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Initially I was disinclined to write about this whole silly affair, but an essay in the New York Times sent me over the edge. First, let it be known that I\u2019m a supporter of street art, and have dabbled in it myself.<\/p>\n
I feel that its methods, even though largely prohibited, can be perfectly appropriate – if the result is the circumvention of the elite art world with the intent of introducing art into everyday life, an oppositional “art for the people” if you will.<\/p>\n
However, when it comes to “being with the people” there\u2019s a big difference between political practice and facile rhetoric. I realize that what I\u2019m about to say may be construed as politically incorrect by those who exalt and defend street art, but I\u2019m bemused by this faux controversy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I feel a bit like Winston Smith, the lead character in George Orwell\u2019s haunting dystopic novel, 1984<\/em>. In one memorable chapter from that book, Smith stumbles into a shabby antique shop and discovers a glass paperweight. The delicate ornament has no value in the harsh social order Smith is a part of, it is an utterly useless thing disdained by the authoritarians who run society and forgotten by everyone else. The object\u2019s sheer loveliness makes it a dangerous and subversive thing. Smith falls in love with the glass orb, realizing that it represents something banished from his reality… beauty.<\/p>\n Now beauty is found in many things, and indeed it can be discovered on the surface of wheat-pasted graphics posted on grimy city streets. But I\u2019m not about to trade my elegant glass paperweight for a tattered grimy old poster. If we are to defend art, yes, there are battles to be fought on the avenues, but shouldn\u2019t we also aim higher?<\/p>\n Street art by its very nature is implicitly political, whether it\u2019s done for aesthetic reasons or not. It conveys a social message in that it redefines public space as delineated by the law. Some street art transforms cheerless urban squalor into colorful outdoor art galleries and gives voice to those who cannot pay inordinate amounts of money to have their ideas “legally” presented to the multitudes. But let\u2019s be clear and direct, there are those who participate in street art because they have a social vision, and those who participate because it offers an opportunistic fast track to fame and fortune.<\/p>\n By breaking the sanctified laws of private property, street art has been classified as “vandalism,” however, let’s be honest… who wants their property vandalized?<\/p>\n In some quarters having an outlaw reputation no doubt comes in handy, and such swaggering “street cred” allows one to huff and puff a great deal, so there\u2019s no mystery as to why elite art circles, enamored of the bizarre and always in search of the “next big thing,” have embraced such gimmickry.<\/p>\n In our media saturated society it\u2019s a given that an individual with the resolve to blanket a city\u2019s walls with their tedious street art posters, and then follow up with a series of showy press conferences and gallery exhibits – will become the focus of a media feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n While lucrative careers have blossomed in this manner, exactly how have the arts been advanced? Thousands of serious and dedicated artists whose marvelous works deserve acknowledgement go ignored as the media is mesmerized by the shenanigans of a gaggle of art stars. There is more than a ring of truth to the Splasher Manifesto, when it states: “The present and banal methods of confronting the prevailing social order through street art have become rotten and rigidified into methods of commodification.”<\/p>\n There are finer points to discuss, like why untold numbers of hideous corporate sponsored billboards despoiling a community are considered legal, while a single unauthorized and non-commercial street poster or graffiti is considered criminal. But to squabble about minutiae takes us from the subject at hand. Street art is ephemeral and was never meant to be long lasting, its romantic and poetic resonance can be found in its transient quality – like those realistic chalk pastel drawings we\u2019ve all seen done on sidewalks. It can also be said that some street artists routinely destroy the works of other street artists.<\/p>\n The most celebrated graffiti, stencil art, and wheat-pasted posters are only the top most layer of artworks buried in the fierce competition to be seen and recognized. In that sense, street art is more the counterpart of the cutthroat advertising ethic than a heartfelt gesture of human solidarity.<\/p>\n Most street art was long ago co-opted by the elite art world, and the example of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the 1980\u2019s should be proof enough of that. Without question, this is the other aspect to the street art chronicles that I find particularly obnoxious. While I appreciate some street art for its whimsy, boldness and occasional insights, I don\u2019t think it can in any way be equated to the higher arts. While I\u2019m an advocate of a multiplicity of styles, I believe that the wholesale espousal of street art aesthetics has lead to a debilitated capacity to discern quality and profundity. We have in essence traded in the talented and disciplined muralists of old for pranksters who wheat-paste self-promoting pabulum onto our city walls.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never understood how Shepard Fairey\u2019s minimalist and obscurest street art portraits of the late wrestling champion, Andre the Giant, have come to be interpreted as meaningful and profound art – Fairey\u2019s statements notwithstanding. He has said his Obey Giant<\/em> posters “stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings, because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious.”<\/p>\n That statement seems little more than self-serving claptrap to me, giving some credence to the Splasher\u2019s attacks upon “a cultural realm which revealed a content of commodity recuperation behind the fa\u00e7ade of pseudo opposition.” That is especially so now that Fairey\u2019s artworks display $40,000 price tags. I\u2019m not opposed to an artist making money, goodness knows I\u2019m trying to do that myself, I do after all enjoy food on my table and a roof over my head. But there is a difference between having a career and being a careerist. Page thirteen of the Splasher Manifesto puts it all in focus:<\/p>\n “There are those who have begun rejoicing over graffiti’s inevitable deterioration out of the realm of criminality and into the world of legitimacy, petrification, and those festering institutions so well respected within the culture vulture circles. And as always stripping every last piece of warm flesh to the bone, so it continues with the Brooklyn Museum’s recent exhibition of regurgitated vandalism gone mad with territoriality, individualism, and technique. And of course a degree in the fine arts never hurts does it? So let the floodgates of dissertations and resumes open with their doctorates already in hand!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/if_we_did_it-400x603.jpg\")