Marc Makes Art
Marc Moss is a local artist in Missoula Montana.
Archive for August 4th, 2008 Whoever loves, go to hell. I want to break Venus’s ribs
with a club and deform her hips.
If she can break my tender heart
why can’t I hit her over the head?
-CIL IV, 1284.
I’ve written extensively about street art and graffiti, specifically what’s going on in the Missoula scene. These posts have consistently generated the most discussion, which I welcome. Respectful discussion, even when there are disagreements. Not being part of the graff scene, merely being interested in it from an art perspective, I have a different taker on it than the folks doing the tagging and the painting, obviously, but I wanted to offer some observations I’ve been kicking around in my head recently.
Graffiti has been around for as long as there have been things with which to draw and write. Our boy CIL up there show us that graff hasn’t changed much over time in regards to content. But I wouldn’t call him an artist. The original Latin in which CIL wrote about his heartbreak was fraught with misspellings. [citation needed]. This leads me to the question: Is it art if it’s poorly executed and shows the author’s stupidity or lack of education?
A recent commenter made the point, however inarticulately, that it isn’t “real” graff if it isn’t done illegally, and that one of the points of doing graff is the adrenaline rush, that is destructive and illegal, and it’s a fuck you to the establishment. While I don’t doubt that there is a fuck you element, as well as an adrenaline rush I would argue that a mentality like that dismisses out of hand the wildly accepted premise in graff culture that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.
I would argue that there isn’t any good graffiti in Missoula that isn’t either legal or stenciled. Missoula’s too small of a town for a graff artist to spend hours on a piece and not get caught, so a more involved piece by simple logistics has to be done on the California Street bridge. Or it needs to be a stencil that can be worked on a long time at home and then taken out into the night.
Graff that’s done merely to vandalize is usually pretty awful. It’s graff like this that only vindicates what Greyman does. So, graff artists, keep painting, stenciling, tagging. But keep it beautiful, too. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
What say you? How do you define good graff and street art?
This post was inspired by a coward who left a handful of poorly written comments on some of my posts. He also hit up another blogger and friend of mine. In both cases there was some inappropriate language. Whoever the commenter was, he used several different aliases and fake email addresses, which only I would see anyway. All of the questionable comments came from the same IP address, though: 72.175.133.214. He recently dropped by again to say that the attacks were directed at a specific graff artist in Missoula and not me. I say, keep your street battles on the street where they belong, pal.Tags: 59801, art in missoula, community, controversy, creativity, graffiti, lOWERCASEl, missoula, painting, public art exhibitions59801, art in missoula, community, controversy, creativity, graffiti, lOWERCASEl, missoula, painting, public art exhibitions |
