I was reading an article earlier today in The Age about Banksy and whether "laneway graffiti" could be worth more than the average house, following the sale (for £208,000) of one of his works on a wall in London.
Meh. Why not.
Although all of the effort you'd have to go to to actually own it would be more than annoying. Plus although I like stencil art and graffiti in general (providing it's well done and not just tags), I'm not completely sure about how it gels with other art forms in terms of "ownership." Graffiti isn't something that's been designed to be "owned," isn't portable and is usually looked on as being something of a menace, rather than given the appreciation that quite a lot of graffiti work deserves (particularly with Dest's work or stencil artists like Vexta in Melbourne).
And in some ways, I'm kind of curious about Andrew McDonald's comments about the need for things to not be preserved when it came to street art. When it's good street art, it's always a little disappointing to see things getting painted over by either owners of the buildings (such as those along railway tracks) or covered with someone else's low-quality graffiti work. But I guess it is rather transient, and is designed to be. It's exposed to the elements and the whims of those who own buildings or fences or whatever other public spaces the work is done in.
It makes me think of a Wizard of Oz-style piece, which I believe was done by members of 21C, that used to be on the line into the city around Ascot Vale or so, which was painted over by the building owners and then that subsequently has been covered with other graffiti. Graffiti in and around Melbourne does tend to be of a high quality, though, so I guess that's what makes me far more sympathetic to it than were it to be those stupid scrawls you see repeated and repeated on fences.
Part of me wonders whether the popularity of some forms of graffiti will mean that it loses something of its individuality and "anarchy," becoming just another commodity that gets packaged, marketed, worked to death... I 'unno.
All that said, there is an absolute load of utterly rubbish graffiti out there - in fact, it outweighs the good by a ridiculously large amount.
6 comments:
art is thought plus energy applied in directions. The rest - the emotion it draws from the audience (and often, how long it lasts as a result) is always beyond the control of the artist. The artist rarely has a hand in preserving his or her work beyond ensuring that the job they do is to the best of their ability. I spose you can apply this thinking to all art?
Artists can have a lot of control over what happens with their art prior to public "consumption" though - there's tonnes of stuff artists throughout the centuries have deleted/erased/painted over/burned/dismantled/thrown out in some kind of quest for perfection ;) But yes, usually it's longevity is dependent on how others feel about it.
Kind of makes me think of an artwork I found in the cellar back where I used to live - it must have been down there for ages and was starting to look very sad. I thought it was brilliant, so hauled it out and cleaned it up. The "Ooh, this is nice" perspective I had on it gave it importance (to me) that others didn't really feel about it.
One person's trash is another's treasure obviously...
Nice story. I like the idea of stumbling across something in the basement that hasn't seen the light of day for many years, then hauling it out for it to do its stuff. Like a time capsule. There's a story - I can't remember the exact details of a Van Gogh painting being used to cover up a hole in a chicken coup for many years before it was recognised for what it was.
It was better than the king brown snake I found down there one day at least...
Cellars should be places for discoveries as well as burial grounds, I think. Makes it interesting for present and future generations :)
I think I'd heard about that story with the painting being used like that. All down to the "consumer's" priorities, really! But then sometimes is there too much importance placed on some works..? I'm not sure. Guess my thinking there is just because something has been done by artist x, y or z, does it mean it's automatically good?
Often, whether it's good or not is the subject of great conjecture, eh? I spose what makes any van gogh special is that the artist's work - his expressionism - marked an exciting evolution point in painting. On the other hand, some people may say that's a load of tosh.
Ahh, the joys of conjecture over art (and most of the time, it ends up coming down to whether or not individuals like the work or not rather than its quality or messages or whatever)...
It's interesting how van Gogh destroyed a lot of the works he did himself. Kind of a shame, though, too. I'm in the camp of not thinking his work is tosh, though *lol*
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