Sep 27 2007
Is This Art? (aka — What gives them the right?)
I attended this event over the weekend, thanks to some free tickets I won 3 weeks from one of my favorite radio programs, one I’ve been listening to fairly consistently for almost 7 years. As is my nature, I was on time, even though I know that musicians don’t share that punctual nature with me and the show wouldn’t start at 10pm, as advertised on the flyer. It’s a hard habit to break.
So, while watching the first DJ set up his booth and arrange his wax for his hour-long set, someone at the venue, most likely one of the bartenders or hostesses for this specific event, put on a documentary entitled Infamy, which chronicled the lives of some well-known graffiti artists and crews from certain key locales across the nation. From what I could observe over the course of the hour-or-so-long film was that there were highlighting two differing styles of graffiti artists (also known as taggers in some circles, since your “tag” is how people know it was your work). 1) There are those who placed graffiti on as many clean, untagged surfaces as possible, no matter if it was a detailed work or a hastily scribbled tag; and 2) there are those people for whom graffiti was their conscious mode/method/means of expression, preferring wide canvasses for truly amazing work, as opposed to random spots for their “art”. Along with a man named Joe Connolly (a Los Angeles resident who spends his free time painting over graffiti on major LA thoroughfares), these two groups were presented as being complimentary to each other, but at times, radically different from each other.
Within the first 15 minutes of our sitting, chatting, and waiting, my friend made the bold assertion that, no matter how lovely the art is or how talented the artist is, when boiled down to its component parts, graffiti is vandalism. For the artist and the defenders of the art and the artists to claim that this method of expression is somehow above laws regarding the defamation of private property is anti-social behavior at best and anarchy at worst. Thus, as we proceeded to watch example after example of individuals, crews, and teams of graffiti artists discuss why they did what they did, what was behind their decisions and their art, my friend and I bantered back and forth over whether or not artists have the right to choose their canvas and their method of expression.
The core of our debate circled around two differing perspectives. While acknowledging that much of work was very skilled and that the artists were talented, my friend held the position that it’s rather dangerous (my friend’s exact word) for some people (i.e. “artists”) to feel that they are above the law, that they don’t need to obey the laws while practicing their arts. I countered with the following thoughts: a) while I don’t agree with people painting up private shop windows of active businesses and similar such things, I have no problem with graffiti artists covering the buildings that are the ever-present blight upon their urban existences; and b) I feel that it’s “dangerous” for artists to be considered “dangerous,” since throughout history, artists of all shapes and sizes have been amongst the first too be persecuted and executed under socially repressive regimes.
My friend responded by stating that obviously the persecution of artists isn’t what’s needed or warranted in the case of these graffiti artists, but they still don’t have the right to circumvent, avoid, and/or ignore the laws regarding graffiti and the defamation/defacing of property. Just because someone’s an “artist” doesn’t mean that person gets to walk around his/her city spray-painting whatever they want for the sake of “art.” My rejoinder was that, while I still agree that private property owned & operated by members of one’s community must be respected and not tagged, I have no problem with the tagging of property that sits dead, barren, and wasted (the type of buildings and works that litter the urban landscape in the average large city in America and the world). It’s better that such buildings be covered with colorful artwork that will brighten the surroundings than sit unused and serving as industrial clutter.
Now, for some people, there’s a fine line (or maybe no line at all) between tagging as art for art’s sake and tagging as some person using a can of spray paint to engage in vandalism of some building. Personally, I do realize that there are people who are vandals and actively seek to vandalize with spray-paint. And I do admit that there are tagging crews who will tag anything and everything with their crew’s sign in an effort to demark their turf, as gangs tend to do, letting everyone know, “Hey! This neighborhood is ours! Keep out or enter at your own risk.” That aspect of tagging is something that I can’t defend, but I can defend those taggers and crews who are artists, who do use the various spaces in their locales as the canvas for their artwork. Artists by nature are those who push the boundaries of what the average public sees and experiences, which is why they ARE considered “dangerous” by the powers-that-be.
