It's interesting that Melbourne strives for respectability by spending hundreds of millions to display obscure art, seen by the eccentric or the disinterested.

With every unwanted and poorly attended showing, grandiose promises of our new-found likeness to Paris, Venice or Prague become more intellectually absurd, as news cameras pan over utterly appalling scribblings or crayon-type drawings that have obscure meaning in even more obscure in-group fringe obsession.

This indeed can only be topped by the eccentricity or perhaps mental illness that moves philanthropists to bequeath untold monies for the same purpose. At the same time our health, dental, transport, low income housing, science education and mental health services flail for want of money.

"Art" like advertising does evoke emotion. The emotion of disgust and despair that accompanies the knowledge that self important curators speaking their mumbo-jumbo in tongues, never disclose how much of public money has been wasted for their demonstrably unjustified and socially criminal self service. Like Master Chef competing with political debates as 30,000 children per day die from poverty related causes. Or wine tasting banalities thrust out as meaningful in a hard drinking, alcohol plagued nation that is also populated with many non drinkers, the misguided assumption is people give a toss.

At least one can behold graffiti and judge it negatively/positively, without the knowledge of such unwelcome mental masturbation that accompanies such crude and pointless indoctrination, of the self anointed cringe-worthy "upper classes".

Of course, the most satisfying graffiti is that covering the abysmal sculptures that adorn our highways serving a purpose that despite ones best attempts to decipher, is only understood by the spoiled creators, whom have apparently ceased taking their medication.

Jeff had a good flair for that.

I think art in itself is self-consuming. Artists seeking 'la vie boheme' in Montmartre might well be horrified by the acceptance their works have since received by the very establishment they ran against. Similarly, graffiti artists (street artists, vandals, whatever you want to call it) have the very essence of their work ripped out of it when it is accepted by the establishment. Ultimately, a rethinking will be needed. Perhaps the soul of street art can be saved through a spirit of ephemera. Let the work stand for a while, then paint over it. Visitors can gape at the ever-changing streetscape and street art can be saved from the rigor mortis of the gallery.

Of course, this is easy for me to say when I don't have to live with it. The closest to street art that I see in my neighbourhood is an absurd tag proclaiming "blak 4 liffe" (not sure what alternative there is there) on the rollerdoor behind the local servo. Does Melbourne want to be a living art gallery? Do its citizens want latte-swilling tourists wandering around their homes and workplaces oohing and aahing at absurd murals scrawled on their walls?