Glowing Puppies

I stopped reading the news.

I stopped checking Facebook. I asked my boyfriend to please stop with his near-constant updates of politics, shootings, mass casualty events. I can’t abide it anymore.

There’s too much sadness, too much madness, too much hatefulness for me to handle anymore. In a word, I am sad that kindness has been so neglected of late. Does anyone else feel this way? I’m not interested in preaching things about “loving thy neighbor”, in fact, I believe–as the reality of living in apartments in New York City has taught me–it’s completely acceptable to not love your neighbor at all. However, while not loving them, it’s still important to be decent to them.

View fullsize

Keith Haring, Two Dancing Figures, 1989

Self-care is a thing now, do you guys know what that means? I just learned about it; you know that thing you do when you treat yourself to a donut, or maybe you spend another 10 minutes in the shower and just let the water stream down your face, or maybe it means you run and run and run. Whatever it means to you, it means you’ve taken a moment out of the world to take care of you. For me, it’s taking a nap, getting a pedicure, cooking. It’s kittens. And dogs. I’ve turned off all social media except for Instagram, where I seek out adorable videos of kittens losing their minds to the twitching of a string or dogs who practice CPR on their human handlers–the explore/discover feature has been really helpful in this endeavor. I try to get lost in these adorable feeds when things start to get me down. Recently, I started following a Great Dane named Kernel. His owner calls him “a clumsy lap cow”, which is all you really need to know, and while I watch his antics (no, for real, antics; this is a word I never use) I can ignore how truly frightening the world is becoming. I think that’s why Lil Bub, and Doug the Pug, and Juniper the Happiest Fox have enough followers to rival even the most popular of Kardashians (ugh, I don’t follow them). They make people happy.

Tseng Kwong Chi, Keith Haring, New York, New York, 1983 | Image courtesy of Tseng Kwong Chi archive

Back in the day, pre-Instagram and Facebook, pre-cellphone, even, one of my all-time favorites, Keith Haring, was decorating New York with images of glowing babies and dancing dogs, friends holding hands and high-kicking and mothers holding babies, alien spaceships and hearts. So very many hearts. Haring was an artist who staunchly believed in making artwork accessible to everyone. He didn’t reserve his work for the ultra-rarefied world of the super wealthy, but also for children whose help he enlisted to paint murals and for whom he hosted art-making workshops. Haring recognized the power of these simplified images as a vehicle for happiness. Before I was using puppies on the internet as a serotonin-lift, he was leaving them on street corners and in subway stations in an attempt to completely subvert the traditional means of viewing artwork. Haring made an effort to create images that were simple and powerful at the same time, images which would mean something to any viewer, no matter the language they spoke or the lives they led–it was a phenomenon, a powerful phenomenon that gave the whole world entry to a museum or to a gallery through which they already had spent their entire lives moving.

The impulse to seek out what makes one happy isn’t a new development. Human beings are predisposed toward happiness. The only thing that’s changed is the means by which we access those things. Keith Haring painted murals and drew on subway advertisements, we use the internet and instagram.

If you happen to be in Japan, Haring has a show up at the Nakamura Collection in Kobuchizawa, for another two months. If you’re in New York, like I am, you can see his mural, Crack is Whack, along the FDR and in Harlem River Park where its lived since he painted it in 1986. For more info always, check out his foundation HERE.

View fullsize

Keith Haring, Crack is Wack, 1986 | Image courtesy of Bobby Zucco

Banksy, I presume?

Graffiti has an adverse effect on the quality of life in various communities in the City of New York, creating an impression of disorder and chaos; and graffiti vandalism can be a precursor to more serious acts of crime and violence; and the damage caused by graffiti-related vandalism depreciates the value of the property it defaces and costs the City and property owners millions of dollars in clean-up expenses each year. - The Mayor of the City of New York’s Anti-Graffiti Task Force Executive Order

Recently, New York was graced by Banksy’s spray can. Banksy, tagger of international acclaim, world-renowned prankster, critic of government, and possibly, graffiti’s biggest sell-out, made his secret way to New York, broke the law, and left just as quickly as he came. In his wake, a 70-foot long mural depicting 365 hash marks and a portrait of Turkish artist, Zehra Dogan. Near the ground on the wall’s far right corner the phrase, “Free Zehra Dogan”.

Many are already familiar with Banksy’s work, but may not yet know it. Banksy, an alter ego to an as yet, anonymous English artist, has traveled the world and left a trail of oftentimes critical, sometimes irreverent, always thought-provoking imagery in his wake. He is best known for a spare style of artwork made using stencils and spray paint. He is, inarguably, the world’s most recognizable street artist and graffiti writer. Banksy is one of the first graffiti artists to have made the “successful” transition from street to gallery where his artworks have sold for as much as $1,000,000. As such, his imagery has transcended the art world in a way that very few others before him have–Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers–and can be found on anything from sneakers to posters, stickers to key chains. He has inspired legions of copycats and enraged scores of fellow graffiti writers. The long and short of it is that Banksy is notorious and has brought attention to artwork and to the art world that they are otherwise often not afforded.

I can’t recall what exactly drew me to street art, nor when I first experienced it. I do vividly remember documenting it on a trip to Paris when I was 16. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I couldn’t stop stopping for it, staring at it, admiring it. Growing up in Chicago I had always had experience with graffiti–tagging, scrawls written on the side of buildings that usually were all but indecipherable to me–but I had never known that graffiti could be art in its own right. I had no idea that it could extend beyond tags, nor that people would spend their time creating a piece of artwork worthy of preservation and protection outside, on the streets, with no guarantee of its future. I was stunned. Was I the only one to notice? Paris is a lot like New York in that its streets swarm with people unconscious of one another and of their surroundings, they are perpetually in a hurry. When I stopped to look at a piece people looked at me like the oddity, the tourist stopping in the middle of her tracks on the sidewalk, rather than at the extraordinary work I felt like I had uncovered.

Herein lies graffiti’s hidden virtue. Having spent years working in and out of galleries I recognize their tendency to isolate. Galleries sell commodities; many would argue that artwork is not intrinsic to human survival the way that food, clean water, and shelter is (I would argue otherwise, but I understand the rationale). Therefore, a gallery represents an already inaccessible and unnecessary expense that few can justify. Galleries serve the bourgeoisie, a class that invites scorn from those who do not belong. As such, they impart an aura of unattainability. Of hostility and hauteur, a place where protocol and behavior is not inherently obvious. All of this falls away when artwork is introduced to the streets where it is afforded new visibility.

On the Bowery Wall, located in downtown Manhattan on Houston street, Banksy has chosen to use his visibility for good. Just over a year ago Turkish artist Zehra Dogan was sentenced to two years, nine months, and twenty-two days imprisonment for painting and sharing an image of a Kurdish town, Nusaybin, decimated by the Turkish government’s bombs. Banksy’s image bears 365 hash marks, signifying the time she has spent imprisoned for exercising one of her basic human rights: free speech. The hash marks become prison bars, behind which Banksy has painted a portrait of Dogan; the final bar becomes a pencil, a simplified signal of the “crime” she has committed. Before visiting the wall myself I had never heard of Dogan, had never heard of the injustice she currently suffers. As soon as I got home, I researched her and found that in addition to being an artist, Dogan is a decorated journalist and a champion of women’s rights in Turkey. She hardly fits the criminal archetype. Banksy's done it. Awareness begins with a single person, and by having brought Dogan's story to me he has achieved his unspoken goal. And here, I further the process, by bringing Dogan's story to you.

Free Zehra Dogan.

Find additional information and resources HERE.