A man from Bristol that I will certainly never meet almost got me in a lot of trouble in high school. He is only know by the name Banksy, the tag he attaches to his highly recognizable stenciled street art featuring malicious rats, small children unknowingly playing in grave proximity to any number of different military weapons, and a variety of revolutionary-style texts. When I first stumbled across his website at around 17, I found myself falling in love. The starkness of his images, the wit and humor and general ballsy-ness to it was the perfect foil to my unrecognized teen angst. It wasn't long before I had "borrowed" the overhead projector from my Mom's classroom, found a fittingly revolutionary/anarchistic image online and was tracing it onto a large sheet of cardboard. One manic night of cutting with a much too dull razor later, equipped with a few cans of flat black spray paint, I went bombing for the first time. Driving through the deserted city streets of my small Iowa town in my parents mini-van with a couple of like-minded friends in tow, we made drive-by stops at the local train station, high school, gas stations and alley walls to try out the new toy I had made. And it was way too much fun.
While I had definitely been interested in graffiti before I learned about Banksy's work, having also idolized and emulated the work of Futura 2000, it was through him that I began to become slightly and shortly obsessed with street art and graffiti. Spotting a TWIST portrait on Market St. during a visit to San Francisco elicited a response from me similar to that of spotting a rare wild animal on a safari. And I was completely blown away by my first trip to New York, where walking around the streets with attentive and even slightly informed eyes was the equivalent of visiting a museum. There was KR. There was ESPO. There was KUMA or KAWS or SWOON. It was a world I was dying to be a part of.
While my stencil caused a mild, local sensation (it made the front page of the local newspaper and was a favorite subject of Photo I students at my high school) it wasn't anything to write home about artistically speaking and was shamefully derivative of my afore-mentioned influence. And my abilities with a spray paint can were even more lacking. So my love affair with graffiti faded away as I discovered oil paints and eventually printmaking.
Studying printmaking in college still didn't let me fully escape the graffiti sphere of influence as I discovered that many of the techniques I was learning were also being utilized by some of my favorite street artist, including the cut-paper works of SWOON, which are based on woodblock prints from my understanding. I unfortunately missed the Printmaking Now show she took part in as well as the graffiti show held at BAM last year. If only I had paid more than a fleeting moment of attention to the second of those shows, I would've learned about the most recent scandal of the street-art world long before reading the article, "As Street Art Goes Commercial, a Resistance Raises a Real Stink" in the June 28th New York Times. The article detailed the events surrounding and leading up to the arrest of James Cooper, a man believed to be the Splasher, the serial killer-esque title that has been bestowed on the person (or persons?) that has been splattering paint on the works of prominent street artists since the winter of 2006. After reading the article, I looked online to discover that there are as many theories regarding the identity, motivation and sanity of the Splasher as there are hipsters in Williamsburg. But it was in this article from New York magazine (by far the most through article on the Splasher that I came across) which introduced me to the "un-requited love theory." This take on the Splasher story involves one of the most frequently vandalized vandals, SWOON, who also seemed to be the Splasher's first victim, and a man named Zach Dempster, a political activist and anti-establishment writer (not to mention MySpace friend of James Cooper) who profiled SWOON in a 2005 article for Clamour magazine.
As the story goes, Dempster developed a rather massive crush on SWOON, who's efforts to apply the success and notoriety of her work to help resolve the political-oppression suffered by people in Oaxaca, Mexico, amongst other noble causes, certainly must of contributed to Dempster developing feelings. But the feelings were far from mutual. And one would assume that the pillar of artistic-activist awesome-ness his crush would place her one only grew higher and grander upon his being rejected.
Not too long after the Clamour profile, SWOON had the opportunity to sell her work to MoMA, which she did. This led to what might be considered a precursor to the splashings--stenciled-letters reading "SOLD TO MOMA" spray-painted atop of SWOON pieces throughout the city. As far as someone with Dempster's political leanings would see it, selling to MoMA was essentially selling out, an act that would shatter Dempster's idealized image of SWOON and her work. So the stenciling began and the splashing followed, first targeting SWOONs work, but soon branching out to include the works of other prominent street artist such as Shepard Fairey and Neck Face, who have both taken part in high-profile (and likely high-dollar) marketing campaigns for corporations such as Vans and Dewar's. But it was during a panel discussion at the BAM graffiti show that the Dempster/SWOON theory was reinforced and all but corroborated by SWOON herself. A man dropped an arm-load of flyers from a balcony that featured Marxist/Situationist-style texts similar to those seen along side splashed works, deriding the art of SWOON and her peers. Delayed by a locked door, SWOON and the rest of the audience got a good look at the culprit and he was recognized by SWOON. Recognized as Zach.
While the above theory has been well, if not over reported and repeating here is far from necessary or groundbreaking considering that Gothamist is calling this theory definitive, case closed, there is one parallel to this story of failed love and graffiti that has yet to be mentioned.
I, unfortunately, do not own The Art of Getting Over, so excuse me for paraphrasing, but as I remember it, modern graffiti started in the Philadelphia in the late 1960s with two writers, one who tagged CORNBREAD and another who tagged COOL EARL. In CORNBREAD's case, he wrote on things to get the attention of girls and in one instance, wrote his name on every bus that drove the line which a certain girl he had the hots for rode regularly. And the tradition of attempting to bomb an entire line was born.
Seeing that modern graffiti was born in part from a love story, it seems incredibly fitting that this critique of the current commercialized and commoditized state of the scene should be born of one as well. It is an affair that, unlike my (unrequited) love affair with graffiti, has spawned a critique that has the potential to leave a lasting effect on the art. It's very easy to aesthetically compare the Splasher's marks to that of the Abstract Expressionist. That definitive mark of Pollack or De Kooning was eventually deemed tired and obsolete when the beginnings of Pop Art began to develop, a movement that would drastically change the course of contemporary art and, through the chain of influence, is partly responsible for the flat colors and graphic style of today's street art. It was Pop-artist Roy Liechtenstein that wrote the obituary for Abstract Expressionism when he painted, in his methodical, exacting style that so closely mimics that look of commercially printed materials, an Ab Ex brush stroke, completely void of all the emotion, movement and life that it once stood for. Could it be that the Splasher, as conceptually delusional and confused and love-crossed as he seems to be (depending on what you believe), might be echoing not only the love-inspired graffiti campaign of CORNBREAD, but performing a Lichtenstien-eque role as well that could eventually herald a change or mark the death of a style in the street art scene? We'll just have to watch to walls and see.