Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« The Week in Geek! | Comte Suggests »

Friday, October 12, 2007

What Is Art?

posted by on October 12 at 13:18 PM

Russia has banned this photo from a Russian art showing in Paris:

russia.jpg

The photographer said they were inspired by this Banksy work:

banksy.jpg

Side Discussion for Sloggers: Since the Russian minister is deciding what is acceptable art, I thought I would ask fellow Sloggers to decide if graffiti is art. All types? Is it ok to deface the property of others for the sake of art? Who determines what is acceptable?

RSS icon Comments

1

Hmmm, Private property is never okay to deface. Public though.... hmmm hard call.

Posted by Just Me | October 12, 2007 1:29 PM
2

Better question. Who determines when something is "inspired by" and and when something straight rips off that Banksy work.

Posted by Cheap Russian Knockoff | October 12, 2007 1:34 PM
3

Graf is art, and just like art there is really bad stuff and really cool shit....Im so tired of the lame sloppy Seattle garbage tags everywhere...Go home and practice and make something that at least LOOKS cool...

Posted by TonytheTiger | October 12, 2007 1:35 PM
4

And who says a question has to end with a question mark?

Posted by Cheap Russian Knockoff | October 12, 2007 1:36 PM
5

marcel duchamp made this question superfluous 100 years ago.

Posted by maxsolomon | October 12, 2007 1:39 PM
6

Who cares about graffiti? It's great, yeah, but what about the important issue at hand: that a Russian minister is deciding "what is art".

Is Zhdanov back from the dead? Fucking Putin. We need to end this before it gets out of hand (CIA, I'm looking at you).

Posted by Jason Petersen | October 12, 2007 1:43 PM
7

As someone whom taggs my own art all over Capitol Hill, I say, it depends on where and what time of graf. I make my own images, and then spray them at various places on the hill, I try to tag off beat places, sidewalks, and divided walls.

Posted by Capitol Hill Tagger | October 12, 2007 1:43 PM
8

Graffiti is not art.

Posted by Jonah S | October 12, 2007 1:54 PM
9

It doesn't matter if graffiti is art if you've defaced somebody elses property. You could put the mona lisa on my car and I'd still be pissed.

Posted by Lushy J | October 12, 2007 1:58 PM
10

Seattle grafitti is the lamest in the entire world. The question of art simply never comes up. I support the death penalty for taggers.

Posted by Fnarf | October 12, 2007 2:05 PM
11

All graffiti is art -- even bad graffiti. But that doesn't mean it's always legally defensible. Theft and trespass address use of property; a graffiti artist who vandalizes someone else's property is impairing that person's use of their property -- effectively stealing from them. Like a punk-ass tweaker who smashes out your side window to steal change out of your ashtray, the offense of the shitty Seattle graffiti artist is compounded by the fact that the spoils of their crime are so pitiful compared to the cost incurred against their victims.

Taggers are the lowest form of life. Worse than spammers.

Posted by Judah | October 12, 2007 2:13 PM
12

@Just Me: Public property is something that belongs to ALL of us, because we all (indirectly, through taxes) chipped in to pay for it, right? Is it ok for one lame asshole to come along and spray paint some crap on it, forcing the rest of us to live with it? Whether it's art or not(and Fnarf is right), the answer is no.

Posted by Roboti | October 12, 2007 2:18 PM
13

Damn... the Russian image is gorgeous. I love the misty look of the trees, and the odd bends and kinks. The two military men sort of fade into the image as a whole, for me. I don't get why the Russian Minister thought it wasn't art. It's definitely not pornographic.

Posted by Phelix | October 12, 2007 2:29 PM
14

Come on. You haven't seen a tag or stencil on the right chunk of sidewalk or on the right crappy wall that made you glad to be able to look at something more interesting than the crappy sidewalk or the crappy wall?

Posted by jseattle | October 12, 2007 2:30 PM
15

Stencils: definitely art.
Tags that take more than 5 minutes: certainly art.

Just scrawling your name/tag on a Metro bus stop because you have a Sharpie in your pocket? Not art.

However, using someone else's design/name/idea is crass. Stencils or tags should be original.

And spraying anything on private property or in religous places is just tacky.

Posted by gary7 | October 12, 2007 2:43 PM
16

@14 - No.

Posted by Hernandez | October 12, 2007 2:44 PM
17

@jseattle: who decides what the right wall or sidewalk is? I've noticed a bunch of new tags and graffiti on the wall at the Turner/23rd/24th interchange, and it's all ugly.

