BANKSY
~ Public Artist Number One
That
Grafitti offends is a truism – it is meant to offend. It is the
conspicuous conscious leg-cock of a testosterone-induced drive to
mark a territory. It defiles the established ownership of public
space while simultaneously laying claim to it. Involuntary exposure
to aesthetically ugly, verbally violent sub-porn is a violation of
our right to feel safe when out of our homes in our own culture. As
offensive as the grafitti is, the higher crime is the
pseudo-sociological elevation of this pissing contest to a supposed
art form.
Sociologists
interpret crass wall scrawls as the 21st
century equivalent of Lascaux cave art; grafitti artists as modern
society’s naieve visual poets; part modern-primitives, part
urban-shamen. The crude, rude renditions of body parts and the
inarticulate inaccurately spelled expletives are allegedly the
legitimate expressions of an alienated, dispossessed underclass. An
attack on a wall is seen as a valid political act of sabotage by
freedom-fighters, a nocturnal raid behind enemy lines, an action
typical of a guerrilla army waging war against an overwhelmingly
superior force. When in reality the poorly executed drawing of
genitalia is an act of flashing by proxy. Not so much a terrorist as
a tosser.
A
Grauniad journo got into Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner claiming
grafitti made him ‘feel optimistic about shared dreams and common
ownership’. But then he wasn’t writing about any old vandal, he
was commenting on the literati’s favourite adopted hoody, the ‘art
terrorist’ known as Banksy. You have to hand it to him Banksy is a
few strokes above your average teen tagger. It is a knowing
post-modernist that installs a fake cave drawing in the British
Museum. A drawing that depicts the cave dweller spearing a bison with
one hand and pushing a shopping trolley with the other. Not only is
this an attack on what constitutes artifact orthodoxy and a blast at
contemporary consumerism, but it also references grafitti artists
being latterday practioners of cave art.
And
Banksy is back in the fray for the Diamond Jubilee. For the 'Silver'
the Sex Pistols held the line for the two-fingers brigade, this time
around it is Banksy with a twin-digit reposte – a stencil on a
London wall depicting a sweat-shop kid churning out Union Jack
bunting. A class act. Is it offensive? .. I hope so.
Mixed
Metaphor Man June 2012
MMM
on the WWW
A
blog blast form MIXED METAPHOR MAN
By
day mild-mannered and middle-aged, befuddled and bespectacled – by
night a bludgeoning blogger.
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