#GVM004: The Demolition Chronicles

# G V M 0 0 4 : The Demolition Chronicles

William Benzon for Green Villain July 2015

#GVM004: The Demolition Chronicles

William L. Benzon

Abstract: This document describes a major graffiti exhibition involving 100 artists producing 28,000 square feet of graffiti on the interior and exterior walls of a Pep Boys store in Jersey City. The building has been sold to developers, who will demolish it in mid-summer 2015. Topics include: history of the project, stylistic and thematic analysis of the art, and social context of the exhibition.

C O N T E N T S Introduction: GVM004 Rises, Falls, Resonates ..................................................................................... 2 OK to Destroy: Jersey Citys Graffiti Jam of April 2015 .................................................................. 13 SP One, Whats he thinking? ................................................................................................................... 24 Graffiti: From Art Crimes to Family Day ............................................................................................. 26 Green Villain Karma: Urban Buddhism in Jersey City ....................................................................... 29 Good Grief! War Boys in the Promised Land .................................................................................... 31 Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation? ................................................................ 35 Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to Informatic Culture ......................................................................................................................................................... 38 Some Styles at the Demolition Exhibition ........................................................................................... 40 Sacred Animal Beyond Category: Super-Dope in Layers ................................................................. 46 Even Heather Mac Donalds Welcome to Tag-Up at the Demolition Exhibition ...................... 48 Appendix 1: Time Line .............................................................................................................................. 60 Appendix 2: Is it Art? ................................................................................................................................ 60 Appendix 3: Graffing the Future: Is the next phase of human cultural evolution being inscribed on walls by graffiti writers and street artists? ................................................................... 62 Appendix 4: Sharks in Formaldehyde: New Yorks Met and the People Who Made It ............ 65

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Introduction: GVM004 Rises, Falls, Resonates

Lets begin at the beginning. I am a thinker, writer, musician, and photographer. For the past few years Ive been functioning as senior advisor to Green Villain, LLC. I have no business card with such a title on it and likely never will. Nor, for that matter, does Green Villain have an org chart, official or unofficial. Not yet. Green Villain is the business of Greg Edgell and assorted associates, as the project requires. Greg is an event producer, DJ, has a record label, and wrangles graffiti writers and street artists on projects large and small.

The Demolition Exhibition has been our largest project so far. This paper is preliminary and partial documentation of it. The bulk of it consists of blog posts that I wrote while the project was unfolding. This introduction is new.

First I run through the history of the project. Then list media coverage, Green Villains online documentation, say a word about each of the posts in the rest of the document, list the artists involved, and conclude with a note about the title.

How It Happened The demolition exhibition just happened. No, it didnt grow up out of the ground all by itself, but it didnt arise through the execution of a specific plan of action at least no plan more specific than use graffiti for the public good. Rather, each step of the way we just took advantage of opportunities that appeared before us, with Greg (aka Green Villain) doing the heavy lifting and me providing advice and encouragement at every step.

On the public good, several years ago Id written a report, Jersey City: From a Skatepark to the World,1 and shown it to a number of people, including Greg. More immediately, last Spring (2014) Greg decided to install murals wherever he could wrangle walls in Jersey City, New York City, and elsewhere. Hed drive around looking for likely walls and, when he spotted one, hed find out who owned the property. Then hed cut deals. The Pep Boys in the Newport area of Jersey City was the 4th deal he landed, hence the designation GVM004Green Villain Mural number 4.

1 URL: https://www.academia.edu/9388376/Jersey_City_From_a_Skatepark_to_the_World

That stores rear wall, which faces the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, has three layers of graffiti on it.. Starting in mid-August, Jurne, Curve, Twigs, and Esteam of the TGE crew laid down the first layer, which is a traditional old school production based on wild style letters:

At the beginning of October Loser, Distort, Acro and Ntel of the AIDS Alone in Deep Space crew went to work on the second layer, which is contemporary eclecticism with old school wild styling here and there:

Some points of interpretation: This is by NTEL, of the AIDS crew. If you look closely youll see wording from the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States: We the People Im not sure whats going on with the three identical little girls jumping rope in a dress out of the 1950s. Theyre rendered in the style of stencil work and may reference Banksy, the best-known stencilist in the world. Banksy frequently uses images of young girls. Notice the magenta crown over the heard of the right-most girl and the small crowns above it, as though they were blown from the heads of the other two girls. Crowns do not get on graffiti pieces by arbitrary artistic choice. They have a special meaning in graffiti culture. Crowns are used to mark a so-called King of graffiti. Youre a King if youve mastered the three basic disciplines tags, throw-ups, and pieces and have executed a large body of work over several years that is visible in many places. Why, then, are these girls being marked as kings, if thats whats being done?

We vaguely knew that the site was in play and ownership was likely to change in the future, which would mean the demise of GVM004. But who cares? Thats just how graffiti is. Its always being painted over, buffed, or eroded by the weather.

In late January of 2015 the building was acquired by Forest City Enterprises and G&S Investors. Things were beginning to move and in March the AIDS crew put up the third layer. Loser, Acro, Distort, Snow, Yoder, Eluder, Dutch, Dzel, Nark & Werds went to work, going over the work theyd just completed (again, contemporary eclecticism):

Then we got the word; the building would be demolished in a couple of months. The art would be gone sooner than wed expected. Not good. But not really bad either. Remember? Graffiti? Ephemeral. Just a fact.

We decided to go for the whole building, make a party of it: CELEBRATE! Greg made the deal and it was on. He put the word out among writers hed worked with over the years and guys started rolling in and getting up all over the Newport Pep Boys. I took photos of things as they moved along and Greg planned an open graffiti jam for April 25. Writers painted on all sides of the building, DJs played music, and the public could see it all.

People walked around the building, drove their cars around it, took flicks, and posed for flicks. Who knows how many graffiti-backed selfies got committed that day? A good time was had by all.

Then it was over.

But it wasnt. It seems the world had something to say about it. One of the executives at Forest City was struck by the quality of the graffiti and contacted

Greg about it to complement him and the artists. Greg got back to him: How about you let us do the inside? He cut that deal on May 1st. Now we had 16,000 square feet of interior wall space to add to the 12,000 square feet wed covered on the exterior.

Well, WE didnt have to do the art. 100 artists did it. Greg managed the whole thing and I took flicks and gave advice. Every now and then we had a few beers.

Meanwhile, Greg had been talking with people at Google about photographing the whole building, inside and out, with their Trekker technology, which theyd developed for Street View. It was a bit of a rush to get things, if not finished, at least get the wall space filled for the Trekker shoot on June 13. That went fine, though we learned that theres at least a six-month backlog of work getting that imagery processed. Distance information from laser scanners has to be combined with the image information so as to produce a smooth 3D projection of the imagery.

But you see whats going on, dont you? Photography became central to graffiti culture back in the 1970s as writers photographed the subway cars theyd bombed (a graffiti culture term of art that has nothing to do with explosives), knowing that sooner or later their nights of work would be gone. When the Internet went live in the mid-1990s, graffiti took flight with it, first at Art Crimes2 and then everywhere. Green Villains just taking it to the next level.

This brings us to the Demolition Exhibition proper I think that name popped out at about the time of the Google shoot. Should we print up 500 brochures or 1000? Greg asked me. We had no idea how many would show up on opening day, June 27, or how many would show up during the following week until July 5, when we had to close it down to make way for the actual demolition.

Well, if we only print up 500 and we need more, I said, were screwed. But if we print up 1000 and

2 URL: http://www.graffiti.org/

we have some left over, no harm done. We ended up printing 2000 and still ran out. The opening party was a success despite the rain and people kept coming by during the following week. Lots of people posed for lots of pictures and lots of people kids and adults rode rings around the place on skate boards, scooters, and bikes.

Its still not over, of course. When the building is actually demolished well be taking photos of that. Even then it wont be over. Weve still got to get it all on line.

And whatever else comes up as the project evolves.

