Jonathan Jones’ Attack on Street Art
Posted: April 21st, 2009 | Author: RJ | Filed under: Featured Posts, Random | Tags: banksy, jonathan jones | 7 Comments »I’ve just read Jonathan Jones’ piece on why he considered nominating Banksy for the Turner Prize. In it Jones brushes street art aside as a lesser art form and nothing but “something that scares old people on estates.” This is not the first time Jones has been critical of street art or Banksy in particular, but it is odd, as just a few months ago, he suggested that state-funded graffiti murals could help discover the next Jackson Pollock.
So maybe Jones only likes graffiti and not street art. Fine. I’ll accept that, even though it raises the much larger issue of what is graffiti and what is street art (a topic for another day, not that anybody really knows a good answer to that question). Back to Jones’ original point.
The paragraph I take the most issue with is this one:
Anyway, I believe in education. The reason I don’t like street art is that it’s not aesthetic, it’s social. To celebrate it is to celebrate ignorance, aggression, all the things our society excels at. For middle class people to find artistic excitement in something that scares old people on estates is a bit sick.
How is street art not aesthetic? How can Jones look at the work done by artists like Adam Neate or Swoon and say “those artists clearly had no intention of creating a beautiful image, or if they did, they have failed miserably?” Maybe Jones is just not exposed to enough street art. The media tends to focus on street artists doing stencils (all good and well, just not usually, save for C215, primarily about creating a pretty picture), and Jones is in the media so he sees the street art that the rest of the media shows him.
And again, this whole bit about street art scaring old people. Has he ventured to look outside of Banksy, Nick Walker, and D*Face? Jose Parla is certainly not intending to scare old people with his work.
There is hope for you yet Mr. Jones. I would urge you to have a look at a few of these street and urban artists who might be more to your liking:
1. Adam Neate
2. Matt Small
3. Jose Parla
4. Judith Supine
5. Keith Haring
6. Dan Witz
7. Swoon
8. Doze Green
9. Faile
10. JR
Any other suggestions for Mr. Jones? I just did this list off the top of my head, so I’m sure I’m missing plenty of people.
Thanks to Caroline W1 sending me Jones’ article
Related posts:
- Doze Green and Josh Keyes at Jonathan LeVine tomorrow
- Street artists take on Hirst
- Vandalog’s London Street Art Tour
- The structure of street art
- Invader & WK Interact @ Jonathan Levine
Get new posts by Email
I think you may have read the article wrong: what he’s saying is that street art = graffiti. He sees no difference between anything outside of his precious gallery system. Everything on walls is the same (and he understands none of it, not the culture, the history, the traditions, the rules, the innovations, the life, nothing, it’s all scrawl to him). Because we all know that graffiti is ignorant, aggressive and scares old people, by extension support for Banksy is support for all graffiti and therefore support for scaring old ladies.
Everything about the article is ridiculous. It totally shows the guy up for his lack of knowledge. You’d think someone demonstrating to the world how little they understand it would be embarrassed, but he’s a stupid pompous hack trying to get hits on his blog with a bit of “controversial comment”, so he obviously has no shame. Or soul.
If Jones thinks street art = graffiti, then he’s being hypocritical by dissing it now as a superficial footnote in contemporary art. He recently wrote in favor of state funded graffiti murals to increase the amount of public art in Britain and possibly discover this generation’s great painters.
You’re right though, Jones knows that he gets hits when he writes about Banksy in a negative way, so why not. As he says in that article, one of the reasons he thought about nominating Banksy for the Turner Prize was that it would get Joe Public interested in the award (he later goes on to say that the press no longer cares about Banksy, but I doubt that very much).
An idiot AND a hypocrite? Not an unusual combination!
I’m not sure its true that nobody knows the difference between street art and graffiti. To me its obvious. Its a matter of intent. Street art is installed with the purpose of engaging the public, providing an open dialogue and promoting community cohesion. Graffiti on the other hand is inherently selfish vandalism. The perpetrator couldn’t care less whether the community regard their intervention as a positive or negative one.
Yes Mike, that is YOUR definition and you’ve made that plain on many occasions. It is not THE definition, and I don’t think it’s shared by many people – certainly not by people who actually know what they’re talking about.
1) Art is not only about intent
2) Art can be as selfish as anything else in the world
3) Art/Graffiti is not a binary polarity, there are many other options
“Graffiti” is a catch-all that can be used to describe anything from “I LUV TRACY” scrawled on a bus stop to the exquisite skills of the Heavy Artillery Crew (http://www.flickr.com/groups/heavy_artillery). Some of it is “just” vandalism some if it is vandalism produced with more positivity, pride and concern for the community than anything the official street art world does. Mike Marcus’ definition follows exactly the same uninformed arc of dimwitted and pompous art criticism as Jonathon Jones (and is not too much of a step from the stupidity of the “no art fag” crew – you deserve each other).
Some street artists produce graffiti and some graffiti artists produce street art. Deal with it.
At this point I could support my argument by quoting Cedar Leiwsohn, curator of last years Tate Modern street art exhibition. I could also sarch flickr.com for the thousands of comments left by various graffiti writers stating “I dont give a fuck about the public” and other similarly articulate variations on the theme. Equally I could quote personal emails from graffiti writers turned street artists who moved from one to the other in frustration at what the scene had become. If I was inclined I could even trawl the streets taking hundreds of photographs of the intentional vandalism of works of art by respected (within their small world) writers such as ten foot and tox.
However I would be accused of not knowing what I was talking about so I prefer to make art and let the fans and so called aficionados argue among themselves.
Mike Marcus in “some graffiti artists are wankers” shock. Guess what Mike – so are some street artists. I can think of one in particular.
Despite the efforts of the provocateurs at the extremes, Art/Graffiti is not a binary polarity. Neither you nor 10Foot can make me choose.