Sane Smith, Brooklyn Bridge

 Above is the infamous Sane and Smith, on the Brooklyn Bridge in '88. Carlo McCormick reminds us:

"Location is everything; context and content are ultimately the most measurable difference between what is written in the bathroom stall and and the profound bravado of more heroic feats like Smith and Sane's landmark subjugation of the Brooklyn Bridge, a move so balls-out it still stands out as the single greatest escalation within the graffiti wars."

McCormick also touches on the origin of a word very relevant to public art today. Trespass.

"... the original meaning of trespass was all about transgression, offense, and sin, as it's use in the Bible will remind us. It took until the middle of the 15th Century for trespass to acquire the meaning of "unlawful entry," as it was first recorded in the forest laws of the Scottish Parliament. We can thus appreciate it's longstanding, almost erotic proximity to transgression, which indeed only begins after trespass becomes more a matter of law than of morality." 

McCormick, C., Schiller, M., & Schiller, S. (2010).Trespass, a history of uncommissioned urban art. Taschen.