Sometime in the autumn of 2006, an anonymous figure began a campaign in the pre-dawn streets of New York. Armed with paint cans and propaganda, he set out to cast a blight upon once sacred images. With furious, brightly colored bursts, wall after wall of celebrated street art was systematically obliterated. Revolutionary creativity does not shock or entertain the bourgeoisie, read communiqués posted at the scene, it destroys them. Deriding street artists as “advance scouts for capital,” the Splasher, as he came to be known, was issuing a proclamation.
The first evidence of a rising discontent came in the summer. It began with the artist known as Swoon. In a world filled with violent color and provocative imagery, her work stood apart - restrained and serene. Her ethereal figures quietly populated the city’s bridge embankments and back alleys bringing a haunting, humanistic quality to otherwise drab urban areas. Then someone started crossing out their eyes. In large black letters, the words SOLD TO MoMA were stenciled next to the newly blind.
It’s a cycle that has become all too familiar. Anything subversive, anything meant to disrupt the status quo and challenge traditional models of thought and behavior is eventually adopted into the mainstream it is swimming against. Once caught in the currents of convention, it becomes powerless. Just another commodity to be traded in the system. Swoon had long been regarded as a holdout, not to be counted among artists growing increasingly more inclined to traffic with the consumer culture they were meant to be undermining. But then she sold. Whether an out should be affixed remains a matter of opinion. One thing is clear – the sale of her work signaled to someone that she had lost sight of the mission.
The splashing began last November. And though Swoon was among the first to be hit, she was no longer alone. What was originally conceived as the antipode to a gallery culture that focused too much attention on the individual was now producing megawatt stars of its own. The brighter an artist’s work shone on the street, the more likely it was to draw the ire of the Splasher. This fact gave rise to an obvious and widely propagated theory: the Splasher resented success. Perhaps he was a jealous artist unable to garner the same attention paid to the darlings of the scene. Or maybe a misguided revolutionary clinging naïvely to the idealistic notion that true artists must remain uncorrupted by the forces of capitalism. Either way, his criticisms were dismissed as bullshit.
After all, he did hit a Banksy.
In the soaring pantheon of street art, none sits on high quite like the mythic Briton. When he descended upon Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood teetering on the precipice of gentrification, the piece he bestowed there was widely heralded as a gift. Stenciled on the face of an otherwise unremarkable building, a small girl skips rope blissfully unaware that the cord she grips in her small hands originates from a nearby electrical box. A young boy raised on painted toes stands poised to flip the switch. The work was a pristine example of the graceful commentary the world has come to expect from the enigmatic artist. When the Splasher defaced it, he committed the ultimate act of blasphemy. In wounded awe, we mouthed a collective why?
From the Splasher’s communiqué: A Dadaist once smashed a clock, dipped the pieces in ink, pressed the ink-soaked pieces against a sheet of paper and had it framed. His purpose was to criticize the modernist idealization of efficiency. Rather than inspiring the widespread smashing of clocks and the re-evaluation of time in society, the piece of paper itself has become a sought-after commodity.
Banksy’s work is largely found on walls. It can be found on the working-class walls of Bristol, the wall erected to further define the separation between Israel and the occupied territories and on walls in the Los Angeles home of actor Brad Pitt. Last year, the sale of his work broke records at Sotheby’s.
The underground art scene whipped itself into a frenzy trying to uncover the Splasher’s identity. Having suffered the desecration of Banksy, there was a universal thirst for blood. The blogosphere was set ablaze in rumor and online tribunals formed in which suspects were named, tried and convicted by a jury of their virtual peers. It all became very simple. The Splasher was a villain and the artists were his victims. The artists, it was decided, must be protected.
But it wasn’t them he was after – it was us.
All art is subject to the same evolutionary cycle. It is created, absorbed into collective consciousness and then coveted. It’s not enough that it exists, it must be owned. Street art grew out of a resistance to this fact. It was a fuck you to the fastidious little gallery owner and his 50 percent cut. A rejection of the exploitative nature of the collector. It was democratic rebellion. Art for everyone. But then we started buying it. And now we, as a culture who demand ownership and insist that art be hung on gleaming white walls, are the ones being splashed.
_Sarah Nardi is a Chicago-based freelance writer.
divide and conquer capitalist mentality.
