Creating Destruction

There are a million ways in which old art is destroyed not only to make space for new art, but to make room for new ideas. A large number of artists and architects find it necessary to annihilate the forms that precede them, making way for new creation. In Japan the great Frank Lloyd Wright created a beautiful structure, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In spite of surviving a 7.9 earthquake the building was later demolished to make way for a new building. In relatively recent times, I have come across a similar issue in art.

Around the same time that Frank Lloyd Wright was building the Imperial Hotel, the Dadaist movement was in full swing. These were a group of anti-artists. The idea that art, architecture, and the bourgeoisie collide was the focal point of their protest. Frank Lloyd Wright is probably just the type of person who would be loathed by the dadaist brigade. In looking back at these artists, Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray, many young artists, and street artists model their ideas on these early and influential artists.

In recent blogging days there has been an upset over the anti-art statements made by an anonymous person or group in New York City. This statement seems to be focused on street art, especially the art of a few artists, Sheppard Fairey, Swoon, Cheekz, Banksy, and probably more. These street artists have been gracing the world with incredible wheat pastes, stencils, paintings, and installations all over the world. This anonymous group of self professed dadaists has picked these street artists as a means to convey their statement. What better art to splash paint on than the art of these mass culture, mass consumer artists? The new dadaists have been pegged as anti-art and as destroyers of creativity, but I have to say that what they are doing is just like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

I love the art of Banksy, and Swoon, and I appreciate what they are saying to us as pedestrians and artists. We are walking in galleries everyday because of these street artists. I love the imagery and the life that is breathed into these walls. In contrast I also love the destruction of that art. Street art is so temporary and exposed. Street walls have no guards, no docents, and no protective glass. This art is subject to the elements of nature and of man. The new dadaesque movement of splashing paint on street art is an invitation to re-think, and create something new. If these artists got together they could find a way to turn this so called destruction into something amazing. a new challenge. They have a new enemy, it is not the police that force them to use their imagination anymore. Now fellow artists have issued a challenge. I say that these new splashes should be considered the first stroke in a masterpiece.

The first Photograph is a stencil of a urinal turned on it's side, it is a classic Dada representation of anti-art originally created by Marcel Duchamp. The fact that a street artist created this image is evidence of the influence that Dadaism may have on street art culture. The second image is yet another Dada representation in street art, this time a more controversial version, that shows the splashed paint on a Swoon wheat paste of a Woman from Oaxaca, Mexico.