It will be interesting to see if anything changes when we see the Banksy show and what happens when graffiti enters the gallery. Is it still graffiti? I do like the aesthetics of some of those photos, I must admit. Nicer to look at than concrete …
When there was a Banksy exhibition there, the man himself painted sheep flocking over a bridge to the arts building where it was held. He also did something massive and lovely on a huge pillar right outside the arts centre. All this was immediately covered in municipal grey which seemed extremely stupid.
Likewise, an environmental group did some ‘clean’ graffiti outside a government building, marking their message by cleaning the words onto the pavement. Did the government - clean the whole pavement to get rid of the offending graffiti? Paint over it? Concrete over it? Pick the most ludicrous option - that’s what happened.
Jun 28, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Neil Scott
I’m surprised by your stance! I find it difficult to begrudge surreptitious graffiti: I can barely conceive of any example without getting drawn into the wondrous ambiguity of the intentionality of the mark vs the impotent tedium of Without; as for commissioned murals, even when beautiful and thematically evocative, I can’t shake the immanent pompous vacuity of the exceptional sanctioned object and its inevitable juxtaposed sanitised earthiness — it forever appears as a ratified insult to the natural art form it stands in contrast to.
I could go into formal ideological segues as to Rights WRT material & intellectual economy: who owns the space, the surface, the thought, the right to impress an idea, the propriety of protocols … but in this instance I think they’d be post-hoc rationalisations.
A cool anecdote from my folks is that they used to live in the flat pictured on the poster for the film Notting Hill: but when they were there it had “CUNT” sprayed over the door in bright pink. Nowadays in Reading there’s a broad civic concern to ‘preserve’ the gaol (what of it and how and why and to what ends is a basket case); the chestnut trees along its riverbank wall have all been felled but special structural protection has been put in place (and for a while, a police guard!) to keep our very own anodyne Banksy on its main road facing wall.
The creatively inclined people of Reading tend to migrate to Bristol, where innumerable end-of-townhouse-terrace façades are covered with teal & pink gradients colouring in images of young heterogenously beautiful womens faces in pensive repose, and teenagers won’t flinch as you walk past them adding to the palimpsest of the local bridge. Perhaps it’s a model for how graffiti becomes an assimilated legitimate form of civic art, but it doesn’t speak to the things I hear when I saw ‘zeяo’ on a street corner behind a bench which has also been removed.
I wonder about this 'legalised walls' policy for a few reasons. Firstly, the transgression of graffiti is presumably at least part of the raison d'etre for some or all graffiti artists. Secondly, and more interestingly, the limited supply of wall space which would be legal would mean that the turnover rates of graffiti would be much faster, giving a much-reduced sense of permanence and therefore cachet. I feel like these legal walls would be like public whiteboards—too banal to be a decent substitute for a clandestine, permanent statement. Still, for those that actually just like using spray paint as an end-in-itself, they would probably be a good thing.
Wow, the above paragraph is very, very, parenthetical, and I should probably, without delay, be required to clean it up, as a matter of public decency, in what we might call, metaphorically, a town square.
Having moved away in late 2020, I was quite shocked by the picture that looks like a stairway at Clyde Street. I was last along there in around 2018 and I don’t recall any graffiti there then, so really does seem like a sad decline.
It will be interesting to see if anything changes when we see the Banksy show and what happens when graffiti enters the gallery. Is it still graffiti? I do like the aesthetics of some of those photos, I must admit. Nicer to look at than concrete …
Some illustrations from Hong Kong:
When there was a Banksy exhibition there, the man himself painted sheep flocking over a bridge to the arts building where it was held. He also did something massive and lovely on a huge pillar right outside the arts centre. All this was immediately covered in municipal grey which seemed extremely stupid.
Likewise, an environmental group did some ‘clean’ graffiti outside a government building, marking their message by cleaning the words onto the pavement. Did the government - clean the whole pavement to get rid of the offending graffiti? Paint over it? Concrete over it? Pick the most ludicrous option - that’s what happened.
I thought you might enjoy reading about the King of Kowloon - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsang_Tsou-choi
Wonderful. Thank you. Interesting that the graffiti he did started from a sense of ownership.
I’m surprised by your stance! I find it difficult to begrudge surreptitious graffiti: I can barely conceive of any example without getting drawn into the wondrous ambiguity of the intentionality of the mark vs the impotent tedium of Without; as for commissioned murals, even when beautiful and thematically evocative, I can’t shake the immanent pompous vacuity of the exceptional sanctioned object and its inevitable juxtaposed sanitised earthiness — it forever appears as a ratified insult to the natural art form it stands in contrast to.
I could go into formal ideological segues as to Rights WRT material & intellectual economy: who owns the space, the surface, the thought, the right to impress an idea, the propriety of protocols … but in this instance I think they’d be post-hoc rationalisations.
A cool anecdote from my folks is that they used to live in the flat pictured on the poster for the film Notting Hill: but when they were there it had “CUNT” sprayed over the door in bright pink. Nowadays in Reading there’s a broad civic concern to ‘preserve’ the gaol (what of it and how and why and to what ends is a basket case); the chestnut trees along its riverbank wall have all been felled but special structural protection has been put in place (and for a while, a police guard!) to keep our very own anodyne Banksy on its main road facing wall.
The creatively inclined people of Reading tend to migrate to Bristol, where innumerable end-of-townhouse-terrace façades are covered with teal & pink gradients colouring in images of young heterogenously beautiful womens faces in pensive repose, and teenagers won’t flinch as you walk past them adding to the palimpsest of the local bridge. Perhaps it’s a model for how graffiti becomes an assimilated legitimate form of civic art, but it doesn’t speak to the things I hear when I saw ‘zeяo’ on a street corner behind a bench which has also been removed.
You should write a blog, Barney. I would read it.
I tend to find official sanctioned street art feels like socialist realism for the current regime but it is anonymous enough to ignore.
I can’t shake the sense that tagging is a weird egotistic troll.
It is an interesting subject and I need to revisit and live with it a bit longer. I am booked in to see Banksy so maybe then.
I wonder about this 'legalised walls' policy for a few reasons. Firstly, the transgression of graffiti is presumably at least part of the raison d'etre for some or all graffiti artists. Secondly, and more interestingly, the limited supply of wall space which would be legal would mean that the turnover rates of graffiti would be much faster, giving a much-reduced sense of permanence and therefore cachet. I feel like these legal walls would be like public whiteboards—too banal to be a decent substitute for a clandestine, permanent statement. Still, for those that actually just like using spray paint as an end-in-itself, they would probably be a good thing.
Wow, the above paragraph is very, very, parenthetical, and I should probably, without delay, be required to clean it up, as a matter of public decency, in what we might call, metaphorically, a town square.
It is pertinent and true. I like it. We’re all in an experimental safe space on total integration.
Having moved away in late 2020, I was quite shocked by the picture that looks like a stairway at Clyde Street. I was last along there in around 2018 and I don’t recall any graffiti there then, so really does seem like a sad decline.
Oh Pandah argues that the only way out is through. https://twitter.com/ColourWaysGLA/status/1670888060848861191