DeviantArt is where it’s at. It’s where over 40 million deviants go every month. The Deviants in this case are artists or users.
According their website, DeviantArt is the world’s largest online social community for art and art lovers. It is where members or “deviants” are invited to “bleed and breed” art. DeviantArt claims that their Deviants have uploaded over 340 million original art works, known as “deviation.”
The mass popularity of DeviantArt in a way breaks away from the notion of deviance. Deviant is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, “differing from the accepted standard.”
The evolution of deviance into mainstream is present throughout history with examples from both the 19th and 20th centuries. Few more examples more blatant than the emergence and newfound acceptance of graffiti.
“Graffiti is deviant because it’s not state sponsored. It’s the voice of the people and it’s this form people have had to express themselves outside of official culture” says University of Wisconsin Green Bay (UWGB) Professor and art historian, Dr. Sam Watson. He explains the significance of graffiti is that it gives a voice to oppressed people. Dr. Watson also says certain types of graffiti can be traced all the way back to classical Greek and Roman cultures. “It dates back to Egyptian workers writing things about the king they would never normally get away with.”
Dr. Watson also says that the graffiti art of then and now is similar in the common use of phallic symbols. “Guys love to draw penises, they always have and they always will.”
The connection between modern art and deviance is also not a new concept. According to Dr. Watson, modern art is a sort of history of deviance in itself because it is trying to alter the language and change people’s perceptions. Dr. Watson also explains that early modern art movements such as Realism and Impressionism made art political and about the “now.”
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Realism was revolutionary in the 1800s for the blatant disregard for imaginative portrayals of subjects and strongly focusing on observation of how the subject actually looks. Though now, we would see them as commonplace in everyday life, the development of Realism came from the rise of professional journalism and photography, which were both showcasing real life subjects. Could this article be considered deviant art? The Encyclopedia Britannica explains that in the 1800s it very well could have been.
Another example of deviant art throughout history is Dadaism (or Dada). According to The Art Story, Dadaism is an early 20th century avant-garde art movement born out of the disgust for the cultural values at the time. Dr. Watson says this movement is unique because it challenged the existence of capitalism as an entire system. The works of art produced from Dada artists were often satirical and nonsensical to a lot of the public at the time. Poet Tristan Tzara once wrote, “the beginnings of Dada were not the beginning of art, but the beginning of disgust.”
Just like Realism and Dada, graffiti art broke away with the accepted norms, and could be considered “deviant.” However, modern graffiti as we know it today is something much different than it was during its rise to prominence in the later half of the 20th century. This is because commissioned graffiti art is something relatively common in cities across the globe. Some of it is sanctioned, however, most of it keeps with the tradition of its history and is not.
American graffiti in the 20th century began its deviant rise as tags and symbols began being marked on buildings in major cities, with a few of the artists becoming famous. Darryl McCray, also known as “Cornbread”, is commonly referred to as the father of modern day graffiti. According to the Widewalls magazine article, “20th Century Graffiti – Rise of Graffiti Art”, McCray got the name “Cornbread” in a juvenile correctional facility and became famous in Philadelphia in the 1960s when he began spray painting the name of a girl he had a crush on all over town.
Widewalls Magazine explains the graffiti trend spread into New York City in the 1970s and attained a new found level of legitimacy when the tag of a popular artist, TAKI183, was featured on the front page of The New York Times in July 1971. The article spawned many more artists throughout the city with name recognition eventually becoming competitive.
The PBS documentary, The History of American Graffiti: From Subway Car to Gallery, explains that throughout the 1980s, graffiti markings became more and more elaborate in detail, size, color and meaning. Tony Silver’s 1983 documentary, Style Wars, closely linked the inexplicable connection between hip-hop culture and graffiti art. Dr. Watson explains that hip-hop and graffiti probably coincided because of both going unrecognized and on the margins. But says that music is similar to art in that outside voices tend to become inside voices very quickly.
Today, graffiti and the artists who create it have become legitimized through publically sanctioned work. Some popular graffiti artists like Bansky are estimated to have net worths in the millions.
If graffiti was originally created as the voice of the marginalized and the unheard, does it lose it’s meaning when it becomes mainstream?
