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Jesus Sanchez, the blogger behind The Eastsider LA, found that street artist Shepard Fairey put an anti-graffiti coating on the brick walls of his art gallery and ad agency in Echo Park. Fairey explained that "when graff seeped into the raw brick it was very difficult to clean. The building is historic and I love and want to protect the brick." The new anti-graffiti coating will make abatement easier, but will not stop graffiti.
This was "after pleading guilty to vandalism charges in Boston over his guerrilla art tactics" Sanchez juxtaposed in the post titled "This is one wall Shepard Fairey wants to keep free of self-expression." It was that tone-setting headline that probably annoyed Fairey, who shot off an e-mail to Sanchez challenging him to post it in full. Sanchez did.
"Your post about the sealer on our building was very obnoxious," Fairey began. "Do you just not give a shit about objectivity? My practice as a street artist has NEVER included putting my work on pristine or operational buildings unless asked to do so. I'm not mad at the graff artists who have hit our building, I just like the brick unadorned. I've always been a champion of street art and graffiti in the same way I'm a champion of free speech. I think it is important for people to be able to speak freely, but if I'm watching a channel whose content is not my cup of tea I may choose to change the channel. It does not make me an opponent of free speech. Preferring my brick unadorned does not make me anti-graffiti. Every time I put a piece of art on the street I know it may be cleaned. That is the nature of the art form."
You can read the full e-mail here.
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kinda sounds like cake and eat it too.
still
All i know, is that a lot of nyc grafitti's hella more intricate and artistic than most of the L.A. stuff.
Coincidence, or something in the water?
All I know is that people who use "hella" are usually Northern Californians and "graffiti artists" are really just low level criminals.
i think you're being hella rude. ha. ;-)
"hella:
Term used to indicate personal superiority. When spoken in conversation, the receiving party immediatley knows that the person saying the word is of a high class because of that person's NorCal roots.
Thusly, if the receiver is not of the same geography and stature, negative emotions arise from envy. A primary example is that of the frustrated SoCal dweller who is frequently subjected to the mighty and humbling presence of NorCalers. "
source: from "urban dictionary" ; ]
eastsider's angle is pretty baseless but it looks like fairey took the bait. in this case, they both suck!
Some people just need to get off Shepard Fairey's balls.
I'm from socal and everyone was saying that's hella tight since the 90's.. where'd ya get the norcal reference??
I could have this backwards, but wasn't it..
NorCal: helluva
SoCal: hella
???
meh...sellouts have no right to point fingers.
if youre reading this Fairey, stfu. you got your start by wheatpasting posters...which are just as obnoxious to clean as tagged walls.
btw, there are park benches in europe twice as old as LA...I would hardly call much "historic" here.
Yes, but there are things in Egypt, Mexico, Cambodia etc. that are older than most things in Europe, and by your logic that would mean that nothing in Europe is historic. It's all relative, and every city has things worth perserving!
Graffiti is Graffiti. No matter what you're touting it as. Just cause YOU don't own the property doesn't mean it's fair game. I love those who claim they do it on public property... Um. yeah, no one wants to see your name or your witty poster tagged on the wall of an unused building.
It is odd, but then again I admire older structures too. When I go downtown I certainly don't look and marvel at buildings from the 1960s. Why would I? But the structures built at the turn of the last century, the 1920s, 30s, and 40s are all interesting to me. I often try to imagine them without the (added on) fire escapes.
So is Fairey off his nut? It is odd, as I said, but I think I also understand it.
i get both sides. i love the eastsider. i admire how fairey has brought a larger audience to art of his ilk. and i think it's great to protect an old building from tagging (a different beast than graffiti art in a lot of people's minds, i think). but the way fairey responded--unprofessional, unbridled profanity & histrionics--makes it look like a bad youtube comment, and really doesn't encourage any sort of respect for him. this disagreement could have been handled with a lot less "fucking" and perhaps it wouldn't have been made into a big issue.
Fairey's comments point to the complexity of contested forms of expression.
While he advocates for all forms of expression in theory and practice, he does not blindly accept all manifestations of that expression. For example, his TV analogy suggests that one can exercise taste over the form and style of the message even while accepting the medium more broadly.
As a graffiti writer I am not bound to accept graffiti in any and all forms, and Fairey should not be expected to blindly consume graffiti or street art because he is a street artist.
If Faiery wants to maintain the brick facade of his shop instead of having graffiti on it, this is a matter of aesthetic taste, not necessarily hypocrisy. He has a long record of advocating for graffiti and illegal street art, and such advocacy (and practice) does not disallow him the right to have discerning taste or aesthetic preferences.
One can defend the right of graffiti writers to interact with any and all infrastructure while still exercising the right to remove said graffiti. Just as we can advocate for free speech even when we wish those who use it would please shut up.
Taste for individual messages or aesthetic forms are even more important when one accepts the medium, and should be more expected when one practices those aesthetics him or herself.
Now, while contradictions and paradoxes are a sign of complex thinking and complicated living, if Fariey was to make appeals to authority (for example, by calling the police in the event of graffiti being done on the brick), that would be beyond a paradox and a contradiction, and therefore unacceptable. Likewise, if his reason for not wanting graffiti on his shop was to maintain property values and therefore maximize profit, that would also be objectionable. And if his desire to maintain the clean brick facade was to silence the local populations and advocate for, say, historic preservation as part of perpetuating gentrification, that would also be questionable and disputable.
But right now, from what I have read, Fairey simply likes how bricks look.
So let the struggle for space in Los Angeles continue, and may the best aesthetic and fervent practice (regardless of access to capital or legal enforcement) win.
I appreciate the argument on both sides, but I can't say the same for arguing that religious spaces should be preserved and free of graffiti. How does that fit the logic on either side of this debate?
By the way, I also like clean brick.... but I like bricks better with a clean black fat-cap tag by Oiler, Chaka, Sleez, Geso, or Cisco on it!