The rise of low culture.

The reason for the blog below might be linked to this blog now. The influence of minorities within popular art. Living within the inland-religious city boundaries, it might be difficult to discern these influence. I swear to God, 90% of this state is white, but yet, the Mormon culture cannot oppress the influence of the minority culture that has burgeoned in larger communities for years. Here, I present an example, in a double blog: the influence of minority culture in pop culture, and the rise of low art to high art -- graffiti.

Now, graffiti is an ancient art form, dating back to scratching advertising brothels in Ancient Greece. Contemporary graffiti is marked by the use of spray paint. It is convenient, easy to use, accessible, and one is able to mark a larger area with such tools than a Grecian might with a stone found on the side of the wall.

I think the main keywords of this blog are as follows: Accessible, and Paint.

But how can we link the contemporary graffiti art to a minority influence? As it is linked with hip-hop influence, a predominately African-American genre, we can thereby conclude that it is clearly linked. Yet, the rise and dominance of graffiti wasn't considered serious until the rise of Basquiat, of Puerto-Rican and Haitian descent, who had a definite influence on how graffiti was viewed by critics and the larger public. Otherwise, graffiti can be linked to gangs, and the attempt of gangs, consisting of various minorites, or rather, a group of displaced people banding togethor against the larger whole (such as Rude Boys, or Punks, or Cryps, or Straight Edgers) to mark their territory. This might be a bit misguided, but marking one's territory might not be too far off, as the first contemporary graffiti consisted of an individual writing down one's name in spray paint, thus marking where he/she has been. It can be agreed upon that a single person is a minority against a whole population.

I drove around Salt Lake to see if I could capture the rise of graffitti from a simple marking of one's presence to the height of art. It wasn't too difficult, and the result were quite rewarding:

One can clearly see the progression from street art to the elevation of high art. The last two are pictures taken at the downtown Salt Lake Library. What we have is a progression from mere name scratching to more and more complex pieces. Yet, these piece aren't going to possess the intellectual complexity of, say, Picasso. One has to simply remember the form - spray paint. Accessibility, and temporality. This is what inspired the 337 project a few years back. The point was to create the most extravagant piece of work on the most temporary sturcture. This is what graffitti seems to lean towards - working with human-based structures, acknowledgement of temporality, accessibility, and style. Each tagger has their own style. Then there is elevation, as is evident in the last two pieces. This might be construed as a postmodern progression, yet I view it as something otherwise, something more baroque. Yet, neo-baroque is not an adequate enough term, since it is reserved for something a bit more formal. The term we must designate for this progression in art should be along the lines of urban baroke.

Sincerely,
Me.