“It’s got to because now it’s being heard” says Dr. Sam Watson on graffiti’s change of meaning. Graffiti art is not unique in this change of perception, according to Dr. Watson, all art changes when it becomes a commodity.
Commodity or not, graffiti is different from other forms of art in that it remains an illegal practice even as it becomes more and more mainstream. Yet, nowadays a distinction has been made between what is acceptable and what is a crime while the ambiguity of what is artful remains intact.
De Pere police officer, Jedd Bradley, says he can appreciate the art of graffiti yet can still make a clear distinction on what is or not a crime. “Creating something from an artist’s standpoint on a rail car is something different. Is it legal? No. It can’t be done without permission obviously.”
Marking public or private property without permission of the owner is illegal. According to Officer Bradley, there are a number of different crimes unsolicited graffiti can be booked under. “The main crime is going to be criminal damage to property, then there’s a bunch of subs under that.” Officer Bradley also explains that a lesser citation filed under a city ordinance violation can be applied to more minor infractions. “If it’s simply somebody writing, ‘Jenny loves Johnny’ under the bridge or something like that we might give a simple city graffiti ordinance citation.”
Compared to other crimes, Officer Bradley says that graffiti violations are far more rare. “Speaking for the city of De Pere, we don’t get a lot of it. There were some a few years ago, and it goes it waves actually.” Officer Bradley also explains that the graffiti crime tends to be a seasonal crime that occurs over a short period of time and then will disappear for a couple years. “The majority of tagging or graffiti complaints come in the warm season months. When it does happen, it’ll happen over and over and then it will stop.”
Officer Bradley also makes a distinction between tagging and graffiti art. “Tagging is simply that. It’s marking territory. That’s not art.” Tagging is generally practiced to claim ownership of certain areas for a certain group, which Officer Bradley says shouldn’t be categorized as graffiti art. “In my opinion, the graffiti and tagging are two different things. Painting a picture or mural on a city bridge is different and a lot of cities are now doing that with artists.”
One of those cities is Green Bay. The Main Street district in downtown Green Bay is now home to graffiti wall by local artist, Beau Thomas. According to Thomas, he was commissioned to create the wall by Olde Main Street Inc. He explains the process of planning, designing, and obtaining funds took over a year and the actual painting of the mural took two months. “The wall is massive and proved to be an unimaginable amount of work for me.” Thomas considers the project the highlight of his career thus far.
Green Bay is not alone in the mainstream sanctioning of graffiti art. Beau Thomas says there are a lot of exciting artists in the Minneapolis area pushing the boundaries. Cities around the globe including Berlin, Buenos Aires and Bogota all have large collections of graffiti art on display.
UW-Green Bay is also home to several works of graffiti art. Beau Thomas’s own work can be viewed on an outside wall of the Studio Arts building. Multiple graffiti pieces can also be seen inside stairwells in the Studio Arts building as well.
Thomas agrees that as graffiti art becomes more mainstream and accepted the notion of what is a crime or not will remain much the same. “Graffiti is usually a crime, it’s also an art. Permission is what decides if graffiti is a crime or not but it can always be looked at through the lens of art.”
Art historian, Dr. Watson, also agrees that property laws ultimately would make the distinction, but feels that art and crime are not mutually exclusive. “I think now those boundaries have kind of collapsed. Now there is such an appreciation for graffiti art, so who makes that determination?”
Determining what is art and what is a crime when it comes to graffiti is something UWGB Design Art student, Moira Poole, says can be mutually applied. Poole explains that graffiti is art, but is also a crime when not permitted, and feels that it ought to stay that way. “I don’t think it should be legal. You are defacing public or private property. Even though I feel that graffiti, especially a more aesthetically pleasing piece, is more accepted today, that doesn’t make it the right thing to do” says Moira.
Moira makes a distinction when it comes to the idea of aesthetically pleasing graffiti art. She explains graffiti usually takes on one of two forms. One is more symbol and word related, whereas the other is more reactionary or political. The latter of which, is what Poole says she usually finds more appealing from an art standpoint.
Artistically pleasing or not, graffiti has undergone an evolution from the voice of the unheard to ultimately becoming part of the dominant “deviant” culture, because DeviantArt is where it’s at.
