The celebrated British graffiti artist Banksy also parachuted into New Orleans, posting his light-hearted graphics at public spaces around the city. Call me cranky, but the one that remains, a silhouette of a girl with a wind-blown umbrella (off a salt container?) painted on the concrete levee, strikes me as a bit too blithe.
A local art vigilante, dubbed The Grey Ghost, seems to agree, for he has painted out most of the other Banksy graffiti, along with any other graffiti he can find, with swathes of neutral gray paint. The late Minimalist Donald Judd is said to have done the same thing when his building in SoHo was hit by graffiti.
Isn't being a celebrated graffiti artist sort of like being a celebrated nihilist? Not that nihilism and graffiti are interchangeable but they do in my mind seem to, in a similar way, question the status quo (although both of them probably just in their spare time while waiting to be celebrated). Now, the Grey Ghost and Donald Judd mentioned in comparable fashion in the same sentence leaves me no other choice than to say-- even with my limited exposure to Judd's work-- fuck the both of them guys.
|
- bill 11-13-2008 3:34 pm
Isn't being a celebrated graffiti artist sort of like being a celebrated nihilist? Not that nihilism and graffiti are interchangeable but they do in my mind seem to, in a similar way, question the status quo (although both of them probably just in their spare time while waiting to be celebrated). Now, the Grey Ghost and Donald Judd mentioned in comparable fashion in the same sentence leaves me no other choice than to say-- even with my limited exposure to Judd's work-- fuck the both of them guys.
- jimlouis 11-14-2008 1:43 am [add a comment]