Accessible Art

          On Christmas Eve, finding nothing pressing in my in-box, I took my litter-picking gear for a stroll to a place favoured by litterers, a short tunnel on what was once a branch railway, connecting a former goods marshalling yard (now the site of our abode) to the mainline depot, but is now a route for pedestrians and cyclists. The tunnel recently had a council upgrade – new lighting was installed and it was designated a ‘legal wall’ for street art, which seems to me a good idea but, as I was to discover, not everyone thinks so. Approaching the tunnel, I heard the distinctive rattle of a ball-bearing in an aerosol can and caught a whiff of solvent in the air. Then I saw an artist at work, perched atop a ladder and wearing a gas-mask.

          Who are the people that do this and why? What is it, anyway? Is it art? Is it graphics? Is it graffiti? And how much is the aerosol paint industry worth these days? These are some of the questions I could have asked the man on the ladder, but he was busily engrossed in his creation. Besides, I could have taken time to find out all this stuff years ago, but I guess I became so accustomed to seeing it that my curiosity waned. Still, he descended as I was passing, so we exchanged a few words. Seeing what I was up to, he commented on the amount of litter scattered around. I refrained diplomatically from pointing out that much of it comprised discarded aerosol cans and asked, instead, about his work, a somewhat hard-edged concoction of symbols resembling hieroglyphs on an orange background. He explained that, because he uses several colours, his approach is more sophisticated than that of some others. His brief explanation of the different styles on the wall taught me something of the hierarchy, in which ‘a tag’ – a stylised signature – is the most basic form, painted by ‘bombers’ whose mission is to spread their brand, especially in places they oughtn’t. Some of the more anarchically inclined bombers despise the concept of legal walls, so they sometimes deliberately spoil the art painted on them by others. That’s why he had brought a ladder, I suspect.

          A few days previously, I had been to see parts of the touring British Art Show 9 and I guess that’s what had piqued my interest in what contemporary artists have been getting up to lately. Some of what I saw grabbed my attention – Hardeep Pandhal’s two animations with hip-hop soundtracks, for example, a sharp, witty, multi-media comment on aspects of street life had me fixed to the spot for the duration. And a spoof “late show” TV piece featuring a very young and unfeasibly intellectual interviewer talking to Jorge Louis Borges, the deceased Argentinian writer, made me stop and think. Other stuff did not impress me, insofar as it appeared to require no skill in its execution – an assembly of industrial pipes laid on the floor, for example – or  made sense only after reading an explanation of the reason for its creation, like the video piece of some people talking randomly that turned out to be a dull, un-scientific exploration of the origins of language. Should I have tried harder to immerse myself in those experiences? Is it not the artist’s job to engage me?

          As a layman, I have no thoroughly informed opinion to offer, other than to say that, if our responses to art are subjective, we should expect no fixed rules as to its form or function. Basquiat supposedly said, “Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time”, which seems to me a pretty non-judgemental attitude to what is a universal human urge to express ourselves, however good we might be at it.