. That said, not all things are worth keeping until they become interesting historical artifacts. Some, like “Evans 16” are simply garbage, and need to be discouraged from being created and removed when they appear illegally in inappropriate places. Art has wider meaning, while graffiti and tagging mostly do not.

So “Dad”, I hope you are happy now?

In this example, “Dad” decided to peck his marks into this Utah rock. Clearly much more recent than even a pioneer name, what “Dad” did here was annoying but might not be the least respectful thing since his inscription was somewhat isolated from the nearest Native chiselings. There are also a lot of people named “Dad”, and who knows which of them did this? Only one man can legitimately claim to have actually done it, but we can never know which one. Unless, of course, “Dad” took photos and videos for proof of him in the act, in which case he opens himself to prosecution and fines, which would also make him an idiot. So what was your point “Dad”? Is it worth defacing a rock for? Overall, my opinion is that we can pretty much do without “Dad” and his chipping his name into the stone. Even if it gains a certain amount of social and historical credibility centuries from now, it is simply not very meaningful and it is not likely that it ever will be….

OK this post is long enough. Comments and further discussion welcome. But please try to make them into art, and not merely tagging.

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(2019 note: The rest of this text was in the comments or written in 2019, some of which I reproduced here since I felt it added dimension to the discussion.)

I wrote: I have noticed an example of an ongoing “modern day rock art situation” on the Interstate Highway 8 corridor in Imperial and San Diego Counties, California as I was driving to the coast two weekends ago. About 75 miles east of San Diego as it drops into the Imperial Valley, I-8 cuts through some very dramatic and beautiful canyon scenery, with huge stacks of eroded granite boulders lining the freeway for miles in both directions in both counties. These boulders present tempting faces to taggers since they are within 100 feet or so of a major and heavily traveled freeway.

I took a series of photos out the window while driving on I-8 of the various rock faces that had been tagged with graffiti and painted over (presumably by CalTrans or another similar highway maintenance agency) in earth tones to mask the vandalism. While not a perfect color match to the surrounding rocks, the earth toned paint helps prevent future vandalism attempts.

But the Federal Highway Department (or CalTrans or whoever else) appears to have adopted a zero tolerance policy for graffiti of any type along the freeway. You can see that many of the largest and most accessible rocks near pullouts on the side of the highway had once been tagged with something, but they were immediately painted over with a flesh-toned paint that closely matches the rock colors, or sandblasted off, not sure which. In any case the rocks appear fairly “natural” although even a casual second glance will reveal that they have been altered by highway department paint or removal efforts after having been defaced illegally.

Another example of a pioneer inscription in Utah. This one appears to have purposely been pecked in over some of the original Native art. The name is illegible, although the letters J and P can be clearly made out.

The point of this discussion regarding I-8 is that allowing any moron to tag a rock of his (or occasionally her) choice would quickly create a snowball effect whereby within a few years next to none of the rocks are intact. Instead, a visual cacophony of trivial and meaningless scribbled letters and phrases and badly-rendered art becomes the legacy of this otherwise very beautiful canyon. I fully support removing all of it, even if some of it is “good art”, simply because the bandwagon effect of the other trash graffiti and tagging it would draw isn’t worth the price. The fact is that for as long as the view driving past at 75 MPH looks to most observers like naturally stacked, pristine boulders, the temptation to draw upon it is minimized. Most people won’t get the idea, not unless someone else does it first. Allowing even one such “artwork” to remain leads instantly to unacceptable levels of defacement. Remove it all, immediately! Good job, CalTrans.

A point was also made by my friend Rusty in a comment thread that urban graffiti on railroad cars can actually be both good and interesting, and such art gets wider exposure simply by being mobile and rolling around the country. Railroad car art (and related subway train art) are on manmade objects, as opposed to natural, and since they are urban and industrial in nature perhaps they aren’t subject to quite the same category of criminality that spray painting “Evans 16” in a beloved National Park should be? Especially if railroad car art is fairly well executed and/or makes a social critique?

I don’t really know how firmly I feel about this, and I don’t necessarily have a hard line objection to some forms of urban graffiti and mobile art on railway cars. Maybe these surfaces covered in pretty good graffiti are subject to a differing moral or aesthetic standard? Hard to say why I feel there is a difference, but generally I dislike trivial tagging in wild places, especially when it harms ecological resources, leads to littering and trampling of native plants, creates visual distractions for high speed traffic, or damages archaeological resources. With so many ways to create art in this world, it seems that rock tagging is a poor one that leads to a “Tragedy of the Commons” type scenario. Stopping it before it gets out of hand is a thing I agree with.