Posted by Emily | October 12, 2007 2:49 PM
18

@14: If it's your own crappy wall, great. If it's somebody else's crappy wall, or the public's crappy wall, fuck off. Even if you think it looks better, individual opinions count for fuck-all when it comes to the public's property rights.

Posted by Greg | October 12, 2007 2:57 PM
19

You need to see good graffiti and then come and argue your point. The point that graffiti is defacing property and therefore is not valid to declare at art is ridiculous. For examples, pay a visit to http://www.woostercollective.com and for a conversation starter, look at the job that was done on Kelburn Castle at http://thegraffitiproject.net/home While I consider the architecture stronger on its own without all the bright colors, it's up to you to decide but at least be informed about what is really going on out there before blindly throwing out blanket statements...

Posted by cunei4m | October 12, 2007 3:04 PM
20

@14 -- yeah, sure. In other cities. Seattle's taggers are the lamest of the lame and should be beaten with sticks.

I've seen the amazing railway walls in Melbourne and the Banksy rat on the wall of the Whitehouse in Liverpool (http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/banksy_liverpool_rat_house.htm). Nobody in this city's got a clue.

Posted by Fnarf | October 12, 2007 3:16 PM
21

I'm going to make a stencil this weekend and go make some public art.

Posted by Carollani | October 12, 2007 3:47 PM
22

@12,

We also get to pay for that shit to get cleaned up. If I remember correctly, some jackass tagged a government building in Olympia last year. The building material he/she tagged is impossible to clean and is very expensive to replace. I also take great exception to paying to clean up other people's shit.

Posted by keshmeshi | October 12, 2007 3:53 PM
23

@14 Seattle's taggers should be beaten with sticks?

Let me guess, you're one of those "I'll determine which vandals are socially relevent" turds who loves Daim and Loomit and Banksy and Shepperd Fairy but hates Cold Killer.

Who decided it was OK to put a bunch of whtieguys faces on the side of a Mountian in South Dakota? The Hollywood sign? A fucking beam of light visible from the moon in Vegas? It ain't what you say, it's who says it and how they say it, right?

You're gonna go through alot of sticks giving a shit if that's your attitude, stick dude.

Anyway, grafitti in it's purest form is vandalism. Vandalism is illegal. Grafitti is often very relevent, credible art and at it's most potent has influenced sanctioned artforms across many lines. Art that is not vandalism, art in it's most widely recognized and accepted mediums is often just as illegal as grafitti.

I'm pro vandal and I think some of the worst shite that government money has ever been wasted on is sanctioned art.

Sanctioned art? The tampon artist in Colorado this week: trite, clever, snotty and apparently censored.

Vandalism? Robbie Conal: accessable, thoughtful, humorous and fresh when his stuff first started appearing around the mid 80s.

We're gonna have to tolerate alot of Kilroys and Pepsi ads if we're gonna righteously support the Bansky's and the Daleks, fan dorks. You're gonna slippery slope your split hairs all the way to the dead horse floggers convetion more than you can shake a stick at otherwise.

Posted by Stick It | October 12, 2007 4:01 PM
24

I saw a Blue Noses show in Tokyo this spring and it was pretty good...Lots of humorous lowbrow shit--mooning famous monuments in Russia, lots of drinking, making fun of Lenin and Putin and tons o' titties...Id like to see their work come out here...If the minister didnt like this he would HATE their videos...

Posted by MadDog | October 12, 2007 4:23 PM
25

Only property owners should be allowed to make art.

Posted by Eric Grandy | October 12, 2007 4:49 PM
26

Gay Literature began with graffiti scrawled under Roman aquaducts. Without Gay Literature we would never have been able to conceptualize our Gayness. All LBGTQ's owe their LIVES & LIBERTY to TAGGERS (and bathroom stalls).

I prefer my city coated with the unravelings of the collective urban mind, thank you, NOT CONDO PLACARDS.

Posted by Mr Catnip | October 13, 2007 4:40 AM
27

kissing policemen isn't the only work prohibited by russian ministry of culture. among 17 other, that didn't go to exhibition in paris, there is this one by an art-group called PG. you can see it here and decide by yourself -- should such things be banned or not:

http://kinst.livejournal.com/19581.html

it is a huge print (2 x 3 meters) with video installed in the center of it.

Posted by Kirill Gotev | October 13, 2007 5:35 AM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).