The Fight and Flight of Street Art

In Poland. By Natalia Rak.

As a rule, respectable people are inclined to think of street art as vandalism, and in many cases they are right to do so. For the most part, they are thinking of graffiti in its depictions of gang signs, obscenities, or general absurd ugliness or mundanity: "The Dell," "Klue," "F*ck what they think," etc. We are apt to judge objects by their worst traits, as we do each other.

But, primarily suburbanites, we offer ourselves little exposure to the world. The graffiti we encounter is generated by those not so unlike ourselves as we like to think -- suburbanites, perhaps disgruntled teens or young adults who just need to shout and get out.

In the cities, the centers of business and the pretentious avant-garde, where the battle for the soul rages more fiercely and the opposing voices clash and shatter against one another, there is a presence that knows it cannot reach its audience with mere mediocrity or annoyance. It knows that it must put up a fight to be seen, to be felt, and to transform. Extraordinary and intrusive -- it can be no less.

In Lodz, Poland. By ETAM Cru.

Beyond the merely sexy and suggestive, beyond the mere representation of culture or its values as they stand, there are some artists who are weaving a new tale, telling a new story, teaching by gift, service.

Such beautiful, complex works of art on the building walls are the artists' heart on a plate. One does not destroy such things unless through guilt, self-hatred, agony -- and such marks (such cuts on the face of Our Lady of Częstochowa, for instance) are the sign of a war on beauty, a war on the self.

But why is the "vandalism" of graffiti necessary? It is not "necessary," per se, but imminent, just as the destruction of countries, cities, lives is imminent in any war. Modernity made its war on the person long ago, and street art fights back with love. The world tears out her hair, and he crowns her head with flowers to assuage the loss. Street art now is a true revolt. It is the mother who, suffering, says no to the child.

It is true that many artists today, more than ever, are isolated within their world. The selective social media that effectively operates our daily lives makes sure of this. But the artist does not want to be seen by other artists only. Even more than this, he must not be seen by other artists only. The artist is for the world. Like Christ, he draws when there is nothing left to say, even if he must draw in the sand, or on a concrete slab.

One of Andre Amador's Playa Paintings

The hardened law is what must be broken, taught, and with such non-aggression as a flower in its gun barrel, a sad human face on its corporate morgue.

The world was made of and for color, light, play, and passion deep as the blue of the deepest sea. And to combat it with handcuffs or paint-overs is to bend the natural law and to hasten one's own death. The cities need "illicit" art because they have become dungeons. And even art that hangs limp on gallery walls can suffer the glare of the evaluative modern mind. Churn, spit, rotate -- that is our definition of sophistication. And when the museum-infected red square #24 plays in service of that mind, laying out a sea of blood to be filled with the self's own manufactured ideals of libertinism and commerce ... it too has gone to the gallows and hung itself.

Lodz, Poland. The site of a wondrous artistic phenomenon. Murals of gigantic proportions appear in panoply upon the broadsided buildings throughout the city, with subjects ranging from the grotesque to the pastoral -- all done with skill. And, strangely enough, embraced unreservedly.

by Aryz

From the Huffington Post: "The public/private partnership and the addition of the artwork has attracted business and investment, and of course urban exploring tourists who can follow a map to see the works within a couple of hours. As a model for employing the talents of street artists to create public art in service of the re-invigoration of a city, this one appears to be very successful at respecting the work while adding value to a neighborhood, district, city, and community." (Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jaime-rojo-steven-harrington/large-murals-transform-lodz_b_3428241.html)

The immediate subject of all art is life, regardless of what is portrayed. It is a commentary and a question, an appeal and a message. It should always inspire the sort of activity mentioned in the above article. Unfortunately, it often encounters a different response:

In Greenpoint, NY. By Banksy.

Thanks be to God, the same intelligent minds whose art is destroyed in the service of an arbitrary and disjointed sense of order know just how to respond. When small arms fail, send a missile.

In London, England

by Banksy

As Banksy says, "Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better-looking place."

