"Art in The Streets" controversy

On April 17th 2011 The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles opened its show “Art In The Streets” the first major U.S. survey of graffiti and street art.

“The exhibition traces the development of graffiti and street art from the 1970s to the global movement it has become today, concentrating on key cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Sao Paulo, where a unique visual language or attitude has evolved. The exhibition features paintings, mixed media sculptures, and interactive installations by 50 of the most dynamic artists(Barry Mcgee, Banksy, Futura, Os Gêmeos, Saber, Neckface, Kaws, Shepard Fairey..) and emphasizes Los Angeles's role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with special sections dedicated to seminal local movements such as cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture.

A comprehensive timeline illustrated with artwork, photos, video, and ephemera provides a historical context for the work.”

The exhibition has been extremely successful for the museum, although the official numbers have not been released yet since the show runs till August 8th 2011.

Of course with success comes criticism and Jeffrey Deitch, the museums director and former gallery owner of the highly influential Dietch Projects along side with MOCA’s board of directors have received their fair share. As a fan of all kinds of art first and a collector second I have been following the show from early inception to its opening and on and with great enthusiasm. I have read many reports and reviews, both positive and negative, and have always felt like I could relate to both sides of the spectrum, even learning a thing or two along the way.

One review in particular really rubbed me the wrong way though, Heather Mac Donald’s “Radical Graffiti Chic” for City Journal. While Heather’s credentials can certainly not be disputed, Yale, University Of Cambridge, Stanford Law, Fellow at the Manhattan Institute etc..Heather chooses to make the piece a platform for personally insulting many of the artist by name. Her point of view on graffiti is out dated and in my opinion detrimental to art as a whole. She also applies the same rules and reality to everything and as we all know not everything in life is equal. I can enjoy something in one context and not in another but she seems to believe it’s all or nothing.

 I like to equate it to attending a concert of a band I enjoy this doesn’t mean I would want them playing outside my home every night. I suppose in her eyes the traditional work displayed in such institutions is drama free, as if the masters weren’t drunks, drug addicts, pedophiles etc.. who were commissioned by rich aristocracy guilty of the same things if not worse.

Well it would seem that Heather is back with a follow up article, this time from the L.A. Times, and I felt like it was important enough to address and share along side with artist Saber’s open response  to Heather.

Heather's Article...

Tagging MOCA

'Art in the Streets' has earned the museum accolades from the art world. But in glorifying graffiti, it celebrates a crime that destroys the city's vitality.

By Heather Mac Donald

May 1, 2011

The Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles is celebrating graffiti, but not on its own property. MOCA's pyramid-topped headquarters on Grand Avenue is conspicuously tag-free. In Little Tokyo, the museum has always painted over the graffiti that appears occasionally on the outside walls of the Geffen Contemporary, its satellite warehouse exhibition space. And now that its latest show — proudly billed as the first major American museum survey of street art — has triggered a predictable upsurge of vandalism in the area, MOCA is even cleaning up graffiti on neighboring businesses.

Why is that? "Art in the Streets" suggests no answer. The exhibition honors such alleged high points in graffiti history as the first cholo tag on the Arroyo Seco parkway and the defacement of L.A.'s freeway signs, without the slightest hint that graffiti is a crime, that it appropriates and damages property without permission and that it destroys urban vitality.

In fact, MOCA's practice of removing graffiti from its premises represents cutting-edge urban policy. Over the last three decades, urban theorists have come to understand the harmful effects of graffiti on neighborhood cohesion and safety. An area that has succumbed to tagging telegraphs to the world that social and parental control there has broken down. Potential customers shun graffiti-ridden commercial strips if they can; so do most merchants, fearing shoplifting and robberies. Law-abiding families avoid graffiti-blighted public parks, driven away by the spirit-killing ugliness of graffiti as much as by its criminality.

But MOCA's hypocrisy in glorifying a crime that it would never tolerate on its own property is easily matched by the two-faced behavior of graffiti vandals themselves. They often dress up their egotistical assault on other people's property with defiant rhetoric about fighting corporate power and capitalism. (How spraying your tag on a bodega on Cesar Chavez Boulevard weakens corporations is never explained, of course.) But what happens when these scourges of profit and bourgeois values see an opportunity to get rich? They turn into unapologetic capitalists.

Britain's Banksy sells his stencils for thousands of pounds at auction. Sticker and poster vandal Shepard Fairey widely promotes his extensive line of clothing and collectibles. Saber, lionized by MOCA for having painted what is reputed to be the largest-ever tag on the "banks" of the Los Angeles River, near where the 5 Freeway meets the 10, has sold designs to Levi's, Hyundai and Harley-Davidson.

