I was looking at a website that pushes for covering city walls in murals.
Graffiti that gentrifies areas, murals that may have come straight out of Disney or some other mainstream tv or movie show.
I read a line that said something like "now there is glorious art where before there was only tags and throw ups". And that on a graffiti blog. It's like the once great NME awarding Beyonce album of the year. Yer mother shouldn't like it.
Don't get me wrong. I like a well executed mural. But importing some graffiti rock star to mural over the tags and throw ups of the local community so the hipsters, flipsters and finger popping tosspots will buy up a converted warehouse or sweatshop . . . well, it just seems wrong to me.
So the Corn Poppy is going to avoid all that in the future.
In future if there is graffiti on these pages it will be graffiti not street art. It won't be mindless but it will be pointless. It will be the work of people who don't have a voice, who don't have a deal with Saatchi, who wouldn't know a gallery show if it bit them in the ass, who are not getting into bed with Nike or Relentless. People who just wanna paint for the sake of it, because they have to.
Maybe there will be some big name street art here in future. Never say never. But you can find that elsewhere so from now on I'm gonna concentrate on other stuff.
I've been here before. I've whined about graffiti that is too Colour Supplement, too Coffee Table Book in the past. I've wanted to move away from "art students painting outdoors". But I like the pictures. Like someone who wants to be a vegetarian but thinks they like bacon butties too much its hard to make the leap.
But like the day I gave up eating meat, I'm just gonna go cold turkey. No more street art.
