{"id":4564,"date":"2011-08-03T10:01:30","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T14:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4564"},"modified":"2011-08-08T13:31:33","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:31:33","slug":"is-graffiti-art-pollution-cultural-imperialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/08\/03\/is-graffiti-art-pollution-cultural-imperialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Is graffiti art? Pollution? Cultural imperialism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I was flying out through Montreal for my summer vacation, I listened to a debate on CBC radio about the meaning and value of the urban-American style graffiti that’s popping up everywhere in Canada.<\/p>\n

That nation’s biggest city, Toronto, has launched a “crackdown” on graffiti artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to ensure that we have clean streets for all the taxpayers of this great city,\u201d Mayor Rob Ford told City Council.<\/p>\n

But some councillors suggested that Mr. Ford\u2019s campaign against graffiti artists is already backfiring, with some artists putting up satiric images of the mayor, whom they suggest has provoked those who paint our city, either with our without permission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I traveled through Europe, I found that the same basic style of graffiti had spread from Switzerland to Italy to France and Spain.\u00a0 (I took the picture above on the outskirts of Milan.)<\/p>\n

This kind of grassroots art is a fascinating phenomenon and it reflects a particular and peculiar hunger for self-expression.<\/p>\n

But as I found nearly identical images — that blocky, tagger-style lettering — echoed again and again, I found myself growing sort of bored and depressed.<\/p>\n

It was all too much the same, as unoriginal and ubiquitous as McDonald’s golden arches or the Microsoft logo.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t help thinking that the uniqueness of wildly different cities — Barcelona, Venice, Paris — was being blurred by artists mimicking an essentially American form of art.<\/p>\n

It felt less and less like an expression of the street, more and more an example of the weirdly viral nature of American culture.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t all bad, or unoriginal or uninteresting.\u00a0 Some of the graffiti images that I encountered were expressive and raw.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But for the most part, it just felt like visual pollution.<\/p>\n

In some of the coolest, most dynamic and beautiful cities in the world, I was being subjected to the copy-cat work of bored teenagers.<\/p>\n

A Wikipedia entry about global graffiti<\/a> suggests that regional styles and experimentation has begun popping up.\u00a0 And it’s impossible not to be fascinated by the street stylings of British artist Banksy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the sad reality is that most of the guerrilla art being generated these days is dross.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s easy to mock politicians and their “clean streets” campaigns, yet this time they’re mostly right.<\/p>\n

The best, most honest critical response is to scrape the junk off and give us all a fresh canvas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was flying out through Montreal for my summer vacation, I listened to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4567,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564\/revisions\/4567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}