"Art in the Streets" co-curator and longtime graffiti promoter Roger Gastman vaunts the corporate clients that he brands with graffiti chic. None of these lucrative arrangements would be possible without a stable system of property rights, which graffiti vandals respect only when their own wealth is involved.

Good luck to parents trying to keep their children away from a tagging lifestyle, now that word is out that a fancy downtown museum has honored graffiti with a major exhibit. And those children who visit the show will learn that MOCA thinks tagging is cool — just look at that life-size, animatronic tagger endlessly spraying his tag high up on a wall!

It might have been possible to mount a show that acknowledged the occasionally compelling graphic elements of urban art without legitimizing a crime. Such an exhibit wouldn't include glamorizing photos of freeway, subway or L.A. River vandalism — and would unequivocally condemn appropriating someone else's property without permission. "Art in the Streets" does not come close to that standard.

Schoolchildren who deduce from the show that graffiti is a route to fame and contracts with Nike will have about as realistic an understanding of their career odds as boys who think they don't have to study because an NBA contract awaits them. Every hour that a student is out tagging is an hour not spent studying, attending school or getting crucial sleep — all activities essential to future success.

In January, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's top financial advisor recommended cuts to the city's graffiti-abatement budget. City Council members and the mayor himself rose up in protest.

"Art in the Streets" gives no clue why Angelenos should care so much about graffiti eradication. Indeed, if graffiti is the boon that "Art in the Streets" suggests, why should taxpayers shell out $7 million a year to have it painted over? If, however, the public is right to demand its removal, why is MOCA promoting it? I asked MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch whether Los Angeles should suspend its graffiti removal efforts. "I don't know," he responded.

The ultimate responsibility for "Art in the Streets" lies with MOCA's buzz-hungry trustees, from Eli Broad on down. When Deitch first proposed a graffiti exhibit, any conscientious trustee should have asked himself: "Would I welcome unauthorized 'street art' by some Saber wannabe on my immaculate mansion or business?"

In case the answer is not obvious, let's listen to the taggers themselves. "I've never written on my own house," a former tagger from Gardena's Graffiti Bandits Krew told me. He was waiting to get his tattoos removed at Homeboy Industries downtown. "I wouldn't like it if someone else did it on my house."

Another ex-tagger from Graffiti 'N' Drugs in Pico Rivera finds my question about whether he would tolerate graffiti on his home silly. "Why would you want to [ louse] up your own house?" he asked me. "That's why you go out and mess up other people's cities."

MOCA's administration shares a defining trait with the graffiti vandals whom the museum is celebrating: self-indulgence. The graffiti criminal combines the moral instincts of a 2-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult: When he sees a "spot" that he wants to "mark," he simply takes it. Deitch and his trustees can toy with graffiti's "outlaw vibe" (as co-curator Aaron Rose euphemistically puts it), knowing full well that their own carefully ordered lives will be untouched by graffiti's ill effects.

But large swaths of Los Angeles and other urban centers are not so protected. "Art in the Streets" has already earned MOCA accolades from the art world, but it will only increase the struggles of Los Angeles' poor communities — and its not-so-poor ones too — to enjoy the security and order that the wealthy take for granted.

Saber's response...

After looking at the longest list of credentials of one person I’ve ever seen—Yale, University Of Cambridge, Stanford Law, Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, recipient of 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement, etc, etc—I came to the conclusion that approaching Heather Mac Donald’s fortified intellect would be the equivalent of challenging the IBM Chess Terminator: cold, calculating, and absent a pulse. I find it hard to believe that someone of such high stature would spend so much energy on something that seems trivial in comparison to her passion for deportation and torture. Yet she seems really upset at the idea of a museum honoring over forty years of development in Graffiti Art.

In her lengthy article “Radical Graffiti Chic,” she refers to artists as “vandal-anarchist wannabes” and attempts to highlight their hypocrisy. She names me personally in the article, stating that I am quick to sell out to any corporate sponsor: “Saber, who declares in an interview with the graffiti journal Arrested Motion that ‘there is no room for empathy when there is a motive for profit,’ has sold his designs to Levi’s, Hyundai, and Harley-Davidson.”

