Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Blu

I realize that I butt heads with a lot of people with this opinion, but I hate graffiti. For the most part I think it's a bunch of rich art school kids who didn't want to learn how to draw, but wanted to rebel against society (in reality, their parents), so they co opted art produced by poor inner city youth. And aesthetically, most of it's disgusting and/or poorly executed. I know many will disagree with me, but it's what I think.

Having said this, I love the work of Blu. His work is smart, innovative, and breaks free from most of the trappings of graffiti. His graffiti animation (below) blows my mind! Here's a link to his blog: http://www.blublu.org/blog/



"The Gaza Strip"


3 comments:

bizhan said...

If it is any consolation..I only partially disagree with you.

These images are amazing. Thanks for sharing this.

Frans Boukas said...

I catch most of Blu's new stuff on-

http://woostercollective.com/

I think Graffiti is different from street art is different from painting murals. Graffiti being a though guy campaign for artists who can't take any criticism battling back and forth. Street artists like blu aren't trying to claim a space as their own with a name, but open peoples minds to unknown wonders and possibilities. Rich kids aside I think now artists try to gain hype or credit by putting their work in the street before the gallery. Recently street artist WK
http://www.wkinteract.com/
was hospitalized after wheat pasting over some local graffers walls while promoting his new show. Which to me shows the difference in the two occupations. If there is something worthwhile artistically to say I think it will show no matter what kind of work you do graffiti or otherwise.

(I however think everyone should do comic books)

bizhan said...

I agree. You also have to define what constitutes graffiti. For Boukas, the line seems to be drawn between those ascribing to the Hip-hop self-promo influenced distorted letter forms and everything else public/illegal. This argument is pretty popular and is no different than fine art vs. illustration vs. design. To further emphasize these perceived differences: quite frequently you find graffiti artists refer to street artists as "art fags."

However, all of these distinctions may be banal when you consider that we are all trying to visually communicate.

In addition, the demographic of people participating in illegal art changes from city to city and country to country - as do the motivations of the artists. In Richmond the assumptions about the backgrounds can be true, but the people ("Hip-hop" folks) participating in Richmond are coming from more of a middle class group.

So hate on the wanabe Hip-hop kids from Richmond!

(apologies for my poor English. I am half Persian and half West Virginian.)