I am certainly not promoting unrestrained hooliganism, nor am I condemning the justified burial of offensive material -- unless it offends for the right reason. One retains one's right to his property if he is a good steward of it. For instance, the Lodz venture might be considered good stewardship: if you find yourself in possession of a great ugly gray block of concrete, it is a good decision to fill it with something beautiful. 

However, if you place your animal in insufferable conditions ... or you do the same to humanity by denying its better voices, you have lost your rights. You are a failure as a steward to the earth, and what is government but an appointed steward to act for the best interests of humanity. At this point, someone else must assume the throne. And authority is not given the steward to deny the return of the king.

In "The Duty of Society to the Artist," E.M. Forster provides a helpful illustration of the conversation between an artist who wishes to paint a mural and a city official. The city official is very happy to pay the artist, but wants to know exactly what the artist shall paint (for it must, of course, thinks the official, be of service, of usefulness, to the state). The artist does not know what he shall paint. He needs to begin. He needs to create, experiment. He is not an engineer or a chemist. He is an artist, and the artist makes out of love, not out of mere design. His creations do not have a purpose, per se, but a meaning. They are not schemes, but the story of life itself, manifesting the reflective nature of man toward himself and the cosmos. They are appeals to the deepest and truest sensibilities of human nature, and thus allow the elusive Real to be actualized as the imagination takes hold and seeks to make itself like unto beauty.

But the city official shakes his head. He does not understand, nor does he care. He is a vandal, unknowing.

We can do with no more vandals. Plenty of vandals have made our love run cold, placed it under fire of scientism's laser beams. I say let the love pour out upon the city streets. Let the snowy-capped mountains be moved to the weirdly Mordor-esque towers of New York and Chicago. Let Banksy be Banksy. His money's where his mouth is and he can bank with mine anytime (with some -- or many --reservations, of course). 

At least let the artists go back to the streets without timidity. Art is to be seen, remarked upon, rejected if need be. But it must be seen. 

Go out and make fishers of men. Go out and be praised and shamed, for is this not your calling, the very essence of your work? Its public nature, its communal nature? Go out and paint the stars back into the sky. Go and replant trees in the most unjungled of concrete jungles; remain to water the feeble saplings. Go out and paint icons of the kings of men, and dare the world to mutilate its very face. Go out and dare. Go out and make fishers of men.

Bydgoszcz, Poland. Mural by Pener and Sepe.

A Defense of Child-bearing

Frantisek Kupka, "The Beginning of Life"

Who has been blessed with those mysterious moments in which an infant for the first time toddles forward on her feet, unaided by any guiding hand or low object, in deep concentration upon the next step? In these moments especially do we not empathize most readily with the parents of this beautiful creature, and wish ourselves progenitors and recipients of this most wondrous gift that can only be divine? Love surges in our hearts, mysterious love without the need for rationale, mysterious love that gives birth to hope, hope that asserts the goodness of this new and curious life. 

Some say that a pregnant mother is irradiated with the burgeoning life within her, that her eyes are alight with the joy of expectation. We, as witnesses of this joy, must wonder how there may be any question as to the benefit of having children, of raising a healthy and numerous family. The more persons, we would say, the better. The greater number of human beings in society, the greater chance that society may grow to be great, not only in size but in quality. Saying “yes” to the possibility of children is the ultimate social act, the ultimate affirmation of the human community, and the ultimate renunciation of selfish interests. Yes, one should have children, if only because one must have children if history is to continue. We know by the very fact of mortality that the story we live is not our own. We prepare, well or poorly as the case may be, for those who come after.

The object, then, is to prepare well, and to prepare well first of all requires the existence of the reason for which we prepare: children themselves. As Pope John Paul II has said, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” If we are to “plan for the future,” as we moderns so proudly declaim, we must not postpone or neglect the begetting of the stewards of the future. What use is a future without people? We are always speaking of the “avant-garde” in art or technology or politics as a state to be envied, and yet this obsession becomes insane when we are equally obsessed with maintaining an isolation and a lack of responsibility that contradicts this very attraction for newness by claiming it only for our moribund selves. Indeed, on a very rational level, whether or not we “like” children, humanity is nothing without reproduction. Children are the very proof that only love is eternal and we ourselves are ash.

