CHAPTER 6: Graffiti and art history — What can graffiti teach us about NFTs?
Intro:
In the last text (Chapter 5), we talked about how contemporary art has a parameter of what is “artistic” based on itself. The loss of meaning comes with the dissolution of an univocal sense of what is aesthetic beauty in art. This was aggravated in the 18th-19th centuries due to the historical reflexivity of the West, that is, the conceptualization of the work of art: it now has a meaning that dialogues with its history, that is, the other works of art that start to provide references and meaning for a given current work. The concept of a work of art becomes the key to achieve the experience of beauty.
After all, the common experience of art seeks the meaning of the work, doesn’t it? When you see a film, you always look for the plot, the meaning produced in that language. Pure and direct contemplation as it existed in Greece or in the Middle Ages, which in art had a direct relationship with the divine — as it was from where its meaning came from — , is no longer found in the collective and common imagination of what art is.
In this text, we intend to illustrate how this diagnosis reverberated deeply in the 20th century. To allude to this, I propose that the city is a form of art medium. What does that mean? This means that the city is both the canvas on which the artist paints and the medium through which this art is propagated, like a mirror, one work of art reflecting the other.
Graffiti:
Graffiti has always been present in humanity since urbanity emerged. What sets up graphite? Its use in collective space as an art medium, as we had said. There is a communicability between the works of art within the collective space, so that a given work has an effective presence in this space. Therefore, it cannot be said that the cave paintings of Lascaux are art, since they were not made in an urban context and their degree of communicability was not reflexive, while graffiti in Rome or Greece was used as a form of communication social manifestation with a personalized character, that is, there was a style of its own.
Graffiti as an art form is fundamentally signified by a subjective conception of art and that is why the notion of personalization in the style of graffiti is so important. However, graffiti is not entirely subjective. It was born in the city and for the city, with the individuality of each artist.
Is graffiti art? If we follow the previous booklet, we will definitely say yes. However, the classical conception considers art as within a canon and that it deserves to be exposed. We would have a serious contradiction there: graffiti is what, by definition, is not in the museum, and art is what is in the museum, so graffiti would not be art. We know that this is not perceived like that anymore (we even have several street artists exposed, like Basquiat and Banksy), but common sense still interprets it that way.
Graffiti within the conceptual order:
If the work of art has moved from the meaning of aesthetic beauty to conceptual beauty, what exactly does graffiti mean then? We talked about how art itself creates its own meaning. Where does graffiti get its meaning from? If the street is the medium in which graffiti is propagated and the street is not the place for art, then that is a crime. The history of Graffiti is linked to the history of urban vandalism. The respect that each street artist has is connected with the difficulty in expressing that message — as, for example, a certain place of difficult access.
The art produced is also outrageous: the more it denounces an unbearable reality, the more effective it is. In this sense, graffiti is subversive and, therefore, so defamed to the point of being stripped of its place as art. The street is the medium of urban art because it is where it cannot be imprisoned, it must be free by essence, so that the denunciation that art makes comes from the city and for the city as well. Everything that gives rise to revolt: growing inequality, injustice and the very repression of freedom of expression — after all, why couldn’t a street artist denounce that message? What is so problematic about expressing an unbearable reality? Now, isn’t this a benign function, which belongs to anyone who wants to be just? Is it not the index finger the finger of justice, that is, to point and denounce a crime?
One could argue about material damage, as a public asset, as an effect of street art. However, street art is denouncing something that is the principle prior to this: to whom does public property belong? the res-publica — the public thing — belongs to everyone who is a citizen. By affirming that urban art is not art and that, therefore, it is a violence against a heritage, it is affirming that the meaning of that art, since it is conceptual by essence, is meaningless! If that art has no meaning, it is because it is invalid. If that art is invalidated, the very citizenship of whoever produced that art is invalidated.
The Virtual Space:
The urban space is everyone’s space, par excellence. Virtual space has not yet been conquered by everyone. Yet. Are there contradictions and injustices on the internet? Yes. When incorruptible values are placed below any value, such as the capital, injustice is being generated. However, the internet is the best we have in terms of communicability, interdependence and reach with all the speed it provides.
We make our own the words of artist Joseph Beuys: “Freeing people is the goal of art; therefore, art, for me, is the science of freedom”. We believe that the internet will be the collective space par excellence of the future. Therefore, virtualization will be the unfolding and continuum of urban space.
There are still serious problems of who says what on the internet — freedom of expression does not mean unrestricted freedom. We also know that art expresses what words cannot in their logical clarity. In this sense that art enables a deep collective transformation. As art is what is recognized among itself by a medium, it is a historical duty, and for a greater sense of what the art of the future may become — which is still under construction — , to recognize which type of art will appear more. As if each computer were a mural and each one who perceives an art, a producer of it.
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