Grafitti as Art

by Tiny

It was 8:30 on a hot Sunday morning at Venice Beach in LA. The sun had been out long enough to cook the asphalt into a black, steaming stew.

Warm tar vapors tose out of that simmering curry. On any other day it would have been too late already to achieve the special quiet an artist needs. But in Venice Beach, on a Sunday morning, only the pigeons were awake. And the saves lightly rippling against the shore.

A medley of swishing palm fronds and the thumps of the occasional runner blended into a cacophony of morning-nature as I swept the canvas with my strokes. I was far from the loud sounds of home, school, poverty and stress that filled my life on every other day.

Suddenly, I heard the low rumbling of an approaching car. The spray can in my hand dropped tohe ground, registering a tinggggggg. I looked up at my work, my art work, on the wall in front of me. I heard the loud ca-chunk of a thick door slam behind me, the heels of heavy boots hit the asphalt and then, “You’re under arrest.”

That was 13 years ago, and I was 14. I was taken to the police station, booked and released. If the Juvenile Crime Prevention Act as now proposed in Washington had been in place, I would have been tried and convicted as an adult, charged with a felony instead of a misdemeanor (under the act, $400 damage is automatically a felony) and served “hard” time for this art “crime.”

Consider the case of Lance Dolan, the 20-year-old San Francisco co “tagger”/artist currently serving a 16-month jail term for vandalism (read graffiti) under a sort-of three strikes law for repeat offenders. The idea is that if you remove young gang members from the streets by incarcerating them, you separate them from the influence of gangs. But this idea fails. The organization of gangs is most powerful in penal institutions and, just to survive, a mere gang wannabe/graffiti artist must become a full-fledged gang member while serving a jail sentence.

And so, the nagging questions: What is art? What makes something “vandalism” instead of site-specific public art?

For example, what of the art of Rigo, known for his large, single word messages on the walls of large San Francisco buildings?

What of Barry McGee, known for his graffiti, praised and sanctioned by art critics? How do we know “tagging” from a “text-based art piece” such as the conceptual work of Barbara Kruger?

And how should we look at fashion designers who borrow the look of the streets when creating $3,000 graffiti-inspired jeans?

Perhaps the difference is resources and education. I and most of my very poor friends never had the financial resources to go to art school, one of the channels to recognition in the visual arts, validation and a chance to leap inside the margins of acceptability.

My lack of access to an education, luck or financial resources ensured that my art would remain on the “outside” – and reliant on the art critiques of the Gang Task Force. My art and the art of Lance Dolan remain illegal, unsanctioned and undeserving of any title except “vandalism.”

Tagging: The act of writing of one’s name, initials or a message, i.e. a tag.

That’s a definition, but is tagging art? To which I answer, is Dada artist Marchel Duchamp’s found art urinal, which he entitled “Fountain” and entered in a 1913 art show, art?

What of the abstract expressionists in the 60s who splashed large – some would say ugly – globs of paint on a canvas and called it art? Was that more “art” than taggers’ works because the abstract expressionists owned the canvases – and often sold them for several thousand dollars – and taggers do not?

Other important questions are: What or who determines that the absence of graffiti on a wall makes it desirable? In other words, that the public lack of color, shape and form is the way things should be?

In indigenous cultures throughout history as well as in Greco-Roman times, it was normal to use walls for messages, images, the recording of history and art.

How have we created a society that is so enthralled with the cleanliness, blankness or whiteness of everything? The homogenous corporate aesthetic has become our norm.

Nationwide, communities converge for the “great neighborhood graffiti clean-up.” On one such graffiti clean-up in The City recently, a cleaner admitted that as soon as he cleaned the wall, someone would “tag” it.

Bu, never fear, the cleaner said, he would be there to “fix” it. Could it be that, in an odd way, a new form of marginal collaboration is in progress, or is it just another example of Americans working for the corporate vision, even if by default?

Solutions? Use some of the financial resources directed at gang task forces and building more prisons into well-developed art programs for inner city and poor rural school districts.

And, as we approach the millennium, we need to re-think our society’s notion of what is art and what is canvas. Otherwise, we will continue to incarcerate our most determined art-makers who are attempting, as are all artists, to be seen, heard and recognized.