Category: Art News

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Roti wall in Atlanta illegally buffed and then repaired

The mural before the buff

Update: Creative Loafing has done a more extensive article on what’s gone on and is going on with the mural as more facts have become more clear. This one is probably the article to read.

Last week, there was a petition started to save Roti‘s beautiful mural for Living Walls Atlanta. The petition got over 1500 signatures from around the world, but signatures don’t mean much against a paintbrush. Last week, a handful of upset Atlanta residents went to the wall and illegally buffed it (very poorly) in broad daylight. Later that day, volunteers and employees of the Georgia Department of Transportation (who own the wall) came to help remove the paint. Creative Loafing has the full stories.

Two things that I see as problematic interesting here:

  1. The mural was painted legally and buffed illegally. I think that sort of speaks for itself.
  2. The mural was buffed by some percentage of the local residents, and while other local residents support the mural, at least some of the signatures on the petition to save the mural are from people who don’t live nearby or even in the City of Atlanta. What right do we or Living Walls or GDOT have to say “We’re putting this mural here and you’d better like it.”? I think just going ahead and doing it is generally a much better way of putting up murals than months of community meetings. Once the mural is up though and if the community hates it, what should be done? I think it’s ridiculous to have a blank beige or grey wall in that spot rather than Roti’s beautiful figures, but I have never in my life had to drive by that wall on my way to work. Maybe that’s what people in the area want. That said, just because a few residents decided that they disliked the mural enough to go and paint over it does not mean that all the nearby residents or the residents of Atlanta hated the mural. And I haven’t heard any real reason why just going out and vandalising the mural was the step that had to be taken rather than holding some community forums to see what the general consensus was. I’m not saying that this mural should have been buffed (I signed the petition to save it) or that the angry activists who buffed the wall went about things the right way, but I think it’s worth thinking about, particularly, in this era of new muralism coming out of street art, how we can best balance the interests of the arts community and the local community. Thoughts?

Photo by Dustin Chambers

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Weekend link-o-rama

El Curiot

It seems that the world never slows down. I’m supposed to be on vacation and it’s been one of my busiest weeks all year, so here’s what’s been going on elsewhere across the web:

Photo by El Curiot

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Saber takes to the skys againt to #DefendTheArts

Photo by Nineteen92

On Sunday, Saber executed his latest skywriting campaign in New York City. About a year ago, Saber did something similar in Los Angeles to defend murals/protest LA’s ridiculous mural regulations. This time, Saber is defending the arts in general against Mitt Romney, who has said that a Romney administration would stop funding the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. The bold action was caught by photographers around the city and organized on twitter and instagram under the hashtag #defendthearts. Nearly 200 photos of the skywriting have been uploaded to instagram under the #defendthearts hashtag, and probably more without the hashtag.

Photo by changsterdam

In full, Saber’s message read: “Artists designers musicians writers actors poets patrons #DefendTheArts #RomneyHatesArt #gopfail Protect NEA PBS NPR No Cuts #ArtIsInspiration #ArtCreatesJobs #WhatInspiresYou #OccupyWallStreet #art #graffiti #streetart Haring Kase2 Sace IZ StayHigh149 AWR MSK EKLIPS REVOK RETNA MSK Twitter at Saber #DefendTheArts (flag)”

Photo by Adam Greenfield
Photo by changsterdam
Photo by changsterdam
Photo by changsterdam

Photos by Nineteen92, changsterdam and Adam Greenfield

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Weekend link-o-rama

Stinkfish

I’m headed to Nuart next week, so expect updates to be sporadic any maybe Nuart-focused. Should be a great festival. Here’s what I missed this week:

Photo by Stinkfish

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The saga of Hyuro in Atlanta

On September 16th, Hyuro‘s mural in Atlanta was buffed by members of the Living Walls team. As I wrote last month, the mural that Hyuro painted for this year’s Living Walls Conference was the highlight of the festival, but it was considered controversial by some of the local residents. Of course, street art and murals cannot last forever, nor should they, but it’s difficult to not be at least a little sad about the swift rejection of this mural by the community. Creative Loafing Atlanta has a great slideshow going over the story of the mural from start to finish.