These aspen trees on a remote rural roadway east of the town of Ely, Nevada have been defaced with graffiti. Aspens (Populus tremuloides) are often targets of vandals who carve their initials into their trunks. There were several references to marijuana usage in this grove, as evidenced by the 4:20 symbols, shown here on two separate trees.

Another aspect of graffiti/vandalism in wild places is the carving of initials into the trunks of trees. While in theory any tree can have initials and hearts dug into its trunk with a knife or other sharp implement, in practice some trees are far more subject to this treatment than others are. Most trees have a fairly thick, rough, and brown bark, which is not only difficult to carve into but also hard to see once done. Some trees will rapidly heal over carved scars, rendering the “artist’s” work illegible within a few years. But some trees have thin bark, pale in color, that heals with darker scar tissue which provides a suitable contrast for the carvings.

A variety of people have attacked this aspen tree over the years. Nearly every sizable tree (and many smaller ones) that is within 20 feet of the gravel road has graffiti on it. This is not a heavily trafficked road by any means, and it is 20 miles from the nearest small town; yet graffiti is rampant on every suitably sized aspen. This lends credence to my observation that any graffiti at all is too much, if it starts the ball rolling and inspires copycat activity.

Aspens are foremost among the trees I can think of that possess this combination of thin barks plus contrasting colored scar tissue traits, but others might include birches, certain firs, and in tropical regions, various species of fig trees. I have also seen graffiti scratched into succulents, especially relatively spineless species of prickly pear cactus, and on the wide leaf surfaces of various agaves.

All plants, whether damaged on their trunks, stems, or leaves, produce scar tissue to heal the damage and prevent the entry of pathogens. Once formed, scar tissue on plants is permanent and damaged cells never return to normal, unlike animal cells. If you get a small cut or scrape on your skin, within a few days or weeks new skin cells replace the damaged ones and eventually your skin returns to normal. Obviously more traumatic deeper wounding can leave permanent scars on your skin, but generally minor wounds on animal skin heals completely and tissues usually return to the original undamaged state.

Meanwhile on a plant, even the smallest nick or contusion results in dead cells that are left behind on the leaf, trunk, or stem surface. Yes, trees can overgrow even large scars over time with fresh tissue, but if you were to cut the tree down and slice it into segments, you will always be able to see the original wound site and the subsequent recovery embedded within the growth rings. The record of damage is retained forever as long as the tree lives, and well after it dies too.

LAW (or more likely, L.A.W., periods missing in what are likely to be the person’s initials) has returned multiple times to this Nevada site to carve his (it’s probably a him) moniker into the same cluster of aspens over the course of years. I observed numbers between LAW 04 and LAW 13, which is a span of  10 years. If there were numbers outside of this range, I didn’t see them, although my search was far from comprehensive.

Scar tissue is a normal part of tree growth and survival and clearly there are numerous natural means of scar infliction upon trees, which has led to them developing methods of isolating the damage, healing, and continuing growth despite the injury. Some things that damage aspen tree trunk tissues include, but aren’t limited to: Extreme weather, fire, insect activity, fungal and bacterial attack, scratching bears and mountain lions who are marking territory, deer and elk rubbing their antlers on the trunks to remove velvet during the fall rutting season, and woodpeckers drilling nest cavities. Aspens and every other plant species on earth have developed means of handling tissue damage. So humans carving their names and marijuana references into a tree trunk aren’t really all that different from a clawing bear, for example. From this standpoint, people are just animals doing something in the forest the same way any other animal does. The trees will live through the indignity.

Of course humans are also not the same as other animals on that list, in that we ascribe extra meaning and ethics to carved names. Also, graffiti is not a necessary survival behavior for our species, but rather an elected one that annoys and irritates many of us. Can you imagine a bear becoming morally outraged at the offensive ugliness of claw marks from a fellow bear? They might become competitive and seek to find the intruder to defend against and deter them from also occupying a home range and the food resources it contains, but it seems doubtful that morality, religious feelings, or higher aesthetics and a sense of despoiled wilderness values comes into play with a bear or an elk.

