Graffiti
November 2nd, 2009
The BeautifulCity.ca coalition has admirable, but possibly naà¯ve, expectations about the civilizing benefits of public art.
The group wants the city to use the projected $11 million windfall from the new billboard tax to finance public art projects in every nook and cranny of Toronto. As BeautifulCity has told councillors [ PDF ], “Economic spin off effects of this historic increase to arts funding helps to ease recession and youth unemployment. Tourism goes up. Torontonians enjoy a more humane, fair and beautiful city.”
I’m not persuaded. For years, we’ve been shaking down developers for a public art contribution, and they, in turn, have been making perfunctory gestures. In general, I’d prefer better architecture, but one takes what one can get.
Does it make the city more “humane”? At the margins, yes, although I can think of numerous public art installations that do little to improve the public realm.
I also question the non-aesthetic benefits BeautifulCity touts. Public art projects don’t produce steady work. If you’re an artist, you may get one or a few commissions out of such a program. But the city’s going to want to spread the wealth broadly, so it won’t add up to a steady income for anyone, except perhaps the inevitable consultants who turn up to direct the effort.
Let me suggest an alternative.
Teenagers are the one demographic group consistently excluded from public spaces, both by neglect and design. While the city and neighbourhood groups go to remarkable lengths to build playgrounds, we all get nervous when adolescents congregate in parks, which, in turn, rarely offer little more than a slab of asphalt with a couple of hoops.
October 19th, 2009
On Friday, I noticed that the sidewalks around the Yonge-Queen intersection have been painted with stenciled ad messages promoting the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This is certainly not the first time we have seen …
August 4th, 2009
New murals are going up on Christie Street’s retaining walls just north of Dupont. While the sunflowers and pastoral scenes emerging on the newly reconstructed concrete walls don’t seem particularly unusual …
July 16th, 2009
The Hug Me Tree, the infamous tree stump on Queen West at Peter and felled almost one year ago, has returned to it’s original location.
Since Nuit Blanche in 2008, a paper maché version of the tree had occupied the original tree’s place. During that time, the tree was moved to a gallery, and plans were hatched to weather-proof the tree and figure out a system that could keep it in place on the sidewalk. While a network of roots used to keep the tree upright, a metal plate now occupies the base for added balance, sturdiness, and durability. And as some of the images of the new installation show, a few more features have been added to the tree that will allow passers-by to interact with the tree.
There are more photos if you follow the link.
May 25th, 2009
Detroit must be some kind of graffiti artist heaven — there are almost endless amounts of deserted, empty walls across the city in neglected streets and abandoned factories and buildings, and a City government that must have much bigger priorities for its limited resources.
I saw tons of graffiti pieces when I visited the city recently, but I was a little disappointed with the wall-based graffiti pieces — there was not a lot that was remarkable, compared to what I am used to seeing in parts of Toronto. I wonder if maybe the fact that it’s so easy means that people don’t feel the need to try as hard.
On the other hand, Detroit has one thing other cities don’t have — entire high-rise buildings that are deserted — and it has developed to a high art a form of graffiti that uses the windows of buildings.
October 30th, 2008
There’s always good art showing in Toronto–even art for the map-obsessed. But this is a particularly good part of the fall for some. Here’s three reasons why:
1) Last Friday, Toronto artists Gwen McGregor and Sandra Rechico’s exhibition Maps in Doubt opened at the newly relocated Mercer Union. (Recap: This artist-run centre used to be near Queen and Dovercourt, and now is near Bloor and Lansdowne–discuss the ongoing issue of “Is Bloor & Lans the new Queen West?” amongst yerselves.)
What McGregor and Rechico do in this show is bring their different approaches to psychogeography to the fore. McGregor, for one, has been toting around a GPS for years, using the resulting data to create interesting maps of her everyday paths in New York, Toronto and elsewhere. Rechico (a former curator for wade) has a similar interest in space and mapping, but chooses to go more analog, having taken detailed, handwritten notes of her daily travels for the past seven years.
Brought together for the first time by curator, critic and York U prof Dan Adler, Rechico and McGregor worked out four different ways of mapping their respective pedestrian travels in four different cities: Toronto, Montreal, Kassel and Munster. Each of these four mapping strategies and cities is presented on a different wall of the rectangular gallery space.
September 26th, 2008
Clever graffitti really should inform more of the debate in our federal election. There I was, tearing my hair out trying to understand how anyone can think that giving young people longer criminal sentences is the most important issue facing the country, when crime rates are dropping and global warming threatens the future of all youth (plus everyone else).
But then I came across an on-line mini-lecture by Dan Gilbert — best-selling author, Harvard Psychology professor and author of the title of this rant. Sadly (for me), he has some pretty good reasons why we are blind to the danger posed by rising greenhouse gas levels, while the threats of tooth decay, terrorism or youth crime trigger immediate responses.
It’s well worth a listen, but he sums it up as: “ Global warming is a deadly threat only because it fails to trigger the brain’s alarms. It leaves us sleeping in a burning bed. It remains to be seen whether if we can learn to rouse ourselves to battle an impersonal, slow and quiet enemy that is indeed more dangerous than any our ancestors ever imagined.â€
Alas, the record of our ancestors on this score is not promising. But not entirely hopeless either. Archaeologist/historian Ronald Wright sums up the historical evidence in his brilliant little book A Short History of Progress with a single line stolen from a piece of graffiti: “Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.â€
I’ve tacked this line onto the wall by my desk because I think it is both clever and wise – and the placement seems appropriate for an academic thesis that started as a piece of street art whose creator the get-tough-on-youth-crime crowd would have us jail.
Clever because it plays upon our familiarity with the expression “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.†So it highlights the possibility of avoiding paying the price by actually learning from our mistakes, even while cynically doubting that this is probable. But at least our unknown graffiti artist retained enough hope to bother writing his warning on a wall.
August 12th, 2008
As we first reported yesterday, the fabled graffiti tree at Queen West and Peter, also known as the “Hug Me” tree, fell over ending its near decade-long reign as a local landmark. But there has …
August 11th, 2008
One of my favourite things about the strip of Queen West between University and Spadina, not too far from Spacing’s office, is the graffiti tree at Queen and Peter near the vendor stands. Over the years, it has become a local landmark as street artists have repainted it numerous times. Others have attached such things as picture frames, action figures, and manifestos.
Sadly, today we witnessed that the tree had been seriously damaged. City staff are still considering what to do with it. Forestry will first have to determine the damage and assess the next step (likely to be taken away and chipped). It looks like a vehicle has knocked it over but we have yet to confirm this with police or city hall staff.
This is the second Toronto graffiti tree in a year to have met its maker: the famed technicolour tree and howling wolf were removed from Trinity Bellwoods Park in July 2007 when the base of the tree showed signs it might fall over due to rot.
The question I put to Spacing readers: Should there be some kind of installation in its place to continue the tradition of graffiti reinterpretation? Or, just plant another tree?
See more photos after the jump or on Spacing’s Flickr account.