Must great talent be put on a pedestool and given a price tag. The art on the street is not sacred. The whole point of paint the wall is to make a subversive statement nothing more, feed public consciousness, inspire debate. It has achieved it's aim. And now we are arguing about ownership? The value lies in the ability to stir thought.. not the dollars it attracts. It's not precious or sacred. It's out there. Perhaps a Splashed Banksy will get a higher price tag now. He makes a valid point. Talent is not smothered. A Banksy has power. Why is Splasher's statement less important than Banksy just because Banksy has attracted a 6 figure sum for his work. Elitism.
A tip for the starting hipster street artist:
make your street art piece and than SPLASH IT YOURSELF pointing and what a sellout you have become! Total detournment self promotion.
And I gave it away for free! :P
The Splasher is nothing more than a sick graffiti maker.
Fundamentally rejecting the system as a whole is one valid method of voicing your opinion. Another method, equally as valid, is to use your art as a trojan horse and infiltrate the system and spread your message amongst the people inside.
Do culture jammers, like the long lineage of 'rebels' before them, really imagine themselves to be the resistance against Capital? You ARE Capital. In fact, you are the advance guard of capitalism, exploring and experimenting with novel aesthetics, rhetorical devices, and symbology. What a useful purpose you serve to the Machine. You are the artistic wing of capitalism in contrast to rather than in opposition to the technocratic wing. Get used to it. It could be worse. You could be enjoying the lifestyle of a truly risky underground, where dissent really is treason and not a pose. In places like Cuba, Burma, and Iran.
Heyo, Asking the street artists to take political refusals is absolutely authoritary, in my opinion.
We don't have to point a difference between mainstream and underground. We should look at the relations between the two of them.
Who is The Splasher?!
Conformism vs Contrarianism....The Saga Continues: Making Stuff is the new Shopping, Idealism is the new Irony.
destruction is art.
Criticizing those who buy McDonald's hamburgers won't solve anything meaningful in the long term;
but taking out McDonald's would be a good start.
Criticizing sell outs won't solve anything;
but taking out those who inspire us yes, all of us to sell out would be a good start. Hit those that cause the most hurt. Why hit an artist when a corporate billboard is across the street. Why hit a billboard when an office building is next door. Why hit up an office building when the people who make decisions are inside. Then again, I don't even own a bucket of paint. But I guess there are as many ways to hit up these folks as there are creative people who are willing to do the work and have some fun. What's your version?
You wouldn't need to write this article if you had read Rebel Sell, rather than your idiotic bible, No Logo. All radical culture even Naomi Klein's posing gets hoovered up by the system. Think about Naomi's millions and then ask yourself if she is really challenging the system, or just 'freaking' with our heads?
I'm pretty sure Banksy knows that the primary law of art on the street is that it is Transitory. If you don't like what the splasher is doing, then paint over what he painted over.
Splasher isn't an artist. He/she isn't trying to make art, he's making a statement. I'm actually inclined to agree with Splasher. By selling out, these street artists are telling people that the art aspect of a piece is far more important than the message could ever be. When you get upset about the loss of a Banksy or Swoon piece, are you getting upset at the message being censored, or an artist's work being destroyed?
If a piece of art is effective in conveying its message and is adopted by a mainstream audience, does the artist not deserve credit for redirecting the course of the artistic community? Commodification would suggest a strong desire to be associated with such pieces of art.
The desire to preserve such art against the constraints of time and weather is also a factor leading to the sale of such works. It goes completely against the temporal nature of street art, yet who will remember this period of free communal creativity if it isn't documented in some way?
Sure, like everything else, art or whatever forms of expression should be criticized, reminded of their in aspirations, objectives, etc. The fact that everything can be turned into a commodity is another well known fact. Should that discourage anyone from trying? Au contraire, it should challenge and incentive people to express themselves even more, remembering that, even though those that have money try to own everything, they will never succeed to incorporate everything. They might seem to be really fast, but they are always a step behind. It still illegal to deliberately change the way a city looks, therefore it is still revolutionary and challenging. If an artist still gives his/her pieces to the public for free, it is just absurd to accuse that person of sellingout. Maybe splashing street art is a form of expression that can't be as easily co-opted, but it is as
rebellious as whining. And how revolutionary buffers would be!
Hi Sarah, in regards to street art becoming an imitation of what it sought to counteract, some people might have similiar ideas in regards to Adbusters magazine. What are your thoughts on that?