Selected Media Coverage Before the Internet rolled around media meant print media newspapers and magazines and broadcast media television and radio. Those media havent disappeared, of course, but they now post their material online. Heres some of that coverage.

General News

Wall Street Journal Corinne Ramey, Graffiti Artists and Developers Draw an Alliance, June 26, 2017 http://www.wsj.com/articles/graffiti-artists-and-developers-draw-an-alliance-1435359107 The Jersey Journal Rebecca Panico, Graffiti artists take over closed Downtown Jersey City shop slated for redevelopment, Apr. 26 http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/04/graffiti_finds_a_temporary_but_legal_home_on_jerse.html

Steven Rodas, Former auto shop in Jersey City transformed into 'mecca of graffiti', June, 28, 2015 http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/06/100_artists_collaborate_for_mecca_of_graffiti_in_j.html NBC 4

Jen Maxfield, Empty Auto Shop in Jersey City Transformed into Art Gallery For Graffiti, June 29, 2015 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video/#!/on-air/as-seen-on/Empty-Auto-Shop-in-Jersey-City-Transformed-into-Art-Gallery-For-Graffiti/310778741 News 12 Exhibition brings graffiti art to Jersey City, July 1, 2015 http://newjersey.news12.com/news/demolition-exhibition-brings-graffiti-art-to-jersey-city-1.10600874 Pix11 Andrew Ramos, Abandoned Jersey City Pep Boys Turned into Graffiti Paradise, June 29, 2015 http://pix11.com/2015/06/29/abandoned-jersey-city-pep-boys-shop-transformed-into-graffiti-paradise/

Graffiti & Street Art

12 Oz Prophets Chester Copperpot, Green Villain #GVM004, May 7,2015 http://www.12ozprophet.com/news/green-villain-gvm004/

Chester Copperpot , Green Villain Creates Week-Long Graffiti Exhibition at Pep Boys Store in Jersey City, June 11, 2015 http://www.12ozprophet.com/news/green-villain-week-long-graffiti-exhibition-pep-boys-store-in-jersey-city/ Animal New York Bucky Turco, Abandoned Pep Boys Station Transformed in Graffiti Group Show: Demolition Exhibition, June 24, 2015 http://animalnewyork.com/2015/abandoned-pep-boys-station-transformed-in-graffiti-group-show-demolition-exhibition/ Street Art NYC Lois Stavsky, Artists Convert Former Jersey City Shop into a Graffiti Mecca: SP.ONE, Mr. Mustart, Distort, ERA, Mr. Abillity, Chopla, Pomer, Clarence Rich, Paws 21, Optimo Primo, AIDS Crew and more, May 5, 2015 http://streetartnyc.org/blog/2015/05/05/artists-convert-former-jersey-city-shop-into-a-graffiti-mecca-sp-one-mr-mustart-distort-era-mr-abillity-chopla-pomer-clarence-rich-paws-21-optimo-primo-aids-crew-and-more/

Lois Stavsky, Green Villains Demolition Exhibition Converts Former Jersey City Shop into a Graffiti Wonderland: Wane, Doves, Curve, Mr. Mustart, Evikt, Jahan, Mes, Themo, Distoart, Kingbee, Era, Goomba, Stay One & more , July 1, 2015 http://streetartnyc.org/blog/2015/07/01/green-villains-demolition-exhibition-converts-former-jersey-city-shop-into-a-graffiti-wonderland-wane-doves-curve-mr-mustart-evikt-jahan-mes-themo-distoart-kingbee-era-goomba-stay-one/#sthash.nnKSBZbK.dpuf

CHICpea JC Green Villain Live Graffiti at Pep Boys, April 29, 2015 http://www.chicpeajc.com/fun/events-parties/spring-weekend-roundup/

Snap Mamas Leslie, Catch Me if You Can, April 28, 2015 http://snapmammas.com/2015/04/28/catch-me-if-you-can/ The Roosevelts Joe Cucci, Jersey City Street Artists Transform an Abandoned Building into a Local 5 Pointz, Apr 29, 2015 http://www.rsvlts.com/2015/04/29/jersey-city-street-artists-building/?utm_source=JerseyCity&utm_medium=StreetArt&utm_campaign=FBCPC

Ongoing Documentation

The line between documentation and media coverage is, of course, fuzzy, if only because media coverage IS documentation. THIS is documentation thats happened and will happen independently of what the media have done or will do. Its what Green Villain is doing; its part of our process.

Greg and I have both taken hundreds of photos of the project over its lifetime. So far. Greg also has time-lapse videos of some of the work and, as Ive said, had arranged for a videographer to fly a drone around and through the building, shooting video as it goes. The same videographer will capture the demolition. Wed also arranged to have Google photograph the site using their Trekker technology, which they created for Street View.

What do we do with all this documentation? Thats obvious: put it on the web. Gregs created a website for the project and youll find some photos there:

Green Villain project site: http://g.reenvillain.com/gvm004

In time well prepare an exhibit for the Green Villain site with Googles Street Art Project:

URL: https://greenvillain.culturalspot.org/home

Ive got a Flickr album where I stash photos of the site:

Demolition Exhibition: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stc4blues/sets/72157655046573570

Ive posted many pieces online at my blog, New Savanna. Some of them are collected in this document, but those posts consisting entirely of photos are not included. You can find all of these posts here:

URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/PB%20Graff%20Jam

My posts on graffiti in general are here:

URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/graffiti

And then theres social media, where everyone else can post their photos and videos:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/explore/tags/gvm004/ Tagboard: https://tagboard.com/gvm004/search

The Posts I originally wrote the posts as more-or-less individual stand-alone entities. There is no ongoing narrative or argument, but there is some repetition. Ive not edited that out, but I have fixed some minor glitches here and there and made a few minor additions. OK to Destroy: Jersey Citys Graffiti Jam of April 2015: This is an overview of the project as it stood at the end of April, before wed had any plans of doing the interior. The photos are from the April 25th open jam, where people could come and see the artists paint.

SP One, Whats he thinking?: Two process shots and one final of a piece by SP ONE. It looks like he changed his mind about the design as he executed it.

Graffiti: From Art Crimes to Family Day: Family flicks from the April 25th open jam, a little project history, and some reflections on the ambiguous status of graffiti as vandalism and as, well, art.

Green Villain Karma: Urban Buddhism in Jersey City: Linking the all but deliberate transitory nature of graffiti with the deliberate transitory nature of Tibetan ritual sand mandalas.

Good Grief! War Boys in the Promised Land: Cartoon characters appeared in graffiti in the 1970s, characters from Peanuts among them. This post examines a mural that places Charlie Brown and friends in a war zone.

Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation?: Sometime during the project Greg sprayed a corner of the service bay with pink paint. And then someone else added silver highlights.

Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to Informatic Culture: Reflections occasioned when two photographer-technicians from Google came by to photograph the site with GooglesTrekker camera.

Some Styles at the Demolition Exhibition: Brief notes pointing out stylistic features in nine pieces in the exhibition.

Sacred Animal Beyond Category: Super-Dope in Layers: Some comments on the placement of one of the last pieces painted, by an artist from Dubai. Shows how this particular wall developed over time.

Even Heather Mac Donalds Welcome to Tag-Up at the Demolition Exhibition: An examination of tags and tagging and a contemplation of the radically interactive nature of the exhibition, where people were free to make their own marks, on canvases or even on the walls, and to ride around on skate boards, scooters, and BMX bikes.

Appendix 1: Time Line: From July 5, 2014, to July 5, 2015.

Appendix 2: Is it Art? That is, is there wide range of styles and quality?

Appendix 3: Graffing the Future: Is the next phase of human cultural evolution being inscribed on walls by graffiti writers and street artists?: What the title says, some things to think about when pondering the future.

Appendix 4: Sharks in Formaldehyde: New Yorks Met and the People Who Made It: A review of Michael Gross, Rogues Gallery, which is about the founding of and behind-the-scenes scuttlebut about New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art. It gives you something to think about when pondering the quasi-criminal nature of some graffiti.