The French spirit of this age, the spirit of ethnic extinction, is one that upraises the image of the unbound self, free and unfettered by worldly ties or the demands of relationships. The mobility to do as one pleases is prized above all else. “This existence, this here and now,” the modern Frenchman might say, “is the great thing, the only occupation worth intellectual or spiritual involvement.” And yet, by agreeing with the Frenchman, we would most ardently disagree. The idolization of the independent self above all else is the same as the hatred of the self above all else, for the self is nothingness without relationship to others, divine or human. The self asserts nothing if it does not assert the perfection of itself, which lies – unexpectedly to some – in the engendering and nurturing of new life like oneself, an infinite affirmation of self-worth. Imagine the great pain and emptiness felt by Hannah as she wept and prayed in the temple, mourned her childlessness in abject loneliness in the darkened tent, swept her garments about her to cover the shame of being known, facelessness being better than barrenness. How she wept and prayed, a woman beginning to wrinkle with age – but what did the purity of desire gain her, all her attentions devoted in ecstasy toward a possible and improbable new life to give hers meaning: reward. Reward in another heartbeat to join her own in the acclamation, the drumbeat and song of life's praise.

We take the ability to procreate for granted, as if this seemingly ubiquitous biological ability we must necessarily also possess. Would it not be a terrible shame if those who now artificially postpone the possibility of children until they have reached what they deem as the appropriate time find themselves, when that time arrives, to be incapable of the greatest blessing afforded us in our briefness upon this earth? Is this awesome blessing, then, not to be pursued with passion and dear effort? Are we not to bend all our will upon the attainment of this treasure that ratifies the very proposition that life is worth living? Are we not to be exceedingly grateful if we are able in the requirements of circumstance to conceive and bear a child? Indeed, we must be and we must do, for as we believe there is a soul, children are a gift from the Divine, and therefore sacred from their conception, and what is sacred must be sought without ceasing.

Dark Quiltwork

Mercedes Benz G-class

          I recently had the terrible misfortune of seeing the above vehicle up close and in person. You, too, may be surprised that Mercedes Benz produces such an eyesore. What is worse, aesthetically challenged individuals are buying and driving the thing, affronting the senses of their fellow men wherever they go. Maybe you want to say, “Craig, it’s a matter of personal preference – some people might think the Mercedes G-class is a beautiful vehicle.” To which I might answer something like, “No, your favorite ice cream flavor is a matter of personal preference.” Similar to the architect, the car designer has the opportunity to design something orderly and pleasing to the senses. As exhibited, some fail.

Beyond offending others, what utility does the G-class have? It may serve the purpose that every other vehicle serves – getting one from A to B – but if that is all, why make it the way it is? After all, modern society generally gives up on beauty in hope of utility. Now, it seems, there are monstrosities about that are neither beautiful nor practical. Take, for example, the EMP Museum in Seattle, WA: surely, such a contortion does not provide practical space. 

One gets the sense from examples like the G-class or the EMP Museum that there is no real purpose to their design. The Mercedes’ engineer designed the vehicle because he could. Frank Gehry designed the EMP Museum the way he did because he could. The museum claims to be "dedicated to the ideas and risk-taking that fuel contemporary popular culture"; I'm sure if you asked, Mr. Gehry would say that his design is supposed to embody those ideas and risk-taking. What ideas are those, what risk is he really taking?  

The building does not offer an opportunity for contemplation but for confusion. If one looks long enough, one might see three mangled hearts with aorta, atrium, and artery amiss, as if snipped and blowing in the wind. What one does not see, no matter how long and hard one looks, is the real in light of an ideal. There is no revelation, no unfolding, no invitation to a sacred space. Ross wrote a short piece, not long ago, where he described “a great “veil,” if not a black curtain” that Marcel Duchamp has helped bring “over reality: the anti-avante-garde in art.” The museum design is not a vanguard, not a forerunner; it does not lead the way to something beyond the chaos of our world. It is one of the many quilting squares that make up the dark curtain that hangs over reality today.