In trying to paint me as a hypocrite for capitalizing on my intellectual property, Heather does not take into account that I support my family through my art. I have painted everything from sets to faux finishing to gold leafing to put food on the table or to pay for health care bills, since insurance companies have refused to cover me due to a pre-existing condition (epilepsy). Heather, who is paid to write articles, should understand the process of making money for one’s creative output, and that this is not what I was referring to in the Arrested Motion quote. I was referring to health insurance companies taking away accessible facilities from sick people in order to save a buck at the expense of the patient’s life. To compare my art to the health insurance companies is ludicrous.

Global, entrepreneurial, and interconnected, the Graffiti Art movement has created its own market and fueled many more. Hollywood and music videos have utilized graffiti style since the 1980s. It should come as no surprise that corporations have aped graffiti imagery and tactics too. After all, the visual content created by this art movement drives millions of hits in web traffic and makes hundreds of millions of dollars in streetwear clothing, publishing, photography, artist materials and spray paint. There is no need to “sell out” when you are busy building. We are an industry, run from the street rather than a boardroom.

Heather Mac Donald pontificates on an array of topics from the safe, sterile vantage point of an elitist, watching life through the eyes of a godless conservative. This verbal assassin is quick to pass judgment on an art movement that she has little understanding of.

Heather seems to view Graffiti Art as the culprit of the degradation of society, incapable or unwilling to recognize that graffiti tagging is a symptom of a bigger problem. The economic consequences of conservative policy makers, the failed War on Drugs, and the expansion of the private prison industry has left people with a sense of hopelessness. In my lifetime, parts of our country have turned into a wasteland of both private and public space. For many youths, Graffiti Art filled a void created by billions of dollars in education cuts. Arts programs go beyond the typical education structure of standardized testing and help young people to express themselves. If you eliminate that opportunity then that energy has to go elsewhere. And I’m sorry, but a two-dollar watercolor set from Walmart is not the answer. That ignorant statement is equivalent to telling kids interested in science to get Poprocks and soda to mix the two. Why not make use of dilapidated, neglected space? Why not make use of a dirty, empty lot or an abandoned train tunnel? For many young artists, Graffiti Art is an environment of aggressive competition to create (a name, a style, a masterpiece), not destroy. Why is it OK for the ad industry to assault urban landscapes with alcohol advertisements while a young person gets a felony for putting a sticker on a lamppost? Why is it OK to invest billions on the incarceration an entire generation in the private prison system yet its taboo to invest in the arts?

Heather seems to think that this art movement is based solely in the ghettos and for the glorification of illegal activity. My personal mission was never based on the “thrill” alone but on the development of an abstract art form. Many critics are under the impression that if it looks like a wild, stylized graffiti piece, then it must have been painted illegally. These complex murals often take days to complete. I get permission and have personally donated hundreds of hours in painting beautiful works in local neighborhoods. These murals stay clean and serve as graffiti abatement in spaces that are habitually tagged. Trust me, if it looks elaborate, then chances are that mural was painted with the explicit permission of the property owner.

One week before the opening of MOCA’s Art In the Streets, Graffiti Solutions, a business contracted by L.A. County, broke into private property and painted over a commissioned mural painted by several artists featured in the show. The building owner and locals alike were in an uproar. The community came together and demanded an explanation. The company had to come back the next day and pressure-wash the grey paint off the mural surface and offered to pay for the artists to repair the damage caused. I believe the city is paying private companies to censure art at the taxpayers’ expense. These companies even use attractive graffiti to promote their business. I wonder if Heather agrees with the city’s tactics? Isn’t this, not only a waste of tax money but government overstepping into the rights of private property owners as well?

The claim that L.A. County spends $30 million a year on graffiti removal is a complete fabrication and anyone who wants to be fiscally responsible should look into how that money was spent. Those numbers are inflated for political gain and change with every new press release. In 2009, the City of Los Angeles used $3.4 million of Federal Stimulus Funds to remove graffiti from the L.A. River. They said they needed that much money for hazardous-material crews to pressure wash the paint off the surface, and dam the river to collect the paint chips so none of it would end up in the water run off. Instead, they held a ribbon cutting ceremony that included the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, a pair of City council members, and the L.A. Sheriff’s department to take turns spraying white paint on the surface. Those funds should have gone to schools and rebuilding our dilapidated infrastructure, instead they hired a contractor to paint thirty miles of the L.A. River white. Adding thousands of gallons of white paint to the concrete slopes, they created an enormous, newly primed canvas. When asked how spending this money would stop people from hitting the walls again, the sheriff said, “Nothing. We’ll just give them felonies.”

