Accidental Art Abolition: Implications
In November of 2018, the City Council passed ordinance by the mayor to create a public art registry for murals on Chicago buildings across the city. Spearheaded by Alderman Brian Hopkins of the 2nd ward, the city will provide and design a unique, three-dimensional marker to be attached to murals on the registry to protect and distinguish them from graffiti. The details of the marker have not yet been decided but will aim to make it difficult to counterfeit.
While some are applauding the initiative to protect public street art in the city, the need for a registry carries with it a history of concerns regarding access, accidents and the impact of art on local communities.
Hopkins decided to push forward with the idea of the registry following an instance from March of 2018 in which city cleanup crews accidentally removed artwork on the Cards Against Humanity office headquarters in Lincoln Yards by Blek le Rat, a renowned French public street artist. Also known as the father of stencil graffiti, Blek le Rat’s work on the side of the privately-owned building came down amid a frenzy of cleaning operations in neighborhoods with building sites under consideration by Amazon at the time for its second headquarters (since then, Amazon has instead decided to split its HQ2 between Long Island City in New York and Arlington, Virginia).
Progress halted on the introduction of the registry until the problem of public street art erasure escalated in August of 2018 when a mural by locally renowned Chicago artist JC Rivera was painted over at the Paulina brown line stop. The mural was commissioned by the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce using taxpayer dollars as part of the Low-Line Project, which aims to turn a stretch of land under the train tracks into a pedestrian walkway that connects the neighborhood.
While Rivera generally avoided speaking outwardly on the washing of the mural, he did provide a brief comment to the Chicago Tribune: “I’m a working artist, this is what I do for a living. I give a lot to the community, I live in Chicago. So I would like people to know that,” Rivera says. “I wasn’t doing anything bad. I’m trying to inspire people and let people know that, hey, if you want to be an artist, you can make it.”
Instead of expressing anger or frustration, a justifiable reaction given the circumstances, Rivera felt inclined to defend the legitimacy of his work as well as the ethics of his actions. Even as an artist who was commissioned and sanctioned by the local authority to create his mural on the space provided, it seems that occurrences like these have traditionally leaned towards viewing the artist more like an offender and less like a victim.
Those who question the significance of accidents like these might be underestimating the sheer impact and importance of art in the public sphere. Art in the street is, in a sense, rhetorical. Even though the meaning of graffiti or a mural can be subject to individual interpretations and preferences, no one can deny that exposure to public street art in the environment of daily life alters and influences whoever encounters it, whether they are conscious of it or not. In fact, murals and other forms of public art contribute crucially to how many of us perceive Chicago as well as our own neighborhoods and public places within them.
Take the Low-Line project that Rivera was commissioned for as an example. Traditionally, the spaces underneath CTA tracks have often been considered sketchy and dangerous; poor lighting, littered garbage, scarce interaction and unkept landscaping are just a few of the factors that contribute to these perceptions. The Low-Line project aims to repurpose this space and bring it a new vitality as a public space of engagement for the Lakeview community. Everything from installing new lights to the commission of public art murals contributes in complex ways to the transformation of a space and how people within spaces perceive them.
These spaces do not simply come into existence; they are actively constructed by the community and constantly in flux, changing and responding within a historical network of other interrelated places, people and things. The presence of Rivera’s mural contributed to the public space of Lakeview, and its erasure ultimately strips the space and the community of something that defines them.
Some argue that the lack of preservation in instances such as these should come to be expected with street art. When a developing South Loop apartment tower blocked a large mural created by internationally acclaimed street artist Hebru Brantley, he responded to DNA Info Chicago by claiming “That is the nature of street art. It is the idea of creating something that may not be permanent.” Brantley seems to believe that those who create public street art should come to terms with the potentially temporary existence as part of its nature.
With the development of the mural registry, the nature of public street art in Chicago might change with the coming sanction and protection of these works. However, with obscurity and vagueness still shrouding the details of the registry, those responsible for maintaining it will face a lot of tough questions. Who gets a say in which murals and other forms of public street art can be added to the registry? By what criteria will works be accepted or denied? How will this registry affect the creation of future public street art, and will it change the meaning?
It looks like street artists and members of the community will be left with more questions than answers while the details of the registry are being finalized. Until then, you want want to think twice about how various kinds of public street art contribute to your neighborhood and influence your life before you decide to dial 311 for a cleanup job.
