Over the last few weeks I've been taking my camera out to look for street art (ie: graffiti), thinking that I would be documenting what seemed to me to be an artistic movement in decline. That's because what I mostly see in my day-to-day life are two things: tagging and pretty simple political messages.
I wrote "in decline" because I had a vague idea that the non-official street art of Guelph isn't nearly as good as it used to be. Fortunately, I had some images from 2006 to compare.
What I found were lots of ugly stuff with various types of messages.
But there are also some interesting "gems". Some are more inspired attempts than masterpieces---but even they stand out.
And others were very well-crafted pieces of real street art.
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How to make sense of what I'm seeing?
One thing I noticed while amassing these images is that there is a lot of evidence that businesses and the city are making a real effort to get rid of graffiti as soon as they can.
One example was a hording around a construction site a block from my home. One day I saw a fairly nice art installation had been recently added to it. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture because I assumed that I had lots of time to do so. Imagine my surprise when I saw the next day that someone had been hired to come and paint over everything.
Another thing to think about is the dramatic rise in the use of ant-graffiti paint put on new construction. If you want to know what it is, run your hand over concrete walls downtown. If you feel a sort of sticky smooth feeling instead of the grit you would expect, a very thin layer of transparent silicon has been put on top of the wall. This makes it much easier to remove graffiti.
If you can believe the You Tube video I've included below, it would seem that the war between maintenance crews and graffiti vandals/artists seems to be being resolved in favour of the guys in boiler suits and high-pressure sprayers against the folks with hoodies and aerosol cans. And walking around the downtown, it would appear that the city is becoming increasingly good at removing unofficial street art without leaving many traces behind.
Like most of the people I talk to about this, I'm conflicted. I like most of the art that I've sampled above. But I absolutely loathe the ugly, poorly-done tagging that gets spread far and wide. If we don't put lots of effort into getting rid of it, it will end up defining our public spaces. And I certainly don't want that to happen.
But having said that, there is something about good street art that really enlivens a city. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and the only policy that seems to make sense is to allow something like "natural selection" to govern what happens. I'd like there to be a rule that non-official street art is allowed to stay up if the people doing the cleaning think that it's so good that it deserves to be there. I think that that would protect most of the art that I've sampled above, but get rid of the ugly crap like tagging.
Unfortunately, I suspect that there would be a lot of "push back" against this idea. I expect that some folks would argue that there is no such thing as good unofficial street art. To this, I'd point out the above examples.
Others might say that only a body of art experts should be allowed to make this sort of decision. I suspect that any group mandated to advocate for abstract ideals would take months---if not years---to make a decision. We have already seen one Councillor feel obligated to preserve a historic building while on the relevant committee only to vote to demolish it at a full Council meeting. I don't think we need similar hair-splitting like this over whether or not to power-wash a concrete wall!
The other problem with allowing a group of experts to make the decision is that academic art sometimes has a tendency to totally ignore the general opinion of ordinary citizens. Lots of famous artists like to shock the public. I know that this is often done to identify and undermine deeply rooted prejudice. But most of it is not done while thinking about context. And art in a public place is more about context than just about any other type. It shouldn't be about shocking the "powers that be", but rather about engaging and building solidarity among the ordinary citizenry. And in that case, I have a lot more trust in a working stiff with a power washer to make the right decision than a committee of artists or a faceless bureaucrat.&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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