The Artists

4SAKN ABILITY ACRO BIES BIZO

BRADLEY EHRSAM BSET

CHOPLA CLARENCE RICH

CONE CREEO (ERA)

CURVE DAK DERT DETER

DISTORT DOVES DUTCH ELUDER EMILIO

FLORENTINE EMO

ESTEAM EVICT

FAIPE FALSE

FATHIMA FK (SPOT) FOREX GOAL

GOOMBA GROPE HOACS IDEAL

JAHAN LOH JAMOE

JEE JURNE KEO

KLOPS KNOWS (WANE)

KOMAR LOSER

M. MUEKER MAESTRO MEDOW

MENT MES

MONE MUSTART

NAB NARK NERO NOTE2

NTEL OCAS ONCE

OPTIMO OREO PAWN PAWS PENG RATH REAP REE

REPO REVENGE

RISKY ROACHI RUKUS SAEZ SEBS

SERVE

SHANK (DMOTE) SKUF

SMEAR SNOE SNOW SP ONE STAK STAVI STAY TENK

THEMO TIER TIPE

TWERK TWIGS VEER VEW

VOR138 WEN

WERDS WOSA YODER ZA ONE

A Note About the Title of this Document As Ive already explained, GVM004 is the identifier Green Villain uses to designate this particular mural site. Were now up to GVM022. The main title thus identifies the site, albeit in a

somewhat cryptic way unless you know the code, which isnt secret, of course. But neither is it common knowledge. When you stick a pound sign (#) in front of GVM004 it becomes a hash tag, used to identify items in social media; hash-tagging started with Twitter. The presence of that hash tag in the title indicates that media are integral to the Demolition Exhibition and not secondary. As for the subtitle, chronicle is a bit anachronistic and implies an elevated tone that cuts ironically in some direction or another.

OK to Destroy: Jersey Citys Graffiti Jam of April 2015

On Saturday April 25, 2015, some 20-30 graffiti writers and street artists converged on the now empty Newport Pep Boys store in Jersey City, New Jersey. What were they there for? To get up as the lingo has it. To spray paint on walls.

That activity is vandalism in Jersey City, as in most other cities America (though, like a number of cities, Jersey City also has a public mural program). And a number of these artists have police records for committing such vandalism. For that matter, I once got a summons for aggravated trespassing while taking photographs of graffiti on posted land belong to CSX, the large railroad conglomerate.

But its not vandalism if you have permission. And these writers had permission. The permission was arranged by Greg Edgell, proprietor of Green Villain,3 a small group of social entrepreneurs and creatives that in the past few years have developed a diverse portfolio of projects and partnerships. Those projects include a number of mural projects in Jersey City, where Edgell lives, and across the Hudson River in New York City.

In the Fall of 2014 Edgell had contacted Pep Boys management about putting art on the rear wall. Why? Because it is very visible, facing the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail where it is seen by thousands of commuters everyday. He got permission and by the end of November the wall had been covered.

3 URL: http://green-villain.squarespace.com

Winter rolled on through, gave way to Spring, and Edgell learned that the Pep Boys building was going to be torn down to make way for new construction. This wasnt a big surprise, as he already knew the building would be coming down. But not so soon.

All that art, gone! What to do? Thats obvious, no? Cover the whole building before it comes down. So Edgell got permission from the owner and put out the call. The artists who came, came

knowing their art was slated for destruction. But then thats how it is in the graffiti world. You pretty much assume your art wont last. If it isnt buffed (that is, painted over) by the authorities, other artists will go over it sooner or latter. Failing that, the weather will erode the paint.

But then, nothings permanent. Nothing. Hence as the sticker says

* * * * *

Here you see the roll doors of the Pep Boys service bays, each allocated to a different artist. The second one in was given to Chopla. Heres the top segment of that door:

Weve got some little squiggly designs: some that look like snowflakes, some spirals, what have you. In the middle, though, we have a decapitated figure of some sort holding a aerosol can in its right hand, with its head rolling on the ground. I suppose it means something, but thats not why Im pointing it out.

Its the aerosol can. In a graffiti project of this scope its almost guaranteed that someone is going to paint an aerosol can. While graffiti doesnt wallow in self-consciousness, that self-consciousness is there, and has been there from the beginning in the early 1970s.

Chopla has filled the lower part of the panel with a skeleton, one of several he contributed to the Pep Boys project. Its clearly visible behind some onlookers and the scaffold Chopplas standing on:

Notice the date, 2015, at the lower right. That is, of course, common. You date your art. And Choplas put something of a signature at the middle to the left of center here:

This is the front entrance to the building and it changed considerably once we decided to do the interior and invite the pubic in.

Those are the glass front doors of the building. Choplas put his name there in block letters. Other artists have used bubble letters. These are known as throwies or throw-ups. Why? Because its easy to throw them up on a wall in five minutes or so. Up at the top we see the single line names known as tags or handstyles. Theyre even quicker.

Thats where graffiti started in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with quick tags. If youre committing an act of vandalism you better do it quickly. Tags and throwies are ideal. Tags and throwies are based on names, not legal birth-certificate names, but a name you take as a graffiti writer.

This too is a name:

It says Themo, though youll have to do a bit of analysis to resolve those forms into the name. This kind of work, known as a piece (from masterpiece) obviously takes longer to do than a tag or a throwie. This is not something youre going to do in broad daylight in a visible and highly trafficked area. Unless, of course, youve got permission.

In the past couple of years Themo has taken to splattering paint on the surface hes painting, which is clearly visible in this close-up:

He belongs to the PFC crew a crew is an informal group of writers who often paint together. Themo often paints with Era, as he did on this occasion. Eras piece is next to his:

Notice that the two pieces interlock smoothly on along their common border:

When a group of writers works together on a wall, the result is called a production. This next flick shows part of a very large production the AIDS (And It Dont Stop) crew put on the rear, track-facing, wall of the building:

The large yellow mass is some kind of animal creature. The eye and nose are obvious at the right, as is the creatures mouth. Given that, its easy to spot the legs and between the legs, riding the creature, is a small blue humanoid. The name of the artist, Loser, rides the creatures neck.

At the left, along the top half, we see a piece by Distort. The O has been rendered as the barrel and cylinder of a pistol. The imagery of graffiti tends toward the strange, macabre, and weird.

This is from the other end of the production:

The name at the lower right is Yoder and the name at the upper left is Elude. Thats Dutch at the upper right and fragments at the lower left.

If we go around that corner (the northeast corner) we find this soup of letters and creatures (known as characters):

Thats, in effect, a roll call of the AIDS crew. Heres sticker the one of the crew slapped on a pipe at the site:

The AIDS sticker is on the pipe at the right, near the top:

Obviously, a good many of the artists who contributed to the building slapped a sticker on one of those pipes, or tagged one of them. But some of those stickers belong to artists and others who just happened by. This sticker belongs to Plasma Slugs:

Hes from Brooklyn and, rather than writing his name, he uses that slug-looking creature as his mark. If you look around Jersey City, New York City, and elsewhere (such as Amsterdam) youll find variations of that slug.

The point of stickers is obvious. Its quick and easy to slap one up somewhere. Where theres one sticker, others are likely to follow. Its a way of getting your name out there.

And that was the point of graffiti back in the day: fame. You remember that TV comedy, Cheers, about the bar where everybody knows your name? Well graffiti is about turning the world into a place where everybody knows your name. Its a way of making your mark in the world, of proclaiming I am.

The people who started graffiti were mostly poor and mostly forgotten. And so they proclaimed their existence on the cars of the New York City subway system and fought a battle with the authorities for two decades before more or less giving up on the subways. By that time, however, graffiti had been adopted by hip-hop and extreme sports and had made its way around the world.

And now, for the first time in its history, Jersey City has had an open graffiti jam in broad daylight in a very visible space. Its certainly not the first time a group of writers have gotten together and painted, but those times and places where out of public view. This is different. Just what will come of this difference, thats not at all obvious.