Unlike rock-chipped petroglyphic art (or spray-painted graffiti), carved names into aspen trees are unlikely to last for eons. Individual aspens are not a particularly long-lived tree, surviving for maybe 50 to 80 years, slightly over 100 or so at most, and then succumbing to age, disease, fire, or weather. Aspens are clonal and what looks like a grove of free-standing separate trees is in fact usually connected group of genetically identical stems, all arising from a long-lived subterranean rootstock. Some aspen clones are thought to be thousands of years old from the rootstock, while the above-ground portions we see as trees are stems that are generally less than a century old.

This cyclical replacement of individual trees every 50 to 100 years generally means that by the year 2075 to 2100, virtually all of these 4:20 and LAW references will be gone. Obviously they could easily be replaced by different graffiti etched into new trees, which seems probable for as long as some people place value upon bothering to carve their names into the wilderness.

When it comes to how I personally feel about this, I’d have to say that while I dislike it and wish it weren’t there, that it’s not quite the same as tagging a rock outcrop. There is actually slightly more effort placed into carving something into a tree, which for some reason counts for something to me. Also the fact that it’s less permanent and shorter in duration over time due to the replacement cycles aspens go through means that it doesn’t seem like as much of a permanent sullying of the ecosystem, although truly when you break it down there’s not actually an infallibly different logic at work here. It’s just how I feel. I don’t like aspens carved with graffiti better than intact ones, not by a long shot. But it annoys me slightly less than spray paint carelessly slapped onto a rock surface that will last for hundreds to thousands of years in its meaningless messaging. At least initial carving into tree bark requires some extra care and time, which mitigates it slightly. Plus only aspens are widely subjected to this treatment since few other western USA trees have bark nearly as suitable for random vandals, so the damage is fairly restricted.

Ancient rock art in wild places can easily add value to an outdoors experience. Even when some of it comes from a white settler chipping his English name into the stone over the Native Americans that originally started this panel. However I would not feel this way about seeing “Evans 16” in the same spot and would work to remove it, hopefully without damaging either the Native or pioneer figures. Age does matter in these sorts of things. I am simply not sure of why.

I wrote: I fully share Alice’s sentiment posted over at the other thread, where she said it is a mistake to view the reasoning of petroglyphs and pictographs through a modern-day mental lens. We tend to call that stuff “ancient graffiti” and assume it was made for the same reasons as we might make it today. The implication being that today’s graffiti and tagging is somehow similar and ultimately acceptable because the ancients also did it. That is erroneous. Not only would the mindset and cultural views of the ancient peoples be different from today, but their tools and materials were very limited as well.

Back then the only methods available to make artistic figures were either other rocks to physically chip away the desert varnish, or a limited range of pigments (red and yellow ochre and clay, black charcoal, white chalk, sometimes mixed with tree resins or animal fats) with which to paint. All of these artworks took significant time and resources to make and I am pretty sure they didn’t waste their hard-earned efforts on total egotistical nonsense the way a kid with a 99 cent can of spray paint and 20 spare seconds of time is able to. Back then, there wasn’t “defacement” – it was legitimate messaging with ritual significance.

This looks like a footprint, although it’s clearly not an actual outline of a real foot – not the way some pictographs are of actual handprints when the creator blew pigments out of his or her mouth and leaving a spattered shadow of their hand. The petroglyph above is quite old. You can tell by the fact that there are now several crustose patches of slow-growing lichens appearing within the footprint-like borders, and the once-pale rock surface that was exposed by the chipping action has started to darken again as new layers of desert varnish form. Over time, perhaps some hundreds of years, it will eventually match the surrounding rock surface again, although the pockmarks may remain evident for thousands of years longer.

In some cases of ancient artworks there probably would have been an “I was here” personalized sentiment, like when hands were outlined for example, although those too may have had more purpose. Even if they didn’t, the point is that today’s technology makes it possible for us to casually and meaninglessly tag hundreds of surfaces, wild and manmade, in a fraction of the time it took to make a true petroglyph or pictograph panel. We are more mobile, we have access to much better materials, and we can act much more quickly.

