Dallas police were at Cathedral of Hope [...] investigating graffiti painted onto the church’s Interfaith Peace Chapel. The building was vandalized at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, according to the Rev. Neil Cazares-Thomas, CoH’s lead pastor. [...]

The spray-painted message included a Louisiana phone number and referred to a car as a “Brown Chivy Suburbin.” The name “Johntion Kimbrou” — possibly “Kimbrow” — was also painted on the church, along with a reference to “kitty porn.” — dallasvoice.com

Anthropologist Susan Phillips had spent a career examining the graffiti that covers urban walls, bridges and freeway overpasses.

But when she came across an unrecognizable collection made not of spray paint but substances like grease pencil and apparently left there for a century, she was stunned.

Phillips had uncovered a peculiar, almost extinct form of American hieroglyphics known as hobo graffiti, the treasure trove discovered under a nondescript, 103-year-old bridge spanning the LA River. — NBC Los Angeles

Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent. 

But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."

[...] in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country's strict laws forbidding artistic expression. — techinsider.io

Earlier this week, the online street art community was abuzz about an article by Rafael Schacter for The Conversation, From dissident to decorative: why street art sold out and gentrified our cities. [...]

Basically, Schacter argues that street art isn’t rebellious anymore. Rather, that it’s most notable form is as a tool used by corporations to spur gentrification. Agree or disagree, the article is a must-read. — Vandalog

Russian police say they're looking for the intellectually minded miscreants who graffitied "Kant is a moron"—along with a flower and heart—on the philosopher's home outside Kaliningrad.

With Arthur Schopenhauer dead for 155 years, however, authorities start off with few strong leads. — theatlantic.com

But how to draw the distinction between unauthorized graffiti and murals? Late last year, city officials issued thousands of dollars worth of fines before admitting they couldn't tell the difference between vandalism and authorized artwork (they eventually dismissed the fines). To correct this, Castañeda-López says the city is working on the seemingly Herculean task of creating a registry for all Detroit's existing street art. — metrotimes.com

In July, Anasagasti hired a lawyer and filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit, accusing American Eagle of stealing his work and seeking monetary damages. If it sounds novel to apply copyright to graffiti art, that’s because it is: Lawyers who work in this area say it’s not clear anyone has ever tried this in court. Copyright law, as its name suggests, lays out the rules for when it’s okay to copy something. But does it extend to art that's on public walls? — theatlantic.com

There has long been a subculture of so-called “urban explorers” who have made a game of accessing off-limits places. [...] Urban explorers take photos mainly to document that they’ve been there, while for Deas the image is the whole point. The outlaw Instagrammers have more in common with graffiti artists, another subculture of underground creatives who make their work in the cracks of the urban landscape. — nymag.com

5 Pointz, New York City’s “graffiti mecca,” is being demolished right now. This morning, a backhoe began tearing into the building that has served as a legal spot for aerosol artists for over two decades. In 2011, the property owner announced that he will be developing the site and transforming it into a massive residential condo complex. — animalnewyork.com

But, with all this push to quantize and characterize, there are dangers. Cities clearly are more than a new kind of physics problem. They are also creations of the human imagination and, as such, they live or die by the quality of the imagination we bring to them.

Thats why no discussion of the health of cities can be complete without thinking about the role of art — public art. — npr.org

If you loved 5Pointz, grab a box of tissues because you aren't going to be happy with what's planned for the soon to be demolished building. New renderings of what will replace the former art mecca have emerged, and unsurprisingly, the towers are as ho hum residential as they come. The new design is the work of New York-based HTO Architect, and once complete, will hold 1,000 apartments within two towers of 41 and 47 stories each. — 6sqft

Using images provided by cultural organizations worldwide, some of which were captured with Google’s Street View camera technology, [the Google Cultural Institute's Street Art Project] includes street art from around the globe, including work that no longer exists [...]

Google is the latest organization to wade into debates about how or whether to institutionalize, let alone commercialize, art that is ephemeral and often willfully created subversively. — nytimes.com

As more journalists are being arrested in Egypt, artists are under threat as well. [...]

Political slogans and portraits of people who have died since the January 25 revolution are painted over by the government and replaced immediately by artists. The walls of Mohamed Mahmoud Street leading to Tahrir Square are layers of colorful murals over asymmetrical blotches of white paint. And despite its attempt to silence, the dictatorial white ironically makes a great primer for many of the artworks. — blog.vandalog.com