You couldnt have seen this five or ten years ago:

You couldnt even have seen it a year ago. What will have changed when the childs old enough to hold a can and wield it with style and grace? That wont be too long from now, but were living in strange times. Will another hurricane have blown through and flooded Jersey City like Sandy did in 2012? Will a woman have been elected President of the United States? Will this graffiti jam have become an annual event in Jersey City?

* * * * *

This post originally appeared in 3 Quarks Daily, rather than my personal blog, New Savanna. Ive written two other posts about graffiti for 3 Quarks Daily: June 2, 2014: Graffiti and the Spirit of the Place http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/the-site-of-graffiti-linked-poetry-and-muen.html June 30, 2014: Graffiti is the most important art form of the last half-century http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html Ive written a good many graffiti posts for New Savanna: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/graffiti Heres all my posts on the Pep Boys graffiti jam: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/PB%20Graff%20Jam These posts are about various Green Villain projects: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/g-zone

SP One, Whats he thinking? Look at this flick, taken at 1:17 PM, Saturday 25 April 2015, at the Pep Boys Memorial Graffiti Jam in Jersey City:

SP Ones working on a piece. SP One is standing in front of a letter form, but whats immediately to the left of that letter form? Decoration, just decoration.

Now look at this shot, taken at 1:48 PM:

No ones standing in front of it, so we can see the whole piece clearly. Knowing this is by SP One its easy to see that letter form as a combination of S and P. The One is obvious enough.

Given the way I framed the shot we cant see much to the left, but whats there seems to be pretty much what was there in the previous shot: decorative background.

Now look at this shot, which I took much later in the day (early evening, 6:49 PM, hence the different light):

Theres a very obvious S over there at the left, on top of what appeared to be just background in the previous two shots. Was it part of the original design, of did it insert itself in process?

Graffiti: From Art Crimes to Family Day

Back in the day, when graffiti was just getting started in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was a criminal act. A minor crime, to be sure, but still criminal. And it still is, for the most part, vandalism.

But things have changed as well. By the 1990s graffiti had been picked up by hip-hop, extreme sports, and had gone international. It was a crime all over the world.

And now, what happened in downtown Jersey City this past Saturday, April 25, 2015? The

Green Villain, aka Greg Edgell, organized a graffiti jam at the Newport Pep Boys store. In the Spring of 2014 Greg Edgell started his plan to take over walls in Jersey City, where he

lives, and New York City, across the river. Find a good wall, contact the owner, get permission to put graff or street art on it, find the artists and let them do it. The Newport Pep Boys in Jersey City was the fourth hit, Green Villain Mural Number 4: GVM004.

Why this building? Because the rear wall is big and visible. It faces the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, where it is seen by 1000s of commuters a day. All systems were Go. By November 2014 the AIDS crew had that huge rear wall covered.4 Five months later word came down that the building had been sold and would be demolished to make way for new construction.

Edgell did the only sensible thing, got permission to do the whole building. On Saturday April 25, 2015 20-30 writers from three states converged on the Pep Boys building, all systems GO on all four walls, North, South, East and West. Edgell & friends DJd at the southeast corner as onlookers toured around the building on foot and in cars and SUVs.

Jersey City had never before seen anything like this. Sure, theres been out-of-the-way spots where writers would gather and get up on the walls. But this is not an out-of-the-way spot. Its very visible. People brought their kids and the kids loved it. Naturally.

4 URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/11/friday-fotos-work-in-progress-gvm004.html

What happened to the art crimes? Theyre not gone, of course. Some of the artists who got up on those walls also have criminal records for vandalism. For that matter I once got a summons for aggravated trespassing because I was photographing graffiti on posted property.

The social conditions that propelled the original writers to protest and proclaim their names on walls and subway cars, they havent disappeared. Just a couple days after the Pep Boys walls were painted Baltimore broke out in riots over police treatment of a black man. Back in April of 1968, almost fifty years ago, and about the time graffiti was itching to be born in Philadelphia and New York City, Baltimore broke out in (much worse) riots over the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King.

Injustice and inequality stalk the land. Graffiti is still a crime. But its now also family day. You make sense of it. I cant.

Green Villain Karma: Urban Buddhism in Jersey City The painting continues on the Pep Boys site, as you can see in these flicks, taken 5 May 2015. Notice the incomplete Goomba head (upper left):

And the front faade is almost completely redone:

Note: The right-hand side of the faade was completely redone before the June 27th opening.

But thats not whats on my mind. Whats on my mind is impermanence, one of the eternal themes of philosophy. Tibetan Buddhists celebrate this theme with sand mandalas. Heres a short Wikipedia paragraph:

The Sand Mandala is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. A sand mandala is ritualistically dismantled once it has been completed and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.5

Heres a link to a time lapse video of one being created and then dismantled:

https://youtu.be/r2PQg6mws4k

This is a discussion of the sand mandala sequence from House of Cards, Episode 7, Season 3.6

5 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala 6 URL: http://www.quora.com/House-of-Cards-Netflix-series/What-significance-do-the-Tibetan-sand-painting-scenes-have-in-Season-3-Episode-7-of-House-of-Cards

Good Grief! War Boys in the Promised Land One could, of course, dismiss it because its comic strip imagery, and therefore Not Serious. One could also dismiss it as graffiti, and therefore Not Serious.

But I cant do that, not while Im being a Martian Anthropologist. In that role I have no choice but to take what the natives do as being quite serious. That is, serious in the sense that it indicates whats going on in their society.

Heres Woodstock, a character from the comic strip, Peanuts, which is surely smack dab in the center of post-war (WWII) American culture and which has featured in graffiti culture since the mid-1970sthat is to say, from the beginning:

The headband establishes Woodstocks hippie cred and the music-blaring transistor radio reinforces it.

The Greenvillain sign is a shout-out to Greg Edgell, who runs Green Villain, the production company thats organizing the graffiti on the soon-to-be-demolished Pep Boys building in the Newport area of Jersey City. This is painted on the southwest corner of the building.

But why the brown? Is it supposed to represent bare dirt? What about the black loops? Since Ive seen the whole mural Ill tell you what it is, its barbed wire. Woodstock is strolling around on a battlefield. Vietnam perhaps? After all, the war there was going hot and heavy when the flower children gathered in the mud at Woodstock, New York, and listened to Jimi Hendrix transform The Star-Spangled Banner into a war protest anthem.

Heres what we see when we turn the corner:

Woodstocks pal, Snoopy, is there to the left, on the top of his dog-house flying in the sky (in his mind it is, no doubt, a Sopwith Camel), and riddled with bullet holes. Hes wearing the cap and the scarf of the WWI flying ace he pretended to be. Hes saluting valiantly as his plane goes down (well see the smoke in the next image).

I cant really read the imagery below as a name, but, if that IS what it is, then that name is obviously written in characters from Peanuts. Weve got Charlie Brown at the left: the zig-zag pattern of his jersey gives him away. To his left weve got Lucy yelling about something (notice the pattern in her dress) and then, I believe, Schroder (Im looking at the hair). There seems to be a football below. Finally, at the right, we have Linus, clutching his security blanket, which is itself the last letter of the name.

Look up top, just right of the middle. Theres eight tiles that havent been covered in (sky) blue. Theyve got TRUBL on them. Thats from whatever had been there before and it has, presumably, been left untouched as a courtesy.

Here we see the smoke billowing from Snoopys damaged Sopwith Camel and we can see explosions in the air here and there:

If you look near the bottom right you can see what appears to be Snoopy in silhouette, perhaps a representation of the WWI flying ace wandering the battlefield behind enemy lines after hes been shot down at night.

I read the name as BSET, where the S is on the boys Superman jersey. Notice, though, that above the boys foot theres what appears to be a gemstone of some kind. Perhaps its wandered here from the Uncle Scrooge comic?

