Recent attention on street art centered on the 11 Spring Street Grand Closing caused me to clarify my feelings on graffiti, street art, public art and our visual built environment. I've been a long-time supporter of street art, though I've seldom painted on public walls. I got started in the day of free public access to museums and a lot of hopeful attention being paid to "easel" painting. I became an indoor painter, one who usually paints on portable supports, like stretched canvas.
Street Art is different from what I do. It is site-specific, it is often illegal. The question that is usually first to come up in any discussion about it, "is it Art?". To this, I say, if it's good, it's Art, if it's weak, it's decoration. Saying that usually gets the conversation to the next point, "if you don't like it, make it better."
I respect anyone who makes art, anyone who expresses themselves, makes a public visual statement, or even those who just sign their name. Although, I don't always like every piece I see on the city's streets, I enjoy all graffiti and street art attempts more than boring, mass-produced corporate advertising, which is still the most prominent visual art in the city. All the art around the city, legal and illegal is more interesting than blank walls.
Sure, sometimes a single paste up or a few tags look like crap, but all they need is more work. A single paste up can be worked into a larger painted piece, a few lonely tags can be better with company.
I like public art to change over time. I don't want to look at the same piece for decades, whether it's graff, street art, advertising or sanctioned public sculptures or murals. I encourage artists to add paint or paper to existing work. I hope they will intend to do so in ways that respect the integrity of the earlier work, giving it new life, new context to otherwise refresh what was started earlier. This is respect shown. Buffing or covering it with plain paint shows no respect.
As I see it, all claims of ownership are bogus. Public spaces belong to the public. Tags, graff, street art in public view is for the public to enjoy and for anyone to improve. Making a public piece does not give the artist the right to control its future. Any other artist can refresh, add to, or improve it, if they are able.
Building owners do not own the public facing walls, the public does. This principle is recognized by law. Developers must get community approval for the exterior appearance of new or remodeled buildings. If a building owner paints their public exterior some awful color, the law will force them to repaint with a public approved color. If an owner paints an image on a public-facing exterior and the community considers it obscene, the owner will be forced to repaint. If an owner wants to put up advertising, they are required to apply for permission. All these examples point to the precedent that building owners do not have solo control over the public-facing exteriors, the public, as represented by our government, determines that what happens on those walls is in the public's interest.
Our legal opinion, today, is that unauthorized public art is vandalism and should be removed or covered over.
If the community's opinion changes, new attitudes toward spontaneous public art, the law could be refined to respect the change in attitude. Public space could be used for public art by and for the public. Building owners could be prevented from selling the visual space to corporate advertisers.
Community standards are the enemy of graff writers and street artists, not the police.
I must admit, I enjoy the urgency of unauthorized graff dashed off by writers who think they are "fukn things up". That they are afraid of getting caught adds to the gesture of their work, often making the best art. If it was legal, it may not have the quality I enjoy. Authorized street art murals often have a leaden look, usually from carrying the weight of community responsibility, which despite it's usual "positive" message, is often just bad art.
If community standards encouraged public art, we might end up with a lot of lame shit on our city's walls. This horror is countered by two factors:
- perhaps we'd have less lame corporate shit;
- any one of us would be free to help cure lame pieces.
Even if public walls become chaotic collections of disjointed work, that would look better than most single statements.
As to the DYM "bombing" of 11 Spring -- they, of course, had every right to do a piece, I hear their anger over the disrespect new street artist's paste-ups showed to earlier graff, but, DYM's own piece was as disrespectful as the paste-ups and what's worse, it was dull, almost blank, like some school maintenance team painting a graff-covered wall white. Nihilist, boring.
In case you're wondering what authority I claim -- I am a member of the public, I am observant of our visual environment, this is the only qualification I need to express an opinion on public art.
hey, i rendomly came across this and read what you said.
im in agreement, for the most part.
i think that graff is good, and a constructive part of society in general.
i think that people percieve graff as bad because the only look at the tags and bombings, they dont see the big pieces because they are scrubbed all too quickly.
perhaps if the public did change their opinion we would start to see change, and yeah i do see where your coming from when you say that any old tom dick or harry will come allong and add some un skilled tag which will look even worse than no tag at all.
skilled graffiti artists are so few and far between because it takes deturmination to carry on writing.
i dont think that the public see writers as artists because they dont know how difficult it is to come up with a mint piece that will be appreciated by other artists, thus not geting tagged over.
anyways.
i also thought that you might be interested to know, the main writer in the picture you posted is a guy called Jace.
i did have a bit of information about him in a book, but my boyfriend has it.
sorry!
google him; on images.
he is tight! :D
later alligator.
Posted by: reds | August 09, 2007 at 07:35 PM