Art in the Streets?

LA Graffiti artist Risk: Wildstyle master at MOCA

Art in the Streets is the latest brainchild of Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Director Jeffery Deitch.   Juiclings may remember the mural by Blu that MOCA commissioned for the side of their prestigious Geffen Wing. And the ensuing debacle that resulted, when the aforementioned work of art proved to be (ahem) politically unsuitable (cough).

The new graffiti show at MOCA opening April17th is a historical retrospective of graffiti spanning four decades. The show features work by more than 100 leading graffiti artists.  The latest mural adorning the Geffen wing was a team effort, coordinated by NYC Artist  Lee Quinones. At time of writing the mural was unfinished, but it appears to be a nice picture of a choo choo train. Hopefully this will not offend any former railroad workers who are living close by, but this remains to be seen.

The exhibition is obviously a bold  step for Deitch, as it lays him personally and MOCA as an institution open to criticism about the validity of Graffiti art as a true art form.

Graffiti, love it or loath it, is a cultural phenomenon and as such it is valid that Deitch should have commissioned this far reaching retrospective. Some of the artists are naturally more talented and personable than others. LA. native Risk for example, has spent years developing the Wildstyle form of graffiti, that melds almost illegible graphic forms, in a psychedelic melange of swirling movement and color. Risk is an artist who has taken his art out of the subway into a gallery context and is to be commended for doing so.

Graffiti’s unsavory roots are never far from the surface however. Artist Chaz Bojorquez has been quoted as saying: ‘you tag your neighborhood because you are proud of it, to protect it.’ here in lies the problem, because graffiti does not protect anything—and neither do gangsters with guns. But it is presumably this heroic myth that Mr Bojorquez seeks to defend. At 62 years of age one would expect Mr Bojorquez to know better.

It is this kind of thinly disguised menace, that will have the blue stockinged patrons of MOCA quivering in their Brooks Brothers suits. Big Jeff will tell us of the new creative blood he is seeking to invite into the artistic mainstream. There is much to be said for this argument.

But for many graffiti exponents, the art form is about ego and anarchy. A barely rationalized tribal impulse, to stake out turf, like an attack dog urinating on neighborhood lamp posts. So what if the world doesn’t understand? What is there to understand about rebellion?

Graffiti is all very well, but no one wants it on their doorstep. Many of the ‘artists’ who are showing at MOCA are career vandals, who have perfected their art via decades of defacing public property. Many have evolved into accomplished exponents of the form. Others haven’t. And for every good graffiti artist, there are seemingly thousands of very bad ones.

Perhaps we should send Jeffery Deitch into the ‘hood’ with an arm full of Jack Vettriano prints to glue on the front gangsta’s houses, see how they like it when the tables are turned.