By Daniel Phillips
New York City fosters street art. No matter who is painting, rolling, spraying or splashing, they’ll continue to do it-on subways and on walls. You may not call it art. Many call it vandalism. I love it.
A few weeks back I started seeing articles online about respected and well-known pieces of art-on-the-street being attacked by some unknown person or group. In a few cases, the art was a commissioned piece, meaning the owner of the building allowed it beforehand. Splatters of blue, green, brown or red paint would be dripped all around the art, partially obscuring the work.
This alone could have been a sort of unspoken dialogue between the artists, as if one was saying to the other “do better next time.” And besides, it’s a fact of life that street art gets destroyed constantly, whether by gang tags or demolition crews (as we saw with the tearing down of 11 Spring St., a literal corner stone of NYC urban art and graffiti). I was terrified, though, that some of the most skillful street art had been targeted.
Whoever was doing this knew they were slicing very close to the heart.
But the splattered paint was not what bothered me. It was the wheat-pasted doctrines that were showing up along with the paint drips.
Written in infuriatingly pristine language, the cryptic flyers referred to street art as a “fetishized action of banality,” with a closing decree: “destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere.” In a small warning box underneath, the poster stated that the glue had been mixed with shards of glass, to prevent anyone from tearing it down. I couldn’t imagine the kind of lunatic that would put this much effort into such a weak ideology.
Aside from an apparent Dadaist tendency toward destruction, I was unsure where this person was coming from. I couldn’t understand what could be achieved by this person calling graffiti and street art a “bourgeois fad,” and then partaking in it himself. Was there really a terrorist on the loose, or was this all just a really stupid plan to get recognition?
I decided that I had to see the artwork for myself. I set out with a few friends scouring Chinatown, the Lower East Side and SoHo. After hours of applying my shoes to the concrete, I found a splattered piece by WK Interact on Ludlow Street. There were no flyers in sight. The paint covered almost all of the treasured painting.
Seeing the work in person, I was troubled. I realized that if this guy hadn’t been running around with a bucket of paint, I wouldn’t have come in search of the artwork to begin with. I was offended that the work of a talented (and commissioned) artist was being covered by a few imprecise dribbles.
I walked some more. Finally, I found a wall on East Houston and Allen covered by white paint and littered with flyers. I read the flyers, which had bolded titles of “Art: The Excrement of Action,” and “Avant-Garde: Advance Scouts for Capital.” I stood in front of the subway entrance, staring at the wall for a while, unsure of how I felt.
The way I see it now, this only legitimizes the original work by calling the subsequent attacks vandalism. And if it takes absurd anti-street art propaganda for people to defend urban art and realize what an enriching element it is, so be it. I’ll stomach these assaults if it means tolerance for art, whether on the streets or in the galleries.
Daniel Phillips is a junior creative studies student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].
Vandalized street art by WK Interact on Ludlow Street.