One more tick to the left and we can see more barbed wire and some character in an army helmet:

This, clearly, is war. Heres the whole front panel:

And heres the whole thing in one shot:

What war? Vietnam? Not really. Just war, but war being fought by the characters of one of Americas most beloved comic strips, Peanuts. America as war? The war that is America?

Ironic? I suppose so. Though I think it pushes as bit beyond irony. Post-modern. Surely. Very much so (heard in the voice of Martin Sheen in the briefing scene from Apocalypse Now). Deconstructive? In the popular sense of the term, surely. Perhaps even in the more robust and demanding sense that Derrida originally gave the term. If you want to argue that line you might want to follow through on the fact that graffiti is, after all, about names, and that its practitioners call themselves writers.

And now were getting downright Biblical: Handwriting on the wall. American exceptionalism, that is, America as the Promised Land. That makes Snoopy and

Woodstock into War Boys in the Promised Land.

Good Grief!

Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation?

What, pray tell, is this?

Its two bottles on a shelf or something. Well, yeah, thats obvious. But what kind of bottles...

look like beer bottles, maybe but beer bottles arent silver

neither are they. thats paint not applied very carefully either, looks like it was sprayed

and the spray caught the wall too.

* * * * * And so the conversation goes. Heres some context:

Thats obviously graffiti to either side. It looks like the pink paint was just sprayed wherever it could go without covering the graffiti. Id guess that the graffiti to the right was first, then the pink, and last the graffiti over the pink to the left (on the orthogonal wall).

Notice that the paints on the floor, too. And those bottles, and the plumbers helper. Silver.

I am further guessing that nothing was moved or (carefully) positioned in this process. Certainly,

the bottles werent sprayed silver off in a corner somewhere and then carefully placed into the scene. Ill bet if we scratch the silver paint on them well see pink below.

Same with the plumbers helper; pink beneath the silver. Notice how the silver bleeds around the edge and onto the floor. No masking tape there. So you think if we lift it up well see the concrete floor unadorned with pink?

* * * * *

Believe it or not, theres an aesthetic to this, a discipline. Taking it as you find it no moving anything to get an unobstructed surface and just painting it all pink, thats a discipline. Painting it pink, whatevers there, where it is, turns it all into a surface. Adding some silver here and there, but not being too careful about boundaries, articulates that surface, but doesnt really pull objects from it.

Whod a thought?

Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to Informatic Culture While the human act of marking walls goes back 10s of thousands of years, aerosol graffiti is quite recent and, in its current form, is often propagated around the world through digital images residing on the web. With that in mind, consider the following photo, taken at the site of Green Villains Demolition Exhibition in the Newport area of Jersey City:

The man is Omar, and he works for Google Street View. The contraption on his back is a Trekker camera,7 which Google developed for photographing streets. While the camera was originally development for deployment on top of a automobile which drives the streets and photographs the scene, this version allows access to off-street areas. In this case Omar is walking around a building that is covered with graffiti. Omars compatriot, whose name I forget, went inside the building with a slightly different version of the camera, one mounted on a frame you can push along the floor.

The building used to be a Pep Boys store. Pep Boys, as you know, services automobiles and sells parts, accessories, and supplies. Pep Boys is thus about the automobile, a technology which dominated American life in the second half of the 20th century, though it originated in the 19th century.

Street View is also about the automobile, but its 21st century technology based on computers. Google itself arose in the last decade of the 20th century as a search engine for the web; and that is still the center of its business. At some point, though I forget just when, it also started serving up street maps, and it created Street View to augment that business.

Street View images live online. They dont come bundled up with paper maps you buy at a gas station or from AAA. The camera is itself 19th century technology, with antecedents going back a

7 URL: http://www.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker/

century or three before that, but the Trekker system combines lasers and GPS and digital computing, all late 20th century tech.

Graffiti of the sort on and inside this building originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is based mostly, though not entirely, on paint delivered by aerosol cans. The aerosol can8 originated in the mid-20th century. During the 1970s and 1980s the subway system of New York City was the most important site of graffiti development. Subways are, of course, train technology, which dates back to the early 19th century, with electrification9 coming at the end of the century.

So, graffiti originated with the application of paint using 20th century technology to trains based in 19th century technology. When the web bootstrapped onto the Internet in the mid-1990s graffiti followed almost immediately. It will be six months or more before the images Omar took will go live on the web. But when that happens, a new era in graffiti culture will have begun.

8 URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerosol_spray 9 URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive#History

Some Styles at the Demolition Exhibition

NARK

The Demolition Exhibition, covering 28,000 sq. feet of walls in the Newport area of Jersey

City, opened on Saturday June 27. Of course artists and others had been in and out of the building for the last two months, so the boundary between official opening hours and the rest of time and space had been somewhat porous. But that will all come to an end sometime in July, when the building is demolished and returned to dust.

With all that in mind, I thought Id offer a few comments on some of the styles in view. As far as I know graffiti styles have not been subject to classification and analysis beyond the standard distinction between wild style, in which the letters and cut up, confused, and disguised, and all the rest. So there is no official nomenclature. Nor do I intend to introduce any here.

But I do think its useful/helpful to note that its not all alike, especially if youre not familiar with graffiti.

* * * * *

These pieces exhibit a flat style, which may be the most common style in the show. There

may be some 3D cues here and there, but theyre minimal. Theres no attempt to imply and overall 3D space. Notice the way patterns are deployed across the surfaces of the letters:

REVENGE (Note: replaced before the 6/27 opening)

CURVE

SNOE

This, in some ways, is flat. But the 3D cues (drop shadows) are very strong, though there is

no overall 3D space. Notice the treatment of color, the gradient from one side to the other:

WANE / KNOWS

Here weve got a 3D space, though the space is shallow:

SPONE

Here we see another shallow 3D space after all, it only has to contain letters but the

surfaces have been rendered with trompe l'oeil lighting to give the effect of a highly reflective metallic surface:

VOR138

The next two have quite a different feel. Theyre more biomorphic. Its not simply that the

forms are rounded, but they give a sense of plant growth. Note that the first has strong 3D cues while the second does not:

TWERK

ACRO / MUSTART

This too has a somewhat biomorphic feel, but feels less contained than the previous two,

more outward motion, and the detailing is styled somewhat differently:

ERA / CREEP

And then theres this, which all but explodes off the wall:

JAHAN LOH

Finally, a footprint:

SNEAKER SAPIENS

I rather suspect that it wasnt deliberate. It just happened.

Sacred Animal Beyond Category: Super-Dope in Layers This is something that just happened. The artist who did that marvelous creature, whatever it is, is not someone Green Villain knew and invited to the party. But Street Art New York came by to flick the show and mentioned that, Hey! Ive got this artist whos passing thru and would like to get up. Sure, send her around, sez Green Villain. And so this wonderful creature just happened.

Three layers:

1) The Animal is the top layer and is outlined in black (the artist, Fathima10 [& Instagram11], is from Dubai). It's painted on 2) the wall of a small semi-enclosed office (look at the way the wall meets the floor). The surface of that wall is the middle layer. Everything else is the 3) bottom layer: the floor and the wall behind the office wall.

Notice that Fathimas creature goes over the door (you can see it clearly in the images below) as though it werent there. Its just a part of the wall, though she does acknowledge the small window in the door.

Strictly speaking Fathimas creature is street art rather than graffiti. Graffiti is based on names and letter forms; street art is not. The distinction is important, though fuzzy.

I took that photo on July 3, 2015. Here's how that wall looked on June 5, 2015:

10 Her website, URL: http://www.fatfolio.com/ 11 URL: https://instagram.com/fatspatrol/

May 27, 2015:

Even Heather Mac Donalds Welcome to Tag-Up at the Demolition Exhibition

A defense of graffitis egalitarian values in an age of oligarchic excess, financial gamesmanship, and ecotastrophe Who the Eff, you ask, is Heather Mac Donald? And just why are you addressing her?

