From getting commissioned for works to having solo shows in galleries, street and graffiti artists have been acknowledged not only by the art world but also by academia. Art history consists of the study of the different art movements and getting to know the greats of each period, but it is often utilized to understand why art is the way that it is. As Los Angeles and other major cities around the world see painters and writers leave their mark on different infrastructures, contemporary art critics and historians have come to understand this culture and realize how this art form has not only come to be but the impact it continues to leave.
“As a new college professor 15 plus years ago, my students were very into street art and graffiti. It was a natural way to bring art appreciation into the classroom. So I paid more attention to it because my students paid attention to it. At that time, there wasn’t much academic work being done, so I tried to leverage the popularity of it to use it as a teaching tool,” said Jim Daichendt Ed.D. of Point Loma Nazarene University.
This initial student interest sent Daichendt down his own path of dedication. Over his career, he has written several biographies about street artists like Kenny Scharf, and Shepard Fairey. He has even written an entire book dedicated to the study of Los Angeles street art. Through the studies of street artists’ lives and his own research, he has defined graffiti and street art as an anti-art movement.
“It can be seen as anti-modern because so much of the modern direction of art and architecture moved away from individuality and human expression. Graffiti and street art situates itself on those modern architectural forms [of being organic and human] and brings back this wonderful creative expression,” said Daichendt.
Over his years of understanding this culture, he has come up with a sort of sliding scale that brings an answer to the controversy of street art and its commercialization. Between artists debating over being a sellout as soon as they leave the streets and people who get involved in this practice to gain fame, it has become a hard debate to understand. Daichendt’s scale helps bring a bit of clarity to the complex situation.
“There’s the very romantic street artists and you have the incredibly pragmatic street artists. The romantic artist is like the punk rock band that plays music in the garage and the moment they sign a record deal, they consider themselves to be sold out. They do it for the love of it. It’s the same principle for the graffiti artists that just put their letters up on the walls illegally,” explains Daichendt. “Then on the other side, you have the pragmatic street artist like Shepard Fairey, who has partnership deals with every major brand, owns his own mass-marketed clothing line and does paid murals around the world. Then you have everyone in between. There’s not a one-size-fits-all, but the romantics are often going to criticize the pragmatic artist.”
Within his deep dive into this culture that surrounds LA, he defines certain distinctions that separate Los Angeles from other cities. From Los Angeles being an international city to the way that the city is laid out, it is a place that goes hand and hand with this kind of expression.
“You have art collectives that are based there, promotional teams, murals that are sponsored by companies, companies that do street art tours. You have a history of Olympic murals and muralism in LA. You also had a mural moratorium where it was illegal to do murals in Los Angeles,” said Daichendt. “Since LA is a series of clearly defined borders between neighborhoods. You see different types of artworks as you maneuver through the city and its infrastructure encourages that.”
The separation of these neighborhoods and communities is part of the reason that graffiti and street art culture began in Los Angeles. Its roots lie with Los Angeles Chicano movements, communities and various gangs. Andrea LePage, professor of art history at Washington and Lee University with a specialization in Latinx art offers some explanation as to why and how this all began.
“It [graffiti and street art] is a way of promoting community values, and sort of cementing themes that are important to the community. In Mexican American history the place that the general population had access to was the public sphere. So instead of not producing art at all, there is a moment where we see the claiming of space and putting those ideas out into the public sphere,” said LePage.
Leonard Fologariat, professor of art history at Vanderbilt University with a specialty in modern Latinx art also sees how the separation and expression of Chicano communities have sparked this culture. He explains that the Chicano population, as many other ethnic minorities in LA, felt disenfranchised by the city. They were forced to live in the poorer parts of the city without a political voice. This treatment grew into pent-up frustration.
“Chicanos decided that one way to proclaim a place in society was actually in terms of a physical place in the neighborhood,” said Fologariat. “And how do you do that? Well, one way to do it might be to paint images on the walls of buildings — sometimes public buildings, sometimes private buildings. It helped define that this is your turf, this is your home, this is where you live. You’re claiming ownership in a cultural way that you don’t have economically.”
He continues to explain how this claiming of territory led to the sort of gang graffiti that became rather aggressive and caused a vast amount of violence within these communities. The streets were then separated into different factions under gangs. Often these gangs weren’t only separating themselves from predominately white communities, but also from each other which led to even more destruction.
Beyond this marking of territory, the amount of these illegal paintings had to do with the authorization process to do public art. In a mutual understanding to ignore the city’s regulation, public art became a community affair that didn’t involve any sort of approval. The lack of legality and this newfound sense of community was completely undermining the structure of the art world.
“The structure of the art world has been developed into a space of whiteness. It is designed to crowd out people of color. The relationship between art and activism is so strong in Chicano and Chicana artistic production that the mainstream white gallery space has made efforts to keep activism and its context away from art. I think that that’s part of the reason that artists are pushed out into the streets,” said Lepage.
Despite the unfortunate battle that many minority artists face to be included and respected by peers in the art world, the streets prove to have their advantages.
“Art in the street is always precarious. These works have the possibility of reaching potentially a very different audience. They may be reaching community members, immigrants, and individuals who may not have the amount of leisure time to spend in gallery spaces or may not have that $25 entrance fee to get into museums. Street art has the possibility of addressing a much wider audience and that makes it really powerful,” said LePage.
Even though street art and graffiti has the ability to spark creativity within communities, it’s important to remember the streets are constantly changing. Nothing is permanent. Some pieces are subject to being covered up by other artists, others fade with time and in most cases, the city comes along to either paint over it or wash it away. But no matter how many times something gets erased, it always finds its way back to the community.
“It’s so pervasive that it becomes a part of the normal landscape. It almost runs the risk of being ignored because it’s all over. It’s one of these great paradoxes. The more successful you are, the less successful your messages are. You can’t win. First, you’re ignored, and then you’re accepted and because you’re accepted, you lose your voice. This sort of paradox doesn’t happen to any other kind of art,” said Folograit. “White artists making fancy, expensive, abstract paintings in museums have never gone through that kind of roller coaster. It only adds to the argument that once street artists are in that gallery, they’ve lost their voice.”
This paradox only continues to build when considering how graffiti artists get recognition and fame within communities. Folograit ends, “Part of the allure of being a graffiti artist is not only that you put your tag on the wall. But guess what? Having it erased gives you greater fame. Because they think the city took me seriously enough to be afraid of me enough to erase me. It’s a true double edged sword.”