Category: AR474

I enjoyed this reading (Plesch and Ashley) as it exposed me to new ideas in post-colonial thought. Specifically, this reading explained that appropriation is the adoption of some subcultural object by the dominant culture to assert power over the object or the subculture. Further, it explained that, while binary views of post-colonial theory typified by Said e.g. suggest that all usage of subcultural objects by the dominant culture are necessarily appropriative, modern post-colonial theory emphasizes models which confer agency onto the “other,” noting that otherized populations may subvert dominant cultures by using the tools of the dominant culture.

This made me think of rap. There are some who think that the popularity of rap music represents cultural appropriation. However, I think that, conferring agency upon the once-otherized this popularity rather represents an at-first unwilling dominant culture being forced to create space in its airwaves for culturally powerful music. Like graffiti writers claiming space in the spatial culture, these rappers are claiming space in the audio culture.

Examples of rappers noting that their success subverts the dominant culture’s framing stories and expectations:

“Wasn’t supposed to make it past 25, joke’s on you we still alive” Kanye West, “We Don’t Care”

”An arrogant drug dealer, the legend I become / CNN said I’d be dead by 21” Pusha T, “So Appalled”

”And they say by 21 I was supposed to die / So I’m out here celebrating my post-demise” Jay-Z, “Murder to Excellence”

“I don’t know what you take me as / Or understand the intelligence that Jay-Z has / I’m from rags to riches, ***** I ain’t dumb / I got 99 problems but a ***** ain’t one” Jay-Z, “99 Problems”

“Oh yeah, fuck the judge / I made it past 25, and there I was” Kendrick Lamar

 

“Children growing up on the wrong sides of urban borderlines are at risk in so many ways; on the edge of everything, they are almost doomed.”

Nandrea’s essay brings up an interesting function of graffiti. All art invites, or even demands, questions. However, usually, individuals can choose whether or not to see art, and so can choose whether or not to be exposed to the fuel that burns into questions. However, much like Nandrea claims the cemetery claims the human rather than we claim the cemetery, one does not choose to see graffiti. Rather, graffiti watches us, to see if we are asking questions. Graffiti challenges us not to think and ask why it exists, and usually this challenge is too great. That is why the “writing on the wall” unnerves political authority; not because it signals a present threat, but because it propels children to ask parents why it is there, and may propel parents to think.

Even graffiti not intended to be political, it of course is; it is a record of a crime committed, visible to all. Why did someone do it? What went wrong, or right, in the conversation between the many and the one that caused this aberration? Nandrea notes that gang violence displays similar themes as the history of colonization, in which Western nations were the most successful “gangsters.” I think that it is the socio-cultural explanations to gang violence that satisfy people enough so that such parallels are not widely discussed in the popular media, and perhaps this is why the “War on Graffiti” is so necessary as well.

 

Plesch intriguingly points out the dual-phenomenon of graffiti at the Arborio, where writers, in “appropriating the public realm,” left behind “soul-fossils” that will outlast “the brevity of a life, indeed forever” and thus became themselves inserted into the fabric of a holy place (7, quoting Dupront; 17). It is further intriguing that this conversational process

Plesch then cites Leach’s proposal of “time” as conceived by the Ancient Greeks as not a succession of epochal durations, but rather a fluctuation between opposites. The point of Leach’s idea seems to be that religions such as the Abrahamic faiths understand time as a succession of epochal durations because this enables us to construct and emphasize a continuum between life and death, rather than have to consider the unsavory notion of death itself. The Ancient Greeks and some other primitive peoples, by contrast, understood time / existence on some level as a fluctuation between states such as night / day, life / death and the coital ejaculation of man / the giving birth of woman. Leach’s note is somewhat bleak, but makes sense given the extremity of primitive mythologies, including Greek mythology, which center on cycles of life / death, men / women and love / war.

Of course, most civilizations still had practical ways of temporal communication, such as our modern “tick of the clock” which represents 1 / 30780000 of the Earth’s revolution about the Sun.

