Column:
City should not discourage graffiti
Published Nov. 2, 2007
This past weekend, members of a local church group met as part of a coalition to rid downtown of its graffiti. They came together at 9 a.m. Saturday and spread out across the district, Goo Gone and sponges in hand, ready to wash everything clean. They rid street posts and walls of tags, and they even added some of their own art.
This sort of thing happens every few years. There's a revival of morality and white-picket-fence desires come forward to manifest themselves in ways of urban cleanup. I hate it.
I happen to quite like graffiti. No, that's not taking it far enough. I absolutely love graffiti as an art form. I think it's chic and interesting in ways that a majority of modern art, especially these days, is not.
What bothers me the most about this unasked-for cleanup is that participants of it make the incorrect assumption that tags, murals and the like on walls are somehow beneath them, as if the fact that it's not found in a gallery gives it less credibility as art.
That's not true. If Damien Hirst came strolling into Columbia and decided the middle of the sidewalk on Ninth Street would be a great place for a piece of installation art, I doubt anyone would try to stop him. Or if they did, there would be a local outcry and a push to save whatever he fancied to put in a glass case of formaldehyde that particular week.
Even if it were eventually removed, I doubt a church group would swoop in and smash it to bits.
Graffiti is becoming more and more legitimized as a true form of art as time passes. Bansky, a famous London graffiti artist, has had works shown all over the world in galleries, open air markets and has even sold paintings at ridiculous prices to celebrities including Madonna and Angelina Jolie. He is even revered enough to have a group dedicated to glorifying him on Facebook.com.
I park my car in Hitt Street parking garage. Every time I leave for work or to run errands, I run right into a written warning, words spelling out firm foreshadowing to passersby: "This is Not a Test" is scrawled on the first level of the garage right next to the stairs.
A few levels higher, there's a stencil of a whale done in red. It's my favorite part of parking in that structure, the way that these things give an otherwise rather drab and forgettable building character and life. The same goes for downtown. Who is to say that graffiti is doing us a disservice? It's like cracking pepper into mashed potatoes. They're good, yeah, but the pepper gives them interesting color and outrageously good taste. Downtown is great, but it's even greater with local flavor making it interesting and unique.
Instead, the group commissioned a local artist to paint the electrical box on the corner of Broadway and Ninth Street. It looks embarrassingly childlike.
A more appropriate solution to this issue would be perhaps providing gallery space for local artists to lend their hands to, maybe commission a mural or five somewhere downtown or even having a showing at one of the few little galleries spread out over the district.
There are some remarkably talented artists in town — the tags all over Hitt Street parking garage are beautiful — and it's disappointing to see such potential untapped, nay, discouraged by the city.
pvyrmf@mizzou.edu