Wow. Whoever goes around splashing paint on things isn't an artist no matter where the paint lands. The entire notion is naive that smashing paint on a Banksy somehow proves an ironic point; if anything, it is robbing us of a much needed epiphany about our culture. Must talent constantly be smothered out without understanding it's importance?
you should watch the documentary the first hip hop documentary about graffiti called Style Wars. There is this exact same issue where a writer named CAP covers over peoples' murals maliciously. The difference between then and now is that in 1983 we were obviously smarter than now because we wouldn't print an idiotic manifesto of the Splasher. as if it was profound. Basically its all just turf wars and the parts of Street culture that are not as nice. Yes people take it political and make manifestos out of it. Is street art revolutionary? Has it ever been? Supposedly in 1968 it was. But that's pretty rose tinted. I would say it was certainly a part of what was revolutionary then. Is it now? Is Banksy? Time will tell ultimately. But not very much. We are in a media saturated world and so more images isn't really very much different. Case in point I saw an 'edgy on street commercial recently that resembled very much the grass planted in parking space Reclaim the Streets thing as seen in Adbusters circa 2000ish. Its can be revolutionary by the effect, not by the style or coolness or sell-outness. The effect is only important if it changes how people relate. Agitprop is less and less effective the more it gets co-opted by Advertisers. Adbusters use to know about that and wanted to get beyond image back in the 90s. Now it seems that is forgotten in this Magazine and Agitprop of the newest, coolest, most edgy outside the mainstream style is all that is noticed. But anything could be co-opted. If its about image then it isn't revolution because image is superficial inherently. If its about something besides image then that's that. Humour and jokes can be subversive. But then we also have sitcoms that keep us Entertained.
i think it is wrong to say that street art must have a message. sometimes it's just about creating a name, marking territory, vandalism, or just making the streets more lively. in fact, i suppose most street art doesn't have any real political message. except the 'reclaim the streets' or 'artwar' aspect. splashing could be counted to street art, but only in a negative case,like crossing check graffiti in my opinion. of course, many interventionist ideas are assimilated by pop culture and mass media, but it actually doesn't have that much impact. most street art that has a message is designed for insiders anyway. all in all, street art shouldn't be seen as a medium to express a direct message attacking a certain, obvious topic. that's what demos are for. nobody will listen to a picture or slogan anyway.
Art never comes from happiness.
In Salt Lake City there was a building set for demolition that was covered in street art, inside and out. A group of artists received permission to use it as an art project beforehand, knowing that it would never be sold and was for their own freedom of expression. Many of the artists commented how enjoyable and freeing it was to create art knowing it would be destroyed and not worrying if it would be bought or done in the correct boundaries to become a commodity. On the day of the demolition in drew all sorts of people from the community to watch it and it made me happy that projects like this got some publicity.
If I came across a Banksy Id splash it my 'flippin' self! The blokes a nuisance. With his Oooo look at this painting ive done telling you that consumerism is a sin. You can have it for $10,000. Prick!
Yes, wk, good question indeed... I guess as far as my reaction to the article goes, the Splasher is doing the wrong thing for the right reason, and the artists seem to be doing the right things for the wrong reason. What would be the happy in between?
Does this mean without talent I can never express myself? I went off art when my art teacher didn't agree with my perspective so I got bad marks. I think the same thing is happening here. I don't know the motives but I think Nardi is right about who really got splashed.
rock is dead.
attacks on public art by agents provocateur intending to blank out political and social expression in favor of contentempty modern art are not unlikely nor is that mentality restricted to the organs of state security, but when small democratic regimes fall to totalitarian coups the first step they take is blanking the walls is it not?
Wow, Adbusters, this story is really old. Where have you guys been? It's not like this event happened in the boonies where no one noticed. This is going on in the birthplace of graffiti. Not only is the story old, it seems like such a status maker for Adbusters to be the first to be over it with street art. Too cool, eh? respect to paint.yourself. green, wk, Quorpencetta, and others for their comments. Now let me tell you why Splashers statement ticks off anyone who has made an international name for themselves over years of painting in public places all over the world. Try getting recognition on the quality, and thoughtfulness of your own work. Lastly, to anyone who can finally get a commission after decades of igniting thought in public spaces, congratulations and keep going.
It's just nonsense. Painting on walls isn't nothing and does very little. These artists have to express themselves good; but don't think it does anything major. It ends up as food to feed magazine world.
arnt we over banksy yet? come on, who cares anymore.