Monday, May 25, 2009

But Is It Art?










While doing the gallery run in Chelsea recently, I was taken with the local graffitti. Frankly, it was better than some of the stuff I saw in many of the galleries. I expected to see graffitti in NYC and that these examples were hanging about outside formal galleries on otherwise unremarkable walls and doors made it all seem very acceptable. My new best-blogger-friend, Owen, has a posting about graffitti as well so I thought I'd slam my own collection up sooner rather than later. What's not posted here are two examples of graffitti art gone mainstream: 2 articles of clothing sporting Basquiat drawings that C & I bought at the Soho branch of the trendy Japanese clothing store Uniqlo . So when is graffitti "art" and when is it just defacement...and who decides? I guess if you came by with a can of spray paint and doodled all over my house I'd know what to call it!

5 comments:

  1. When taken through the lens of your camera, Lynne, it is most definitely, yes, absolutely... ART !

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  2. “The walls are the publishers of the poor”
    Eduardo Galeano

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  3. Owen: Your comment leads me to think that Art, like Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But then, I have a tendency to interpret Life in maxims.

    Dw&T: Uniqlo! Did you bring anything back? I got a darling black sort-of-sweatshirt dress and hot pink leggings. Great with my circus shoes!

    Chercheur: Sortons les craies! Aux murs, citoyens!!

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  4. No, just took a look around. Hot pink leggings ~ wow!

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