Leach notes that given such a perception of existence, there must be a third “thing” which does the oscillating. Plesch interestingly claims that this is Arborio itself. My understanding of this claim is that the ritualized conversation between worshipper and sacred space in the liminal zone of the Arborio support constructs a culture which proceeds along a continuum of epochal durations even as individuals may die. I think that the overall analysis of Arborio is fascinating.

Although, I wonder if emphasizing the continuum between birth and death is not the result of an inability to cope with either, but rather a rational response to the fact that one cannot do anything before one is born or after one is dead?

While her primary thesis is to complicate the notion of pre-modern acceptance of graffiti, Van Eck provides a valuable critical examination in her scrutiny of the view – which originated in the nineteenth century and is exemplified in the writings of Butler e.g. – of “graffiti as … expressions of a lower cultural register which nonetheless preserve precious voices from the past.”

Van Eck notes that this near-exoticization of the underclass as unthinkingly leaving remnants whose significance must be explained to them is not compatible with the “certain degree of intentionality” implicit in applying a graffito to a surface not designed to accept writing.

Further, Plesch’s note that such application “constitutes a symbolic act of appropriation” suggests that failure to acknowledge intentional claims of spatial ownership not only hinders understanding of spatial expression (as well as the socialization of space and objects in the sense of Volioti) but also strips artists of their agency.

Van Eck reaches what is, in my mind, the correct conclusion: while all graffiti can be aptly termed as “soul-fossils,” the intentionality of these leaving-behinds varies depending on the spatial context. For example, while scratchings on a bus stop may be unthinking, the pre-modern graffiti in religious spaces reflects “emphatic” intentionality.

Broadly, this emphasizes the importance of spatial context of a graffito in understanding its significances as well as the overall diversity of spatial expression.

Baird and Taylor note the ubiquity and acceptance of ancient graffiti to conclude that the practice was “not (in most incidences) considered defacing,” asserting the misguidedness of “modern ideas about the illicit nature of the activity” (16).

This raises the question of how evolving understandings of space, expression and the interaction therein have fomented the changing attitudes towards graffiti, and implications regarding how academics may derive value from the study of graffiti.

The researchers note that their work “demonstrates the diversity” of graffiti, whose “non-monumental, private and often spontaneous nature” may reflect “in a more direct way than other categories of inscription the thoughts and feelings of people.” At the same time, the researchers reject the implicit understanding of graffiti as pertaining to the “low class,” noting examples of graffiti on the interior walls of wealthy households (15). This heterogeneity of graffiti is evidenced in the myriad Pompeian inscriptions – literary, political, personal names, greetings, erotic texts, pictorials of animals or ships and abstract drawings e.g. – which reveal a liberal view of space and expression (2).

However, In 1970s New York e.g., urban graffiti were more often “held up as representing a socio-cultural otherness,” as Zadorojnyi puts it, rather than used to understand the socialization of space and objects as in Volioti’s chapter on the materiality of writing on the physical surface (14). Mayors such as Ed Koch and the MTA’s “War on Graffiti” revive rather Mau’s “blanket assumptions” of wall art in Pompeii as not belonging to the “people with whom we should most eagerly desire to come into contact, the cultivated men and women of the ancient city” (2).

The otherization of graffiti reflects a spatial manifestation of broad otherizations. For example, in 1970s New York, Austin’s New Rome built “across the back” of the Naked City enabled politicians to curry favor as protectors. The attitudes displayed in Mau’s study of Pompei and the Greco-Roman literary elite’s view of graffiti e.g. likely stem from such political framing stories (5). However, Baird and Taylor show that study of graffiti is most valuable when it considers graffiti as a means by which to understand the socialization of space and explores the interaction of the writing and the physical surface.

October 18 Reflection

When thinking about what I wanted to write my semester research paper on for this course, I knew I wanted to explore something that we had not really talked about that much. I was inspired by the D’Alleva chapter on Feminisms and Linda Nochlin’s 1971 influential essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” After reading Nancy Macdonald’s essay on ‘The Graffiti Subculture’, I knew I had found what I wanted to research.