Both Hyuro and and (Living Walls co-founder and executive director) made statements about the mural and it’s removal.

Hyuro:

Each person can take it the way they want to, because it is for everyone …and at the end, if it gets painted over, know that the gray paint will not hide the fears of no one, but if anything It will make those fears more visible.

Monica Campana:

Paint on this wall made for a beautiful mural, people talking about it made for a beautiful conversation. A public space was created and all of a sudden this dead intersection became more human. The mural belonged to all of us, to the ones that liked it and to the ones that didn’t, it was our dialogue, it was our challenge, but now it’s gone. Now we are back to ignoring that space again, now we are back at thinking that erasing the evidence will make us think this never happened. It hurt so much to paint over the wall, to destroy something someone else put so much heart and passion into. It was a painful process, but what hurt the most was that for the first time I felt like I had to censor myself. It was a weird feeling, a confusing and ugly feeling that I never want to experience again.

Photo by Dustin Chambers via Creative Loafing Atlanta

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Weekend link-o-rama

Zéh Palito and Tosko

It is time for me to get a reasonable number of hours of sleep. Until I have to get up in the morning. Here’s what we didn’t get to write about on Vandalog this week:

Photo by Zéh Palito

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Tony Goldman, founder of Wynwood Walls, dead of heart failure at age 68

Tony Goldman was a developer and preservationist acclaimed for revitalizing neighborhoods in Miami and New York. Long after South Beach was considered past its prime, Goldman Properties turned the sleepy, moth-ridden strip into one of the most glamorous destinations in the United States. He has also been accredited with endeavors to salvage Center City Philadelphia and SOHO in New York. But what does the death and life of a great American businessman have anything to do with street art? Because Goldman’s interest in street art and graffiti late in his illustrative career has spawned some of the most prestigious and contentious mural projects in the world. One of Tony’s more recent rejuvenation projects is the Wynwood Walls compound: a museum of murals flanked by two upscale restaurants, cordoned off from the street and protected by security. This lush oasis or mausoleum, depending on your perspective, has been the beachhead for Wynwood’s transformation into an arts district fueled by the feverish energy of Art Basel Miami. In an interview with the New York Times, Tony explained that he felt Wynwood had “an urban grit that was ready to be discovered and articulated.”

This quote is perfectly representative of Street Art’s slow growth into a movement that manages to simultaneously encompass the smallest illegal act to the colossal legal wall. While the story of the avant-garde getting over and becoming the establishment is an old cycle that is endlessly vilified and reenacted, Wynwood Walls, the infamous Houston Street Wall and Goldman Properties’ recent collaboration with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program are distinctly American approaches to mural making and Street Art. Tony Goldman not only recognized the potential in neighborhoods otherwise disregarded as blighted, but realized the exciting promise that sanctioned walls had for his properties.

Via the Miami New Times

Photo by Wallyg

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The Street Museum of Art’s guerrilla curating in NYC

The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) has announced the debut of it’s first exhibit In Plain Sight. What that means is that some street art fan or fans have put up the outdoor equivalent to gallery wall labels in order to help identify, draw attention to and explain a few selected pieces of street art. ForIn Plain Sight, the curator(s) have included work by Sweet Toof, Faile, Gaia, JR and others.

This could really easily come across as ridiculous and cheesy, but I think the SMoA have pulled off one of the best actions demonstrating both the necessity and impossibility of displaying street art in a museum setting. On some level, wall labels for street art are absurd, but on another level they are quite useful. And rather than trying to create some sort of fake and inevitably lesser copy of the street indoors (like the installations by Neckface or Todd James, Barry McGee and Stephen Powers at Art in the Streets) or organizing murals that again emulate some of the look of street art but not the energy behind it (like the murals organized for Os Gemeos recently in Boston), the SMoA have just brought the museum to the street, as if to say “Here is the real thing. It cannot be imitated in a museum environment. But it is as valuable to our culture as what you might see in MoMA.” Maybe the SMoA will help people to see things that they haven’t before, and then maybe they’ll start noticing street art everywhere without the help of wall labels.In Plain Sight elevates street art both to make a strong statement about the art and benefit viewers. It’s like a mini version of the street art tours that Stephanie and I have offered in London, but free and self-guided. Great stuff.

