Editor’s Letter: May, 2014
”Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” ~John F. Kennedy
Left: Artist(s) Unknown, ‘Street Art, New York City’ Mixed media.
Creative Activism
When I go to New York City on business, I walk. I get more walking in on the streets of the city than any day devoted to a good workout in the country. And as I walk, I observe that art is everywhere. It’s as though there’s an unwritten rule: no blank space shall go unused. Famed communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan once said ”the medium is the message;” and for the urban artist’s medium, fair game consists of every alley wall, abandoned building, construction fence, truck body and doorway.xxxxxx The ubiquity of tags, stencils, scrawls, doodles, impromptu murals and poster collages in New York, or any urban environment, is, I would argue, not a transgressive gesture whose intent is to merely deface public spaces. It is far more skillfully-executed and well-thought out to be dismissed as cultural detritus. Street art in its various forms carries deeper and more profound meaning. Denied access to the sacred corridors of white-walled and square-roomed museums, or the posh galleries of Chelsea, art of the people spills out into the streets. These skilled artists then create installations that challenge the format of traditional art spaces. When the only response to the recent Sotheby’s $750 million all-time sales record for modern and contemporary art is to be rendered mute and incredulous, the logical reply is to claim the public venue in defiance. Social outrage, political activism or mere aesthetic expression may be the goal, but the presence of art everywhere proves that an irrepressible creative impulse crosses all social and economic boundaries, regardless of compensatory motivation.
Art claims the urban space, redirecting the pulse and energy of the city from grand anonymity to personalized expression—an elaborate extension of the Depression era scrawl, “Kilroy was here,” with its familiar cartoon-like peering eyes, nose and fingertips straddling the top of construction site fences, seemingly everywhere. But, unlike gratuitous postings of earlier years, the power and effectiveness of graffiti art (there, I said it!) in recent decades has been to embrace a more complex message. Based partially on the anonymity of the messenger, speed of execution to avoid detection and the fact that final images are often comprised of multiple layers of meaning and serial contributors, the intent of the ‘finished’ work may often be ambiguous. And like much of contemporary art in galleries and museums, the impulse to plumb the true intent of the work may be trumped by an appreciation for its sheer beauty and power to attract our attention—if only for a moment.
The street is a space where art thrives, and a place where artists are emancipated to shape public aesthetic—and to some extent, public agenda. Street art is intended to disrupt daily life with work that creates wonder, emotion, and humor. Moving well beyond the time tested methods of spray painting, postering and stenciling, artists have expanded their repertoire to include video projection, art intervention, guerrilla art, flash mobbing, street installations, woodblocking and even yarn bombing! With powerful layers of meaning, beautiful aesthetics, and use of unique media, street artists are pushing the boundaries of contemporary art, placing it well beyond the sanctified realm of most art critics–squarely and unapologetically in the public domain. * * * On a separate, and not wholly unrelated note, this managing editor has been elected to AICA-Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, American Section. A by-invitation-only organization, it consists of several thousand members, world-wide, but only 400 scholars, critics and art historians in the U.S. The International Association of Art Critics is an NGO official partner of UNESCO, founded in 1950, in the wake of cultural suppression under Nazi and various fascist regimes. Its global objective is to support art criticism, and combat censorship and repression in all its forms. Its international forums are dedicated to keeping pace with changing disciplines within the visual arts. AICA’s head office, located in Paris, represents and promotes the activities of the Association’s 4,600 members, grouped into 61 different Sections, throughout the world. I am pleased to continue to bring the critical voices of experts in every phase of the creative arts to the ‘pages’ of ARTES, a fine arts magazine, and to lend my editorial perspective to important artists, exhibitions and movements affecting the world of the visual arts, wherever they may be occurring. Thanks for reading ARTES Magazine. Best Wishes, Richard Friswell, M.Ed., M.Phil. Publisher & Managing Editor www.artesmagazine.com