Macdonald argues that within the graffiti subculture, “you are what you write”, and that “what you write determines exactly who you are and where you stand…unless you are a woman” (313).  Unlike her male counterparts, a woman will always carry the baggage of her gender. Her gender will immediately make her stand out prevent her from ever being fully accepted within the graffiti community. After reading this essay and our class discussions, I knew I wanted to take this further and figure out why there aren’t been more female graffiti artists. I wanted to explore the various social, political and cultural constraints that prevent a woman from the full experience of the graffiti subculture.

 

I love Schnabel’s film Basquiat. I saw it years ago before even becoming an art history major and was immediately mesmerized by Basquiat as a character. I then wrote my “Theories and Methods” paper last year on the film and the ways in which it perpetuates Vasari’s myth of the “artistic genius.” Although I love Schnabel’s Basquiat, it definitely glorifies the New York art scene. In contrast, the documentary on Basquiat, Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat shows a devastated New York. While watching this documentary, I was shocked by the extreme poverty shown in the film. Basquiat shows Jean-Michel as living on the streets, but those scenes help to boost his image as a “struggling artist;” they do not show the reality of New York City in the 70s.

The documentary uses images of the devastated streets of SoHo to illustrate the impact of art in the area. The poverty of SoHo allowed for artists to work in the area and collaborate on street art. Since no one cared about the lower east side, graffiti artists such as Basquiat could get away with writing all over the neighborhood; the poverty of the lower east side allowed for the subculture of graffiti to thrive.

Never sure quite what to make of the work of Basquiat, this film helped my understanding of the motives behind much of his early work, as well as much of the arts climate in Soho at the time. Having lived in Soho this summer and working in the area as well, it was really interesting to see the changes that have occurred in the neighborhood. However, more shocking was likely the similarities between the climate seen in the movie and the types of art seen in the neighborhood today.

 

Especially interesting was the way in which artists were able to interact in this area during the time. I feel as if now this ability is marginalized due to the influence of social media, a more defined art market and the greater gentrification of the area. However, there is reason to believe that some of this still exists in the form of street fairs and vendors selling works on the sidewalks. Walking the area this summer, I was surprised to see much less graffiti than I would have expected. At first I thought there was a chance that possibly the general population was less charged, both politically and socially, and therefore refraining from producing work, but after consideration and watching this movie I realize I am wrong. Possibly the graffiti of the times in Soho is more emphasized in social media spheres, however this makes the conversation between artists much less notable and therefore draws less public attention from the art market as a whole.

Speaking with the group about the work of Nancy Spero, it instilled a new interest in the way in which we look at works in relation to others on the wall within the same exhibition space. Especially noteworthy to my eye was the way in which the accurate framing of the works came into our discussion. When thinking about Spero, and her attempt to fill transitional spaces, the frame seems a dangerous way to take away the transitional nature of her works, however the correct framing that we see in the Colby Museum impressively highlights this attribute of the work.

Drawn to the work just above where we were sitting as a group, I find myself considering the preservation of transition that we see with this work via its mounting. Mounted in a floating position within the box frame, it seems to me to keep the transitional qualities wherever it may hang. This idea of the preservation of transition is very interesting, as it is something that we struggle to find both in art and the natural world. I consider my own research on the issue of graffiti in national parks and think about where those works fit in on the spectrum of the transition of these lands through their history. Removing the graffiti (which I argue against) seems to be a removal of this transitional and a push to hi light the old space, rather than the effects that the current state have on its development (or lack there of).

Although this was a bit of a longwinded connection between my research and the work of Spero that we viewed in the museum, I find it exciting to be able to draw a tie between the two. There is, of course, a parallel to be drawn as well when considering the work Spero did to create a voice as a woman artist. This too can be tied to my research of unidentified graffiti in national parks.