The one disappointing thing I have found about In Plain Sight is that it takes place in Williamsburg. Of course there is a lot of great street art there, but I think a lot higher proportion of Williamsburg residents are probably aware of street art already. But hey, even a jaded hipster might be willing to learn something new about Sweet Toof if the text is right in front of her.

I’m curious to see what the SMoA does next.

Also, I’d like to compare what the SMoA is doing to what some street artists in Australia did last weekend.

The artist CDH organized a “Trojan petition” where a group of street artists petitioned the city of Melbourne and the government of Victoria because of unfair graffiti laws in Victoria. The petition was delivered as part of an installation to which 20 street artists had contributed artwork which surrounded the text of the petition. Essentially, these artists say that the laws regarding being found with spraypaint or markers on your person are unfair as they reverse the burden of proof to a presumption of guilt instead of innocence (this seems true), and that property owners who do not take care of their property effectively give permission for artists to paint it (an interesting argument). But they delivered this petition in a really weird way by dropping it outside of a major museum and, for some reason I don’t quite understand, seem to pit museums against street artists even though museums in Australia have been some of the strongest allies of street artists over the last few years (the petition states “Melbourne’s street art is consistently ranked among the top in the world [1-6], unlike any of Australia’s fine art institutions.”). The National Gallery of Victoria, where the petition was delivered, has actually decided to display the work until Friday. So, the gallery where the petition was delivered seems to support the street artists…

There’s more info and a more positive view of the petition over at Invurt, and I think Luke may be writing something about it as well in the coming days for Vandalog. But I just thought I’d bring up that comparison of two groups almost simultaneously trying to make a point about the legitimacy of street art as art that should be appreciated by people and supported by the state or institutions, and making that point in two very different ways. The Trojan petition seems to take a very negative approach and the SMoA takes a very positive approach. Which one do you like better? Although I can enjoy anger from time to time, I think SMoA made similar points a hell of a lot better by staying positive and improving the streets.

Photos courtesy of the Street Museum of Art

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Shepard Fairey gets off easy for falsifying documents and lying in court

On Friday, Shepard Fairey was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, two years of probation and a $25,000 after pleading guilty earlier this year to one count of criminal contempt. Fairey actually got off pretty lightly. Government lawyers believed that Fairey could have been fined up to $3.2 million and also argued that he should spend time in prison (he could have been incarcerated for a maximum of 6 months).

Here’s how we came to this point: In 2009, Fairey sued the Associated Press to show in court that his portraits of Obama were fair use of an AP photograph and avoid being sued by the AP himself for copyright infringement. Fairey and the AP disagreed over which photograph Fairey had used as his source image for the HOPE poster, but they both agreed that Fairey used an AP photo from the same event. Then Fairey realized that he was wrong and that he had indeed based his work on the photograph that the AP said he had used, so Fairey panicked and tried to cover his tracks by submitting falsified evidence and attempting to delete the actual evidence from his computer. He then went ahead for months in this case claiming something that he knew was false. Eventually, Fairey was confronted with evidence of his deceit and came clean. The lawsuit with the AP was settled, with Fairey paying the AP $1.6 million (although some of that is believed to have been covered by an insurance policy). But the federal government was still unhappy about Fairey’s lies, so he was charged with criminal contempt and plead guilty to that earlier this year.

I don’t generally believe in prison time for nonviolent offenders, but Fair Use is an issue close to my heart and damn that still seems like he got off easy, but not for the reason the federal prosecutors think he did. In a statement on Friday, Fairey said, “The damage to my own reputation is dwarfed by the regret I feel for clouding the issues of the Fair Use case. I let down artists and advocates for artist’s rights by distracting from the core Fair Use discussion with my misdeeds.” He’s exactly right: Fairey blew what could have been the biggest Fair Use case of the century. If this case had gone to trial, as Fairey seems to have originally intended it to, and he certainly has to be given some credit for not just settling from the outset, Fairey would have had one of the best legal teams in the country supporting him and hopefully striking quite a blow against overly-restrictive copyright law enforcement.

For more on the case and Fairey’s sentencing, you can check out these other articles:

Photo by cliff1066™