Man One and Retna at Fowler Museum for panel on the power of street art

The more popular street art has become, the more people seem to be facing off on key issues at the very core of the practice. I'm not thinking of just the recent MOCA saga, but of the flare-up that erupted in New York when graffiti artists "carried out a rude sneak attack on a godfather of their own scene" by tagging a Kenny Scharf mural, as reported by Art+Auction editor-at-large Judd Tully.

When does one person's right to free speech begin to trample on another's? Where does the line between artistic expression and vandalism get drawn, and who do we entrust to draw it?

Thursday night I will be moderating a Zocalo panel at The Fowler Museum at UCLA that takes a slightly different tack, exploring how street art "humanizes" cities.

The panel was organized to coincide with the final week of Larry Yust's photography show at the Fowler, featuring panoramic shots of street art in Paris, Berlin and L.A. that fairly explode--or bloom--with color. The panelists are Fowler curator Patrick Polk, who organized the Yust show; independent curator Aaron Rose, who is helping organize the upcoming MOCA street art survey; and two of L.A.'s best-known muralists: Man One and Retna.

Any questions that you would like me to ask?
--Jori Finkel
www.twitter.com/jorifinkel

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Comments

[Melroser]

Here's a question: Why don't graffiti taggers go and tag museums? It seems that museums and museum leaders are taking graffiti more seriously than anyone else does. So why not go and tag there? (And why not leave alone our neighborhoods, where we don't want tagging, and feel that it harms our communities?)

I would like to hear an answer to that.

[Courtisopolous]

Melroser...it's curious you should ask that kind of question, given that the commissioned street art mural at MoCA was whitewashed. Street art is in crisis. Expression and creation is being manipulated and stifled. Taggers are being threatened with legislation that would elevate the act to a violent crime. It's one of the reasons that the Fowler exhibition is so critical. Tagging, regardless of location can be beautiful and meaningful and it does deserve museological attention. Perhaps if given that opportunity it can reveal that street art need not neither be vilified nor forced to stay within or on the walls of museums and can become part of the colorful quilted landscape on the urban canvas.