Heather Mac Donald is a well-known commentator and is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. As the name indicates, its a Manhattan-based think-tank that, in its own words, has been an important force in shaping American political culture and developing ideas that foster economic choice and individual responsibility.12 Four years ago Mac Donald wrote two critiques of graffiti for City Journal, a quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute. The pieces were occasioned by Art in the Streets, an exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which billed it as the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art.13 And that, so far as I know, is true. Its by no means the first time graffitis made it into a museum, but it was the first major retrospective.

One piece, Radical Graffiti Chic,14 is about graffiti and graffiti culture generally while the other, Crime in the Museums,15 is a review of the exhibition. Needless to say, she was not impressed. But she WAS angry and disgusted. Graffiti after all, is vandalism, as we all know. Moreover Mac Donald asserted that its not particularly accomplished or interesting as art, it does nothing to better the lives of poor communities, and, in the museum world its just something for rich oligarchs to play with while theyre safe in their urban aeries. I rather agree with the last, but have

12 URL: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ 13 URL: http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?&id=443 14 URL: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.html 15 URL: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/bc0417hm.html

severe doubts about her other objections. But I dont want to go into that here, as Ive already responded to some of her remarks in two pieces:

The Skys Falling! and Graffitis to Blame: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/06/skys-falling-and-graffitis-to-blame.html Crime in the Museum, from Antiquities to Graffiti: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/06/crime-in-museum-from-antiquites-to.html

Rather, I want to look at a stunt she pulled when she went to see the show. As she tells it in Crime in the Streets:

Once allowed inside the show, I went to Martha Coopers influential photos of bombed subway cars and made ready to write my tag on the wall next to them, eyeing a guard conspiratorially. Oh, no, please! intervened the watchman apologetically. You cant do that. I tried again next to the timeline entry celebrating the start of Faireys stickering campaign in 1989. You cant write on the wall, another guard told me.

Hypocritical to the end, MOCA is selling graffiti spray paint in its bookstore along with its $55 Art in the Streets catalogues.

Of course she knew very well that she wouldnt be able to write on the walls.

Before getting to that, though, I want to bring up another point. Perhaps a bit pedantic, but

its also a point of honor, and of truth. Unless Mac Donald has a secret life as a bomber thats graffiti lingo for someone who gets up (more lingo) all over the freakin place 24/7 she doesnt have a TAG. She has a name and its signature, but thats not a tag.

Its not merely that a tag is ones nom de plume or, if you will, nom de guerre but that its

carefully and deliberately styled. Its the foundation of graffiti. A skillful tag can be spotted at a glance. So Mac Donalds merely talking about defacing a wall with her signature, not a tag.

As to whether or not she should have tried that stunt, thats an interesting question. If shed consulted Socrates, who drank hemlock for his work among Athenian youth, he might well have advised her: If youre willing to pay the fine and do the time, sure, go ahead. [Im thinking, of course, of the Crito.16] But obviously she wasnt. She was indulging in a bit of theater so she could use it in her review. It was a cheap no-risk trick.

But she does have a point. There is some hypocrisy there. Anyone whos involved with graffiti knows of the criminal risk involved and we all think about it. Just what we think, that obviously varies from one person to another. Some of us do think were living in a world that calls for trespass and while others just want to get up and over. As Ive said, I dont want to argue the point here and now. I want to switch the game a bit.

I want to look at the Demolition Exhibition,17 which recently concluded its one-week run in a now-abandoned Pep Boys store in the Newport area of Jersey City. Why only one week? Because the buildings slated for, you guessed it, demolition. Green Villain, a small production company, made a deal with Pep Boys to do, first the rear wall (facing a commuter railway line), and then when the building was sold and slated for demolition, the entire exterior. GV then made another deal with the developer, Forest City, to do the interior and open the building to the public for a week. Thats whats just concluded: one week (June 27 to July 5) and 100 hundred artists, free.

If Heather Mac Donald had shown up shed have been welcome to tag-up or sign her name just like anyone else:

Of course, those canvases got pretty crowded, and some of the earliest tags and signatures got covered over:

16 Heres an online version of the Jowett translation, URL: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html 17 An article in the Wall Street Journal, URL: http://www.wsj.com/articles/graffiti-artists-and-developers-draw-an-alliance-1435359107

Signing a canvas put there for that purpose might not be transgressive enough for Heather Mac. But she couldve signed the wall, just as others have done:

Trouble is thered have been nothing transgressive about that either, not at the Demolition Exhibition. Not everyone did sign a wall. But many did. Many did.

Why? You know those old cave paintings? There are places on those walls that are covered in hand prints. People would put their hands on the wall and then blow pigment over them, leaving a print on the wall. Whyd they do that?

Theres plenty of space on the walls, especially if you go small. See:

Maybe thats not quite the spot she wanted there are others. After all, its in the bathroom. Look to the lower right of the mirror:

As she knows, bathrooms are traditional locations for wall markings, not just in graffiti culture. That wall is pristine in comparison to others Ive seen, at the old 51 Pacific spot,18 for example.

But maybe, upon reflection, H MacD would have decided that walls just werent her style. Well then, the floors available. If you want you could go large:

18 This is a warehouse loft where Green Villain held underground parties. The interior walls were covered with graffiti, as was the alleyway behind the building. Edgell curated and managed the graffiti and had it changed periodically. Heres an article about the bathroom, with photos, URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/08/everyone-poops-graffiti-on.html

Or go for elegance:

As I said, it all starts with hand styles. Without a decent hand style, a graffiti writers got nothing.

Want to boast? If youve got the cred, by all means show it:

Thats a crown, reserved for a king of graffiti. Its not something you bestow on yourself. And if you go putting a crown on your tag, or throwie, or piece, without having earned it, youre going to get in trouble.

And then theres this:

I dont know whether the writer is Greek, which is certainly possible in this city, or just likes the look of Greek letters. But whoever did that the wanted their name to be known. Without even looking I counted that name in two other places at the exhibition, perhaps three (check the canvas close-up for one of them).

Whatever the Demolition Exhibition WAS, it was NOT a museum show. Not with skate boarding and BMX couch jumping:

And not with the DJs spinning vinyl, yes! five decades of prime American pop, rock, soul, jazz, hip-hop, house, reggae and whatever the hell else:

You had to be there!

These days everyones a photographer:

Smart phones clicking all over the damn place. Stills and videos straight to Instagram.19 Thats why we created the hashtag: #GVM004. In a world of social media who needs a museum? Well, maybe thats not quite the question. The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art notwithstanding,

19 Heres the instagram page for #GCM004, URL: https://instagram.com/explore/tags/gvm004/

museums and graffiti dont mix all that well. For one thing, you need to see graff at scale. Photos, even the best photos, dont give the flavor. At the demolition exhibition we worked to scale. All originals, baby! And like the classic graff of the New York subway system, all gone tomorrow.

We should remind ourselves that museums are only about two-centuries old. They arent eternal is anything? And museum culture is, to no little extent, robber baron culture, as Michael Gross detailed in his history of New Yorks Metropolitan Museum, Rogues Gallery.20 The world weve got now is the product of the values that built museum culture. Maybe its time to hit the reset button on all that. Thats what graffiti is doing, hitting the resent button on expressive culture.

Thats what the Demolition Exhibition is about:

R E S E T ! Its not something that happened because we dont yet have a graffiti museum. Its not something conceived as a step toward a graffiti museum.

Its something else. The event itself is now receding into history. Before long the building will be gone. And then itll be replaced by a mid-rise apartment building.

But people will have their memories. And theres all those photos and videos on the net. Will it resonate?

Call it a small gesture in a big world, the Anthropocene. Whatre the values of graffiti culture? No one does. Its in flux, after four decades graffitis not

settled down. There are lots of people involved with graffiti, the writers, the photographers, curators, gallery owners, property owners, the police, and who knows what else. Theyve each got their own values and interests and nothings settled. Were still trying to figure things out.

