The New york graffiti war
Attacking art with art: how a public good was manipulated for private interests
By Julianna Rubbins-Breen
The McGill Daily


Angel Chen / The McGill Daily

Since late November 2006, an individual or group of individuals in New York City have embarked on a project to critique not only street art, but also capitalism and “bourgeois culture.” Those involved have been coined “the Splasher” because they target prominent street artists and deface their work by covering it with splashes of solid colored paint. Beside the vandalized works, manifestos are posted that condemn the art of high profile street artists as by-products of capitalism that serve only to reinforce harmful social hierarchies.

To date, the Splasher has pasted two manifestos. The first is entitled “Avant-Garde: Advanced Scouts for Capital,” and calls the targeted artists bourgeois “art professionals” whose work is a “fetishized action of banality.” While the chosen artists may not be household names, they are increasingly well known in urban art circles. One of the artists’ works has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, while others sell for thousands of dollars to art dealers.

Capitalist interests increasingly shape these large-scale sculptures, like the cities whose landscapes they appear in. Urban form is often manipulated so that space yields the largest economic return possible. Corporations capitalize on urban space by creating more “private” spaces, places that exclude those who are not consumers. Historically, street art has been a way to resist this corporatization and privatization of urban space by reclaiming the streets as public spaces of creativity and dialogue. However, as the movement gains popularity and the art becomes a coveted commodity, some high profile street artists seem to be playing an active role in the drive to corporatize and privatize city space.

This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that as the works of popular public artists rise in value, so do the neighbourhoods around them. The work of popular street artists, inadvertently or not, spurs processes of gentrification and urban renewal. In New York, the majority of chosen works have been in the Lower East Side, a neighbourhood akin to Montreal’s Plateau, where trendy bars, vintage clothing shops, and small boutiques reign. The street art is used as a selling point, helping to reconstruct the image of the neighbourhood into one of bohemian charm, art, and culture. As a result, levels of investment and property values increase. While the art undoubtedly makes the visual landscape more diverse, the inhabitants of the downtown Manhattan neighbourhood are increasingly homogenized. Gentrification displaces those who once lived in single room occupancy or low income housing, while old housing is converted into upscale lofts and apartments.

The Splasher’s most recent manifesto, “Art: The Excrement of Action,” explains that the art of prominent street artists maintains social hierarchy because it creates “actors and an audience, agents and a mass.” The Splasher has aroused such a passionate response because fans – and at times the artists themselves – are distraught to see popular works vandalized. They wish that the art would remain untouched and in its original state. Paradoxically, the initial intent to reclaim the street from corporate influence is subverted by new questions of ownership. Public space is, by its very nature, contested space. It is a space where various individuals, groups, and movements can enact struggles and voice opinions. The act of creating art on the façade of a building is an attempt to appropriate urban visual space and open that space up to dialogue. But those who denounce the actions of “the Splasher” fail to realize that their outrage negates the initial goal of the critique. Once questions of ownership and authorship are evoked, the space becomes private, actors and an audience emerge, and social hierarchies sustain inequality.

Attempting to prevent further destruction, many media outlets have chosen to ignore the movement’s most recent activity. It is clear, however, that the critique is just beginning. As the Splasher’s latest manifesto states, “True creativity is the joyful destruction of hierarchy…the passion for destruction is a creative passion.” As long as “the Splasher” believes that certain street artists serve to maintain social hierarchy in urban space, the critique will continue. Seeing as the street is one of the few accessible spaces in cities today, it is of utmost importance that this dialogue is sustained. By exposing popular street art as a consumer good, the Splasher has made the first small step toward a much larger critique of the corporatization and privatization of public space. These opinions of dissent and dissatisfaction have just as much right to be seen as the artistic impulses of high profile street artists. If those who oppose the Splasher cannot realize this, then the desire to reclaim streets through art has become yet another capitalist endeavour, a way of manipulating urban space to generate profit.


The entire “Art: The Excrement of Action” manifesto can be found on the Village Voice’s blog “All Street,” in its January 17 issue. To read the entire manifesto, see photos, and keep abreast on the dialogue the Splasher”is generating, navigate through the articles and links at curbed.com, imnotsayin.blogspot.com, flickr.com, and nyc.indymedia.org.