It starts when a kid tags on a pole. Detectives and the police hunt down a teenager with no previous criminal record. They raid his house using SWAT tactics with the local news trailing behind them. The politician has a friendly win and prison gets another body. It costs $50,000 a year to house an inmate at the taxpayer’s expense while private prisons reap rewards for shareholders. This country spends $68 billion a year on corrections, 300 percent more than 25 years ago. These extreme measures are a waste of money and are not leading to solutions. The continuous prosecution has only helped create martyrs for the cause. I think a better solution would be to allocate a percentage of the funds used to incarcerate people and put that money towards job training programs and community improvements.

Heather shows a limited understanding of what is actually happening on the street. In searching for an extreme view of the toxicity of tagging, she interviewed people at Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles gang intervention outreach program. Sadly, a tragic story isn’t difficult to find there. If she had dug deeper she would have found that for some, graffiti is considered an alternative route away from the dead-end gang life. I doubt she was willing to stick around at Homeboy Industries long enough to find anything beyond the quotes she plucked. I’m sure none of the Homeboys would even speak to her if they knew her extreme positions on immigration.

Chicano letterforms have certainly been influential artistically (particularly in Los Angeles), but Graffiti Art has nothing to do with the territorial marking and violence of gangs. However, since the LAPD would like you to think otherwise, they came up with the derogatory term “tag-banger” to conflate the two. I don’t believe in turning my back on those kids, and I have met plenty of them that would look you straight in the eye and tell you that Graffiti Art saved their life.

“To be sure, some graffiti murals are visually striking, showing an intuitive understanding of graphic design (though their representational iconography is usually pure adolescent male wish-fulfillment, featuring drug paraphernalia, cartoon characters, T&A, space guns, and alien invaders). In theory, it might be possible to mount a show that acknowledged the occasionally compelling formal elements of wall painting without legitimating a crime. Such an exhibit would include only authorized murals, whether past or present, and would unequivocally condemn taking someone else’s property without permission. No graffiti propaganda has ever abided by such limits; the MOCA show will not, either.”

In the quote above Heather gives Graffiti Art a sprinkling of merit. But her assumption that this skill is purely intuitive reveals how little she understands. Far from “infantile solipsism,” the skills of artists in a crew are developed through mentoring. I am a strong believer in the idea that you get out of life what you put into it. I want to be recognized as an artist based on the merit of my art. When I was younger I wasn’t able to grasp the consequences of every action. While I would never take back any of my experiences, I feel I have learned important lessons over time. Ultimately, Graffiti Art has led me to a positive place. I believe that most of the artists in MOCA’s Art In The Streets have contributed to its development with hard work and artistic integrity. The grossly exaggerated cry of “increased vandalism” during the show never materialized and the surrounding businesses are reaping the financial benefits of the throngs of people attending the museum to see the show, which is set to break museum attendance records.

Heather, your battle cry is too late. The Art In The Streets show at MOCA is a huge success. The people have spoken. The museum has been packed since day one and it is clear this is only the beginning. Coming next March, I will be celebrating with my peers in the great halls of the Brooklyn Museum while you will be hunched over your computer concocting your next witches’ brew.

“In atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations.” (Ronald Reagan – Farewell Address, Jan. 1989)

An update from Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman (as seen on LA Weekly)

I am writing with the unfortunate news the Brooklyn Museum must withdraw as the second venue for “Art in the Streets.” I asked our curator, Sharon Matt Atkins, for your email address so that you might hear this news directly from me.As I hope you know, we have all been tremendously enthusiastic about this exhibition from the very beginning, and we applaud LA MOCA for organizing such a groundbreaking project bringing the important history of graffiti and street art to a broad public. In Brooklyn, we saw it as an appropriate next exhibition for us after our Jean-Michel Basquiat and graffiti exhibitions in 2005 and 2006, respectively.We regret that we are now in the position of withdrawing from this project. We have already and will continue to face severe reductions in financial support that require the Museum to make very tough decisions in light of the challenges facing us in the coming fiscal year. With no major funding in place, we cannot move ahead.I know I speak for Sharon as well in expressing our regret that we will not be able to move ahead with presenting “Art in the Streets.” We have the utmost respect for your work, and I hope we will find other opportunities to collaborate in the future.

Although the museum has cited a lack of financial funding as the reason for forgoing the show I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t any other reasons involved behind-the-scenes. It would be a shame to deprive New York, the historic origin of much of graf and street art, of such a showing, especially if it is because of some misguided negative press.

I  hope the Brooklyn Museum reconsiders its position or another institution will step up to give fans in NYC what they want.