What gives them the right to paint all over the buildings of their community? It’s not that they have the right or that they need/want the right to engage in their art (though sometimes the best art is quite political and subversive). It’s more that artists have an insatiable need to create and practice their art, as if their work is eating away at their insides and it needs to get out no matter what the cost. Besides — does it really hurt anyone if the side of a few buildings are covered with some intricate pieces of modern art? In the end, which is really more attractive: the bursts of beautifully arranged colors or the brick-and-mortar side of a building?
September 27th, 2007 at 19:10
September 27th, 2007 at 19:23
I view the trouble as not being “tag” vs “tag not”, but “art” vs “art, NOT”. I have rarely found “bursts of beautifully arranged colors” on the sides of buildings. It is more of “Yo Mama”, or the like, in black and white very “tell-tale” script. But I guess that person can say it is his art he’s sharing with his neighborhood. Puh - leez!
I very clearly remember Port Arthur’s attempt at bringing local color to their rapidly deteriorating downtown area. They enlisted the help of many high school youth and also some of the area’s semi-famous artists to come and paint murals on the existing walls. My uncle, Al Gaytan, then residing in Houston, did several walls that even were highlighted in national weekly magazines. The town took on a whole new look and it was amazing. However, it was not graffiti, they were truly wall murals.
Of course now, “La Raza”, etc. covers the walls and there is little resemblance to the once beauty.
September 27th, 2007 at 19:53
What intrigues me is the question of whether an artist should be dangerous and above the law. And I have to say that I’m more appreciative of the dangerous art — and I think that it speaks moreso than the placid Thomas Kincaid crap that passes as art today.
When I think of art, I, personally, want to listen to a band that actually has something to say that is dangerous. Whether it is Rage Against The Machine screaming in anger at the establishment or Derrick Webb, a CHRISTIAN artist calling out the hypocrisy and ideology preached by the modern church by saying, “There are two great lies that I’ve heard: “the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely dieâ€; and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican, and if you wanna be saved, you have to learn to be like Him.”
I do enjoy other art as well but I tend to be drawn to, and moved by, the “dangerous” stuff.
But that’s just my heretical rebelliousness surfacing…
September 27th, 2007 at 20:14
Banksy is famous in art circles, travelling the globe from his home in England to make social comentary where it needs to be made. It is well and good to speak objection to injustice, but I totally appreciate his ability to spraypaint a picture that completely alters the context of the discussion.
I’ll add one more thing. 1985. Berlin Wall. West side. Every hue of paint imaginable was sprayed on the section of wall where I stood. To my left, seven white crosses marking the place where seven people had been shot to death while trying to escape from East Berlin. To my right… messages in every language, in every colour. Some called for peace… and some were just silly (like “The David Letterman Show”), but each spoke of life. Life and freedom and a richness that was horrifyingly absent a few meters and one tall wall away.
Graffiti, as with most other things in life, is never a black and white issue.
September 27th, 2007 at 20:15
September 27th, 2007 at 20:18
I guess I never questioned the teachings of my parents, and what I tried to instill in others, that there was a “time and a place for everything”. And I guess it basically boils down to I didn’t even question the “danger, Will Robinson” stuff at all. I felt that if there was to being painting on walls, it should be “okayed”, and not just vandalism.
Again, perhaps it is simply the generational thing. I surely don’t want to be the one censure anyone’s artistic energies, or limit them to pen and paper or canvas, it’s just that I do not see graffiti as “random acts of kindness”, or beauty.
September 27th, 2007 at 20:49
And yes, I fully realize that graffiti, as is commonly understood and legislated to prevent/punish, is traditionally random scribbles meant to intentionally deface property. I’m against that and I’m not talking about (as I stated in my original piece). My context for this piece as this documentary which featured a wide variety of highly colorful and detailed artistic creations. What would be wrong with such work?
And yes, Wilsonian, I’ve heard of Bansky & the art of the East Germans in the 1980’s was instrumental in conveying & honing public opinion against the failing Soviet regime.
September 27th, 2007 at 21:09
September 27th, 2007 at 21:15
September 27th, 2007 at 22:11
This is where I think I had just better go back to scrapbooking.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:29
I don’t have a problem with predictability. After all, all of us are predictable to an extent.
And I didn’t mean anything by the capitalized Christian, except to say that most Christian artists are more enthused about singing of His love forever and other such things (which is fine) than speaking about hypocrisy in such an open and forthright way and it isn’t that some secularist is doing the chastising.