20 Grosss webpage for the book, URL: http://mgross.com/writing/books/roguesgallery/

Its not settled down.21 Museum culture is over. Graffiti culture is not.

Bring it on home!

21 Ive examined graffiti through the lens of Bruno Latours Reassembling the Social, URL: https://www.academia.edu/9709527/Reading_Latour_Assembling_the_Society_of_Graffiti

Appendix 1: Time Line

Date Milestone

July 5, 2014 Reached agreement with Pep Boys management to paint the rear faade.

August 14, 2014 First production began.

October 1, 2014 Second production began.

January 24, 2015 Building acquired by Forest City Enterprises and G&S Investors.

March 14, 2015 Third production began on rear faade. Pep Boys agrees to allow the entire exterior to be painted.

April 1, 2015 Pep Boys closes its doors to the public.

April 25, 2015 Outdoor gallery opening where local and international artists paint while the general public watches.

May 1, 2015 Forest City grants access to the interior.

June 13, 2015 Google Cultural Institute uses Trekker camera to capture the entire project, inside and outside.

June 27, 2015 Demolition Exhibition opens to the public. DJs, merchandise vendors, River Horse craft beer, and BBQ pitmaster.

July 5, 2015 Final day of the exhibition.

Appendix 2: Is it Art?

As often as not that question is asked in a context where the implied answer is, no, its vandalism. While that IS and important issue, and one that DOES interest me, thats not what Im thinking about now.

Im thinking more about a version of the question that implies that ART has some essence, so identifiable mark, that proclaims it to be art. In that version, one proceeds by explaining what that essence is and how you identify it. This is a difficult question and, in fact, some aestheticians and critics have simply given up on it. There seem to be so many very different things that people call (legitimately) art that its too difficult specify what it is.

Im sympathetic to that problem, so sympathetic that Im not going to attempt to identify an essence and then pin it, or not, on graffiti.

Ive got something else in mind: variety. Variety in style, variety in quality. One post I did in connection with Green Villains recent Pep Boys project, Some Styles in the

Demolition Exhibition (see above), identified four different styles. Describing the differences is tricky, but seeing them is not. How many distinctly different styles were on display in that project, as I made no attempt at a complete survey in that post? Ten, twenty, but certainly not 50 there were only about 100 artists involved. And of course we didnt even come close to sampling the whole space of graffiti.

If you examined that whole space, how many different styles would you find? I might well be able to find 100 in the work Ive photographed in Jersey City, and thats just one relatively small region. World-wide would it be 1000, less, more? I dont know. Are those significant numbers? Whats the comparison? I dont know.

My point is simply that there is significant stylistic variety. Were not dealing with a hodge-podge of more or less opportunistic and unschooled variety. Theres systematic variety, driven in part by the competitive need to differentiate yourself from others and, in part, by a desire for visual exploration.

Whatever it is that people mean by art, surely it implies systematic variety. We can identify that without having to identify a recognizable essence of art.

And we can do the same with respect to quality. Off hand Id say that the Demolition Exhibition had three, maybe four, quantum levels of quality. Buy that I mean that all the pieces within the same level are of roughly the same quality and all are better than those in the level below and not so good as those in the level above. Would others recognize the same levels? I dont really know, but Id like to find out. I think theres a good chance that knowledgeable observers would and I stress knowledgeable.

If you arent familiar with graffiti, you cant really see whats there in any deep way. Its just a bunch of complex lines and patterns, or not so complex, depending. You cant discriminate among styles or levels of excellence.

Off hand, without thinking about it, Id say there are at least two quantum levels of quality below whats in the Demolition Exhibition and one, maybe two, levels above. Thats five, maybe six, quantum levels of quality. How significant is that? I dont know.

How many different quality levels are on display in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC? And, in each genre on display there, how many levels below museum quality? Again, I dont know. But thats the kind of question you need to ask if you want to know: Is it Art?

Appendix 3: Graffing the Future: Is the next phase of human cultural evolution being inscribed on walls by graffiti writers and street artists?

DUNE UNO: The Bottle, Gil Scott-Heron 1949-2011 I have a bias about the future, the deep future. We cant predict it, for its too strange. Its not simply a continuation of current trends into the future. Oh, sure, there is that.

But there is also radical change, captured in the concept of a singularity, a moment in human history that so changes the dynamics of human society and culture than those living on the past side of it cannot imagine much less predict the nature of life on the far side.

We are now living in such a singularity. It is breaking over and around us like a 12-foot wave breaking over surfers in the Banzai Pipe.22 We dont know what the world will be like when the last energies of the wave have dissipated. All we can do is be prepared to create a new way of life on those shores.

Images Images (Photos) Everywhere I am an intellectual. My main mode of acting is through thinking. And what I am thinking is that those distant shores began appearing before us in Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am of course talking about graffiti, not just any writing on walls, but the particular kind of writing that appeared on those walls at that time, writing using aerosol paint as its instrument.

22 URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_Pipeline

At the time most good citizens thought of it as vandalism; from a legal standpoint, thats what it is. In his essay to the first bible of graffiti, The Faith of Graffiti, Normal Mailer called it art. Im calling it messages from the future.

I note first of all that we are living in a renaissance of images. Everyone has a cell phone and uses them to take photos. As a recent Google report observed:

Since the dawn of time weve been captivated by images. But the web has turbocharged our ability to view, share and create more imagery than ever before, to the extent that visual imagery has become the dominant form of communication in the 21st century. No wonder smartphones and tablets sans keyboards are increasingly popular they prioritize imagery above all else.

This bias towards imagery is creating a new sensorium how we perceive and sense the environment around us. It has not only influenced how we engage in the digital space, but outside of it too.23

In 2011 380 billion photos were taken, thats 10% of all the photos ever taken. 24Most of those photos, of course, are quick and dirty. But as people take more and more photos they will inevitably be come more discriminating. The quality will go up.

Its in that context that we have to think about the impact of graffiti. In an increasingly visual culture, visual imagery is ever more important. Graffiti is everywhere, and spreading. Photos of it are all over the web. Last year Googles Cultural Institute launched the Street Art Project25 to showcase graffiti and street art from around the world.

From Human Origins to the Renaissance With this in mind, lets go back in time. While weve found cave paintings26 roughly 40,000 years old, weve got stone tools going back almost 2 million years. Thats important, as I noted in a review of Steven Mithens book on music (Synch, Song, and Society,27 Human Nature Review 5, 2005, pp. 66-85):

Obviously we have no record of these utterances, but the archeological record does have indications of cultural conservatism. The repertoire of stone tools was both limited and unchanged between 1.8 and 0.25 million years ago; Mithen gives particular emphasis to the constant form of hand-axes (164). Mithen suggests that, because their finely wrought form exceeds the practical demands of butchery, wood-working, and cutting plants, these hand-axes may have been fitness indicators in the sort of sexual selection regime Geoffrey Miller has advocated.

Beyond this, I note that Ralph Holloway (1969, 1981) long ago suggested that strongly conserved hand-axe form was an indicator of social norms. Those forms could not be conserved from one generation to the next unless there was a deliberate intention to do so. One has to note the significant features of an existing axe and discipline ones knapping motions to produce that result. That is considerably more exacting than simply producing an axe with a sharp edge and appropriate heft. The motivation behind such exacting form, then, is not practical.

23 URL: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/memes-with-meaning.html 24 URL: http://blog.1000memories.com/94-number-of-photos-ever-taken-digital-and-analog-in-shoebox 25 URL: https://streetart.withgoogle.com/en/#home 26 URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting 27 URL: http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/05/wlbenzon.html

Nor can it be merely aesthetic, which would allow for considerable individual variation. That leaves us with a desire to conform to social norms. Given the importance of such norms, that may in itself be a sufficient motivation for their form, to serve as a visible token of social solidarity. In any event, Holloways observation does not contradict Millers, and now Mithens hypothesis. Norms are norms, regardless of their specific purpose and norms that serve multiple ends are likely to be particularly strong.

