The impermanence of street art
Street art has been an accepted and respected form of art for many years. It’s a way of creating identity for urban areas, but also a way for the artists to convey ideas, criticise society or protest governments.
Street art is by nature not everlasting — from the very moment the art work is born, there is a chance it will be repainted. And that’s the beauty of it — only the spectator that is there within the right time frame, can share in the experience of seeing it. An experience that afterwards, will never me shared by someone else again. With this, street art is much closer to our own experience of the impermanence of life than a 16th century Mona Lisa and that’s why we love it. Like us, the art work will eventually die.
There are no realistic ways of conserving street art. Taking out the piece of wall and placing it in a secure place, will eliminate the ‘street’ and turn the work into merely ‘art’. The other way is photography, but a photo of an artwork can never have the same impact on the spectator than the work itself.
It’s an unspoken rule that the more beautiful, impressive or original a work and the more respected the artist, the lower the risk that the art work is gone by tomorrow. Thus, the better the artist and the work, the longer the exposure time that’s granted.
Sometimes, however, the finiteness of street art can be painful. Some examples from Melbourne.
1. The dead disappear
In 2012, New Zealander Owen Dippie created a work of ‘The Joker’, a character of the actor Heath Ledger who passed away in 2008, in the famous Hosier Lane. While the work was seen by many as a beautiful way to honour Ledger, it was repainted in 2013. Australian artist ELK found the new work of low quality and repainted it very shortly afterwards. Good thing: no one can repaint Ledger’s movies.
2. Pretty much everything disappears
Adrian Doyle generated outrage in the artistic community and basically in the Melburnian community as a whole, when he painted the entire Rutledge Lane, after Hosier Lane the most famous graffiti tolerance zone, in an eyesoring baby blue. Even with support of the Melbourne City Council. Previously, Rutledge Lane was a colourful spectacle of tags, stencils, life-size artworks. Now, everything from walls to pavements, the street, bins and pipes was blue. Doyle called the project Empty Nursery Blue Laneway and did it ‘in the name of art’. Doyle wanted to connect the colour ‘Nursery Blue’ which he created to express his Suburbian childhood, to his present self, who spends all his time in the graffiti-lanes of Melbourne. After the project was met with great criticism, he changed his statement and said he wanted to create an empty canvas, a nursery for young talent, and bring Melbourne’s street art to the next level. Doyle’s work existed for about half an hour — then the first bits and pieces were repainted.
3. The grand master disappears
Melbourne once had a collection of nine Banksy’s in its streets, which he created in 2003. Today, there are probably only two left after a series of blunders. Banksy’s iconic rat with parachute disappeared from Hosier Lane, where it was painted on a building without license (even though the City Council permitted it to stay due to Banksy’s international prestige). City cleaners were tasked to clean the rat-infested lane in 2013, during which Banksy’s rat disappeared. Melburnian art expert Ken McGregor compares the mistake with repainting the Mona Lisa. In the same year, two Banksy’s disappeared when the son-in-law of the owner of a church, decided to repaint the church when he was ‘house-sitting’ (or church-sitting).
In 2016, a Banksy was drilled out of a wall in ACDC-lane to make space for a new door. The Banksy was received with pride — as a true monument — in this lane that played an important role in the struggle for the legalisation of street art back in the days. The loss of it is painful for artists and residents, but certainly also for the construction workers. Had they known that a bit of wall with a Banksy on it is worth half a million, then they would probably have taken it out in one piece. One work of Banksy disappeared intentionally when a group of artists or vandals (up to you to choose) threw paint on it and wrote “Banksy woz ere” on it. That’s right: what goes for all other artists, also goes for Banksy — your street art is bound to disappear eventually. That’s again the beauty of street art. Even the work of the grandmaster of street art will not last.
