Art or vandalism?
The grey area between what can be identified as art and what is vandalism is a topic which has endless contrasting opinions. Street art is often portrayed as an act of destruction against an area, commonly associated within a niche group of young delinquents. On the contrary, some view street art as a form of self-expression. Looking into each viewpoint there are reasons to somewhat justify both sides. Street art encapsulates a wide range of art forms, for example; graffiti, stencil graffiti, paste up pieces, posters, stickers, installations and so on. Anyone can create street art; from a professional artist, to a novice, to someone just wanting to get their work out there.
One of the main reasons street art is commonly given a bad reputation is sadly due to stereotypes. Many relate street artists to the small minority who vandalise private property, spray painting their own tag everywhere for example. When in reality street artists take to the outdoors for many reasons.
As a form of decoration; taking what was once a derelict building and turning into something new.
As a way of getting their work noticed; many famous urban artists got their recognition from putting their work so blatantly out there. Stopping people in their tracks and forcing them to look at something they probably wouldn’t have paid attention to elsewhere. For example, Banksy.
Political agenda. A vast proportion of street art has some form of political agenda, whether it be blatantly obvious or hidden it is usually targeting something that is ultimately controversial. Creating conversation for something that needs attention and spreading awareness.
In relation to political agenda, this can be what also gives street art a bad name. Controversy. People who disagree with what is being placed in front of them create a negative impression and relate that to all forms of street art. To put this into context, if you were to go around an art gallery will you like everything you see? Most likely, the answer will be no. But would you question whether it should be considered art? No; because it is in an art gallery.
Bringing this analogy back to street art; Just because something isn’t to someones taste, that doesn’t then disregard it as an art form.
So, what is art? -Anything really. It can be anything visual, audible, even edible. In relation to visual art, there are uncountable amazing artists out there that put paintbrush to canvas to portray their emotions; Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Andy Warhol, David Hockney- to name a few. However, some artists don’t want to confine their pieces to the restrictions of a piece of paper; they needed something more, something with texture, cracks, unlike the surface next to it. This allows them to create pieces individual to the location they are painting/ spraying/pasting it on- and placing them right in front the of the intended audience. Some may say this is smart and others may say it is vandalism, but ultimately it is effective.
It does have to be take into account that sometimes street art isn’t just unwanted because of personal taste, but because of if it’s legally allowed to be there. Sadly a lot of the time graffiti pieces and paste up posters are removed because the owner of the land or the council’s permission for that piece to be placed there.
Following on from this, Shepard Fairey is an extremely well known American contemporary street artist and graphic designer who gained his following starting out on the skateboarding scene. His claim to fame was his original sticker design of an illustration of ‘Andre the Giant’
Very quickly people became interested in these stickers that were only intended for a little self motivated project, they soon started appearing all over Rhode Island generating a buzz and connection amongst the public.
Fairey comments on his inspiration behind the piece of writing that started off his ‘Andre the Giant Has a Posse’ stickers.
“I wrote this piece for class, actually an architecture class, about how the psychology of spaces, their fixtures and details, anything having to do with these, are taken-for-granted interactions people have with faces. So my interpretation was that people take for granted their interaction with public space, public signage and advertising. When something else is thrown into the mix, it is perplexing, if there is no obvious reason for it to be there.”
This is an interesting take on peoples natural reaction towards street art. If a piece of art is presented to you in an out of the norm manner then of course you are going to take some kind of interest in it; figuring out why it is there, what it is and who put it there. This is one of the key powers of street art. Merged with anonymity you get a great deal of curiosity from the public.
Fairey went on to develop his posse sticker, making it into a large paste up poster that he stuck on top of a billboard of ex-con, Buddy Cianci, who was running for mayor of Providence at the time.
Fairey mentions how the billoboard stating “Cianci Never Stopped Caring.” Made him really mad because it didn’t even mean anything.
“I thought changing the billboard would be a pretty dramatic intervention that will affect the quality of the day for a lot of people. While I was looking at newspapers, I saw an ad for Andre the Giant, so why not?”
This was the start of Faireys political intervention street art pieces, His most famous being his Obama ‘Hope’ poster in suppourt of Barak Obama being voted president.
Shepard Fairey has been arrested 16 times, charged with 32 felonies and could have been given an 80 year jail sentence for his street art pieces. Surpisingly this has never stopped Fairey from continuing to put his pieces out into the world, he comments on why;
“Street art is important to me because it goes directly in front of people. There’s no bureaucracy. People say, “Oh, well, the Internet goes directly in front of people,” but it doesn’t have the same visceral human connection. I consider street art to have courage and defiance and something tangible; when people experience that, whether they like it or not, there’s a greater impact. Some people are ired, some people are inspired. Also, it’s something that anybody can do, as long as they’re willing to deal with the consequences if they get caught.”
An 80 year jail sentence for decorating the city and raising political awareness is completely incomprehensible. Yes a large amount of the pieces were put there without permission, but were they harming anyone? What is the real issue affecting society? There doesn’t seem to be one. Placing a young father in jail for 80 years for creating art would be the issue.