It is possible for a single tagger to spritz his cryptic and annoying gang name onto dozens or hundreds of surfaces in a matter of days. This is vastly more impactful than a few glyphs etched into a remote canyon rock face with spiritual significance, or drawn onto a cave ceiling in charcoal. Not only is it more impactful, but it means less and most people would consider it obnoxious antisocial behavior. No one wants to see it, and indeed we shouldn’t have to, which is why we criminalize it. Note to “Evans 16” – this is why your meaningless shallow tagging resulted in 16,000 plus people trying to find you and hold you accountable, so that you won’t do it again.

The Power of Lightning Eyes. To people who are like “Evans 16”: We will find you and hold you to account.

If someone were to take a rocky grotto on their private property and work to paint it up in a labor of love, imbuing the scene with meaning to themselves and at least somewhat understandable to others, then that is art. The difference is in the intention and attention paid. Tagging is noxious, and most graffiti (especially on natural or wild surfaces) is too.

These charcoal and ochre pictographs in Baja are simply much nicer than a spray painted name tag generated by a sullen teenager. They mean more, even if we cannot be sure of precisely why they do.

John asks: “Is the degree of artistry relevant? They could have painted the Last Supper on the rocks and it would still be a physical trespass… permanently attached litter. In public we are to leave it as we found it, and any act which leaves it differently is a violation.”

I wrote: I would say that the degree of artistry might maybe have some relevance, but probably not in most cases. Truly worthwhile art that takes a long time and some skill to create isn’t usually what happens with graffiti. It’s most often a hit-and-run activity, conducted quickly and furtively under cover of darkness or in a remote enough situation where being caught in the act is unlikely. These parameters tend to limit the degree of artistry and complexity that can be achieved. So while I get the gist of your question, it’s almost a moot point since by virtual definition most really good art takes longer to make and has a greater investment by the creator, and greater value to observers.

The more relevant question is, “Was the art made legally and with the permission and support of the landowner or public agency?” Graffiti and certainly tagging are not. So if criminal trespass and vandalism are involved, then even pretty good art should be removed, especially if the rightful property owner wants it removed.

This abandoned building in southern California has been fenced off by whoever owns it, yet vandals have still entered and spray painted their crap on some of the walls after breaking through the glass of some windows to gain access.

In the example of the structure above (maybe once a house, maybe a small business at some point) the owner has clearly attempted to exclude unwanted visitation by erecting a 6 foot chain link fence around the property. It didn’t work. I am nearly 100% certain that the owner did not want the graffiti the intruders left behind to happen, and if they knew who did it, I imagine they would press charges to prosecute and/or seek reparations from the perpetrators.

As a result of these several factors, this is decidedly not art or valuable messaging. It’s just vandalism, and since a specific owner was harmed in the process it would be a prosecutable offense in our legal system. Unlike tree carved initials in a public National Forest under nebulous general public ownership, specific harm can be ascribed to a single individual, in this case the owner of the now defaced building. Some cases are clearly just graffiti that should never be tolerated under any circumstance, and this is one of them. It has zero value and is not worthy of preservation.

As with the footprint shown earlier, these Creation Spirals are getting old and darkening again as the patina of desert varnish replenishes across the surfaces where it was flaked away. Desert varnish is mainly manganese and iron oxides bonded to fine clay particles, and forms slowly over centuries, with the darkest surfaces taking several millennia to develop.

Another example of how relative petroglyph ages can be assessed via how dark the chipped surface is and how closely it has returned to match the original desert varnish layer. It may not be possible to determine precisely how many years old such rock art is using current methods of measurement, but as a rule of thumb the darker it is, the older it must be, since only time creates desert varnish layers.

The whiter appearance of these petroglyphs indicates that they are younger than the spirals are. They may still be hundreds of years old, but this is as opposed to thousands possibly for the darker ones.

Historical rock art like this is simply much more valuable than cheap spray painted graffiti knocked out in a few seconds by someone with nearly zero investment in the process of creation. In the case of the building a few photos above, it doesn’t matter whether the artistry was good or not (it wasn’t) because the owner will object to the painting activity regardless of its quality. But with ancient rock art, we can sense the meaning even if exact translations of the creators intentions aren’t quite possible. And while I do grant that given enough centuries and distance in space and time that even scrawled tags like “Evans 16” will gain some historical value, I still maintain that we should refrain from vandalistic activities in a world crowded with billions of people all seeking to leave some sort of mark that they, too, once existed.

We have an inherent drive to leave such signs of our existence, and they are understandable. But please consider whether your marker interferes with the current rights of others, and with the expressions of those who passed this way ahead of you, before you leave it.