The Outliers

Coming down to the wire. Finished the chapter on the "Graffiti Free New York" program, and begun the final chapter, which is a bit about a building owner in Gowanus who's chosen to have his building buffed by the city, and isn't quite keen on getting a mural done. Instead, he's quite happy with this:

Sexy, right?  You just have to love the way they've barely even bothered to use matching paint to buff the graffiti that was there. Why, it's kind of an abstract block piece, don't you think?

Now, contrast this with another picture, which I also took in Gowanus a few years back:

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Now, the funny thing about graffiti that I've discovered as I've worked on this thesis is that although this last image is kind of what I always envisioned it to be, and what I've always thought would be awesome to have more of, there are lots of variations to the form.

Some of which go beyond mere color, shade and form (or lack thereof) and enter the realm of droll, on the one hand, and um, let's just say, "provocative" on the other. I've never seen in person the work of two artists in particular who represent these two poles, but I've learned a lot about them, from reading sites like Vandalog, Animal, Streetsy, Wooster Collective, The Street Spot and Brookyn Street Art.  Think of them as the outliers, commenting in a sort of meta way on graffiti and street art as a whole

First up is Mobstr

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The second image is a cheeky critique of street art in general, but it's the first one that I really like. It's the kind of pithy attitude that I wish I saw more of when it comes to buildings like my friend's up in Gowanus there, with his cornucopia of gray. Plan and simple: A building may look like shit with messy tags all over the place, but it looks just as crappy with a bunch of just as sloppy splotches of paint.

How big a deal can a guy be who seems to be known mostly for pithy sayings written in block letters? Well, as it turns out, big enough to be invited to participate in an art festival in England. The piece he did is very insider-y, to be sure, but just you gotta love that second one, the rain cloud piece, for its site specificity.

Then there's, Lush. Pretty much everything this guy does is NSFW. We're talking Hustler level pornography. Some of what he (I assume it's a he; he's always behind a mask) does is commentary that's obviously only meant for online consumption, like this. (I'm linking instead of embedding, so you can't blame me if you click on it at work and get in trouble).

And there's stuff like this. That's actually some of his tamer stuff; if you have a lot of time to waste, flip through his Flickr stream for some seriously weird, mostly misogynistic crap. The folks at Vandalog, where I first discovered him, seem to be mostly bemused by his shtick, and it's pretty clear that he sees himself as something of a provocateur. For some reason, I imagine he digs the Insane Clown Posse and Human Centipede movies.

So there ya go. Two thoroughly different takes on this whole "I'm gonna write some crap on a wall" concept. You can probably guess which one I prefer.

Cheers!