My point is a simple one: the oldest evidence we have of specifically human cultural norms is of something that can be seen and therefor copied. Cave art, so far as weve discovered, is considerably newer. Other than those stone tools, cave art provides our oldest evidence of human craftsmanship.

Now lets turn our attention to more recent events, the European Renaissance. Notice the sequence in this chronology: Filippo Brunelleschi Invented one-point linear perspective 1377-1446 Nicholas Copernicus28 Championed the heliocentric view of the solar

system 1473-1543

William Shakespeare29 Playwright often credited with inventing the modern sensibility

1564-1616

Isaac Newton30 Synthesized the conceptual foundations of classical physics

1642-1746

It was the visual arts that kicked off the change, not literature and not science;.They followed. Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance:

Besides accomplishments in architecture, Brunelleschi is also credited with inventing one-point linear perspective which revolutionized painting and allowed for naturalistic styles to develop as the Renaissance digressed from the stylized figures of medieval art.31

There is, of course, no assurance that the future will unfold according to patterns followed in the past. But if that happens, then our future is now being written on walls around the world.

The Case for Graffiti Assuming that the visual arts are leading the way, why choose graffiti?

On the one hand, the legit art world is in turmoil. You cant tell the hucksters from the genuine artists and, in any case, there is no definitive sense of direction. Artists, dealers, collectors, and museums are thrashing about.

Meanwhile, in the course of two decades from the late 1960s to the late 1980s graffiti made its way around the world and did so pretty much outside the art world.32 Graffiti represents a new starting point,33 a new conception of image space34, and its the only form of abstract art to attract a mass audience.

28 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus 29 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare 30 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton 31 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi 32 URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/08/through-duchamp-and-beyond-graffiti-in.html 33 URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/06/graffiti-hit-reset-button-on-culture.html 34 URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/11/graffiti-aesthetics-space-of-writing.html

Further, as its spread, graffiti has attracted other styles of art and imaging making and given birth to street art. Think of them together as an aesthetic laboratory in which all styles of art will be tested and tried. Its through that experimentation that the enduring forms of 21st century art will first emerge, for that is where they will receive their sternest test and widest exposure.

On the walls of the world, the World-Wide Wall.35

Appendix 4: Sharks in Formaldehyde: New Yorks Met and the People Who Made It I have two reasons for including this book review: 1) the book tells about the ethically suspect and even criminal activity involved in creating a revered cultural institution, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and 2) it suggests that the social fabric that sustains that museum, and by implication similar museums, is fraying.

* * * * * Michael Gross. Rogues Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum. New York: Broadway Books, 2009.

Full Disclosure: After Id published a piece analyzing the literary style of David Patrick Columbia, Michael Gross contacted me, thanking me for mentioning his book in that piece. He indicated that the book had angered some influential people and, as a result, the book wasnt being reviewed. I did some digging around on the web, had a bit more correspondence with Gross, and ended up asking him to get me a review copy, which he did. Heres my review.

There are two ways to read Michael Grosss latest book, Rogues Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum. The title and subtitle offer a tell-much extravaganza over 500 pages worth of juicy gossip about the rich and powerful folks behind New York Citys Met, one of the finest art museums in the world. Stick this Rogues Gallery in your weekend bag or on your night stand and read it at your leisure. It wont disappoint, and you have the added frisson of knowing that youre displeasuring the socialite who hired white-shoe lawyers to write threatening letters in an attempt to curtail, shall we say, the books circulation, or, at least to produce changes in a subsequent printings and editions.

I mean, if such a letter isnt a roguish stamp of disapproval, I dont know what is. How can you resist the urge to find out what was so deep, dark, and dastardly that someone spent real money to protect keep you from wallowing in reading the dirt? Well, not all of it, just some of it, near the end, the stuff that bears on the question: Who will deserves to replace Brooke Astor as the doyenne of New York City philanthropy?

With only a little more effort, however, and perhaps a little thought here and there, you can read a more substantial book, one that raises a serious question: Is the social web that created and sustained the Met about to disappear, leaving the Met with the life prospects of a beached whale?

Even as he was having fun digging into the archives and tracking down skeletons in Fifth Avenue closets, Michael Gross was, in effect, rethinking the nature of The Metropolitan Museum

35 URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/07/you-know-you-want-to-see-it-world-wide.html

of Art. Rather than thinking of it as a big solid structure that house and protects three millennias worth of art treasures, Gross came to present it as a fragile network of social relationships that somehow manages to balance the good, the bad, and the ugly in such a way that The Beautiful has a home.

By contrast, consider Grosss previous book, 740 Park, which is about another building, an exclusive apartment building in New York City inhabited by the wealthy. Ive not read the book, though I read about it, perhaps even a review of it, in The New York Times back when it came out. I can imagine that the gossip dished out in one book is as good as that in the other. But an exclusive apartment house is just an exclusive apartment house. The residents may travel in the same or over-lapping social circles, but that's it. They are not bound together by a common enterprise.

The Met is a very different kind of building, one that houses an institution of importance on the world stage. And so the relationships among the people who made and make-up the institution, they're more intimate than the relationships among the residents of 740 Park Ave. Gossip about the residents of 740 Park Ave. is just gossip, albeit gossip about very wealthy and powerful individuals. Gossip about the people who built the Met is the history of an institution told at the level of individual desires and actions.

And, if gossip is a moral activity directed at maintaining social norms, then Rogue's Gallery becomes something of an intervention directed at the institution itself. Gross is revealing what those norms have been and how they have changed over time and he is doing this precisely at the moment when that fragile nexus of relationships may be dissolving - which is what he discusses in the last few pages of the book. The building and the art works are still there, but the world is changing around it and the social nexus that built the building and collected the artworks, that's disappearing.

What, then, were those norms and standards? When it originally oozed into existence in the late 1860s and early 1870s the Met was a play to show that America, meaning its wealthiest citizens, had arrived on the world stage. It featured art of European and ancient provenance, though sometimes that provenance was a bit dodgy, a problem thats persisted well into the mid-20th century. American art didnt come into its own at the Met until after World War I, that is, until America had proved itself in world combat and diplomacy. And it took a powerful New York City official, Robert Moses, and a particularly flamboyant director, Thomas Hoving, to finally make the Met an institution of and for the people rather than a club for the competitive collecting habits of the wealthy.

Along the way you have robber barons and their descendants using collecting to put a good face on their wealth. Some were genuinely smitten by and appreciative of the art while others seemed rather more interested in using it as a means to social prominence. Curators cultivated donors, donors manipulated dealers, and everyone looked the other way when it was convenient to do so. All of this seems rather standard to me. And, while many of the details were titillating, some even delicious, I cant say that any of it was terribly surprising or shocking. Its not that Ive got any immediate familiarity with the social world Gross has documented, I dont, but simply that Ive lived a bit and know that nothing is what it seems, theres no purity anywhere, and that Art is not so fussy about the company it keeps as we would like to imagine.

The question remains: Is this mlange of motives enough to carry the Met into the future? For example, The New York Times recently had at an article about one Andrew Hall, a fund

manager who's getting a nine-figure bonus paid out of bailout money and who's bought a German castle to house his 4000 item art collection, the sort of collection that was, not so longer ago, folded into an existing museum, such as the Met. It doesn't seem likely that Hall's going to donate to the Met, the Modern Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, nor any other existing museum. And what about those Arab princes building universities and art museums out of whole cloth in a race against time, remaking their world before the oil dries up?

We arent in Kansas anymore, no were not. Nor is it clear just where we are and where were headed. The vanity, corruption, back-

biting, social climbing, and double-dealing, all the juicy stuff, that will persist. And it may be sufficient to sustain the Met on life support. But growth and transformation, that requires inspiration and unshakable faith in, dare I say it? Beauty. Wheres that in this first decade of the Twenty-First Century?

The Tree of Knowledge?

#GVM004: The Demolition Chronicles

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