The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA July 11, 2011
Sometimes when you first meet someone you don’t know how your interaction with them will change you or what impact they will have on your views and opinion of things. I never thought that I would be interested in a graffiti art exhibit and probably would have passed it up if I hadn’t known Judd. When we first started dating we would walk to school together every morning and pass by graffiti and tags on recycling bins, street corners, and miscellaneous buildings. “Why do people do this?’ i asked. “I think it looks really trashy.” “Because it’s art.” Judd replied. And every morning he would point out certain tags and tell me who they were and why they wrote what they did. The crew he’s part of is the New Mystics based out of Seattle. They had received a grant for an art space in Pioneer Square and within a few short months were told to evacuate because the landlord didn’t realize it was going to be a graffiti space and didn’t find it visually appealing. So I know I wasn’t alone in my misunderstandings of what street art is.
But the more I noticed it the more it grew on me. I know that if Judd were here in LA he would want to go see the exhibit and that because I was here I should go for him. If I can be a fan of Lichtenstein and Pollock then why can’t I be a fan of graffiti and street art? Upon entering the exhibit I read the introduction and was shocked to find that graffiti is the biggest art movement since “pop”. And that “Art in the Streets” is the first major historical exhibition on graffiti and street art. I was blown away by the congruency of the exhibit starting with 1967 (the development of spray paint) to today. How it has evolved from “Kilroy was here” (the doodle we all drew as kids with no idea of where it originated) to huge full room installations by Swoon and Os Geobos. You can see how what started as someone leaving their name on a wall has indeed grown to a modern form of art. There were whole walls filled with train car tags and how the movement moved from east coast hip-hop Philly and New York to skateboarding kids in Santa Monica. Blondie. Banksy. Blu. oh my.
The exhibit mixes actual full scale pieces with photographs, installations, video, and interactive elements. It was visually stunning and bigger than life. I think it was the fact that it was laid out in a time line for me made it easier to understand that it has been there my whole life without really paying attention to it because it was just part of the landscape. I was living in Philly in the early 80’s and remember tags on trains and stations. As I was driving home I was trying to piece together why I finally “got it”.
Last week I had a conversation with Wesley where he asked if I had heard of Richard Misrach? He photographed New Orleans right after the storm and said that he wasn’t going to release the images for 20 years because they were still too painful for people. Just recently he decided to release just a few of graffiti he found throughout the city. http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2010/09/misrach-destroy-this-memory/
I was thinking to myself, “graffiti? In New Orleans? I know there’s some Banksy pieces, but graffiti just isn’t that big there.” I went to the blog and checked out his shots and said out loud to Carmen, “This isn’t graffiti! It was our way to communicate with each other. We wrote on buildings and plywood because there were no phones. We wanted people to know we were there. We were alive. And we longed to connect.
A-ha. And there it was. And there’s the connection I needed to understand why these artists do what they do. A need to be heard. A way to connect. My opinion has completely changed thanks to conversations during this week, seeing this brilliant exhibit, and knowing an incredible man who was the first to open my awareness to this genre.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
*I tried to find the photo of the sign I spray painted on the Delachaise when I got back into the city but I don’t know what I did with it. I found this similar one i did online*
Here are some highlights and images that contributed to my change of heart.
