Politics, Madness and Spray-Paint

Politics, Madness and Spray-Paint

In Zurich, Switzerland on many canvases and walls, a creepy Swiss man; that resembles the late horror film actor Peter Lorre, is airbrushing a world of crazy textures and creatures that even ones most frightening nightmares wouldn't conjure with thinly veiled messages about life's futile fears, simply using all the shades of gray. Meanwhile in the busiest cities and politically charged environments, a masked man from the UK is spray-painting a stencil-drawn image that is food-for-thought in regards to why we may hate each other or what it means when one is faced with the truth in plain black and white. Every once in a while we are reminded that art isn't limited to the bright and colorful just as much as it isn't held in the boundaries of being on merely canvas, and the works of these two artists are proof. These two craftsmen of the imagination are Hans Rudolph Giger (or H.R. Giger for short) and the United Kingdom’s masked madman, Banksy.

In my younger days I aspired to be an artist but had many inspirations that were more in the world of cartoons and comic books. Many at the time didn't consider those mediums to be very serious art, but when I was a teen, the great Renaissance artists didn't stir my interests. However, the simplicity of spandex-clad superheroes was a lot easier for me absorb visually than cherubs, naked statues, or falsely depicted images of Christ. In those adolescent years the works of Van Gogh and Leonardo didn't really impress me; it all seemed like they were just crafting a world that already existed. I already knew what “Postcard Paris” looked like and seeing it through the mind of Van Gogh's absinthe haze in Starry Nights just looked like a blue, smeary mess. Seeing art and being captivated by it didn’t happen to me until I saw pictures from the film Alien (1979, 20^th Century Fox) in a Barnes and Noble comic book section in the mid-nineties.

Banksy

HR Giger

The creature of the Alien in Ridley Scott's film was designed by H.R. Giger, who was notable at the time for his work displayed in his 1977 compendium Necronomicon. While the “Mom” Barnes and “Pop” Noble I found this book in wasn't well stocked enough to cater to a comic book fan, this coffee table book caught my eye instantly. Giger's imagery is painted with airbrushing and usually isn't very colorful; more often employing just one color and many shades of gray and black. His subjects usually are people that look as if they've been bound into landscapes of wild textures or attached to machines and metal. These portraits are often painted to be realistic and to the more sensitive eye, disturbing. His most notable work is an ink drawn early work known as Birth Machine: A work that shows a cross-section of a handgun, showing all the springs and inter-working gears that operate the weapon, yet instead of bullets- the guns clip in the handle shows three bald, old men that resemble children; one child in the chamber ready to be fired from the barrel. One would gaze at this work and ask themselves: Is it political or just a shockingly cynical view of how life feels like you’ve been shot from a cannon and forced to fall into line?

As a youngster with an interest in art this was an eye opening game-changer. I found an artist that appealed to my senses and as a 1990’s Goth, this was an artist that made paintings that stirred my imagination. Whenever sketching I would try to emulate, this shady world of anatomical landscapes, emaciated figures that seemed to tell their own stories and this whole time I kept in mind just why Giger painted this way:

“I became aware that art is a vital activity that keeps me from falling into madness” (Giger, 1997, p.9).

He paints more for himself it seems than for any audience that might very well turn their heads in disgust; perhaps he enjoys the disturbed reactions of ordinary people more than pandering of art critics. From those days on, I was hooked to this style and showing this work to others my age just to see their eyes open as wide as silver dollars was a joy.

The other end of my artistic tastes points more towards the satirical: Banksy has become my new leaf. His work isn't always on display in museums and if it is, it’s purely for the sake of irony. Banksy is a street graffiti artist and his work has been illegally tagged on walls ranging from the broadsides of warehouses in the UK, alleys in Europe and most notably, the Israeli/Palestine West Bank border wall. Few people have seen this man's face, as he works mostly at night and wears a mask that resembles a Japanese anime monkey. Since his work gets painted on property and is illegal his work has an anonymity that gives each piece an edge; he has no political party that supports him or his work. Banksy embraces and defends his anonymity, once quoting:

“'In the future, everybody will be anonymous for 15 minutes.'' (Trebay, 2011, p.1)

Banksy could either show a brief glimpse on religion, politics, or life on the whole. Some of these images can either portray the ridiculousness or danger of those subjects. Most of his works are spray paints that have been stenciled onto walls and Banksy has to be able to quickly put an image onto a wall, move into the cover of night before the police show up. And in the interest of not repeating himself Banksy has also made larger, sculptural works that show up on the streets of London; one day a red telephone box is missing from London’s SoHo square and a week later it will return to its original location…bent in half (Kent 2006, p.10). Other examples of his pieces spray-painted onto a wall could also be a bandana-masked man posed as if he is about to throw a flaming molotov cocktail bomb but the lit bottle is replaced with a bouquet of flowers. Is he telling us to make peace and not war? Or are we supposed to guffaw at such an idea of throwing flowers towards our aggressors? He tags, you decide and his work allows you to pursue your own conclusion. Regardless of how vague some of the art may be, people’s reactions to Banksy are an array of emotions, varying from the patronizing of people who see the work but really don’t understand it, to genuine perplexing that asks “What the hell does he mean?” My reaction is one where my imagination draws a conclusion: The violence in this image of the Molotov cocktail/FTD-logo-like flower bomber begs for me to ask that for all our aggression towards hate, are we just as zealous with the equally as important emotion, love?

So now one could ask: what do these eccentric figures, separated by countries and cultures, have in common? Giger is leaning on the illusions of an opium addiction, while Banksy is strategically changing the hearts and minds of people who fight over trivial things. One could see the political undertones of Giger in the Birthmachine work, but this doesn’t really hit the eye as much as Banksy’s ideological symbols outlined in his pieces. However, Banksy isn’t fond of high details or texture thanks lack of legality of his craft meaning he can’t stay at the wall painting very long. But the commonality of these two is in the tools of their trade: Air propelled paint. Airbrushing is just the same as spray painting, and vice versa. One comfortably uses the medium in the privacy in his home to disturb the mind while the other uses his cans of Krylon to get the gears in the mind turning. All hail, air propelled paint!

My voluntary exposure to these artists has made me look at the world through not-even-close-to-rose colored glasses. While I haven’t lifted a paint brush since high school, I still take a lot of inspiration from these men; they're works have given me the drive to write with as much creativity as they have painted. As a result, I now can appreciate the Van Gogh paintings and the sculptures of Michelangelo. Perhaps those crazier pieces by Giger and Banksy are gateways to higher art because I once was like many young people and just didn’t quite understand the great Renaissance paintings of old and needed to see the dark or funny side of fine art first; a habit compared to when one begins a wine tasting hobby by starting with cheaper, and easier to enjoy, boxed vino. Perhaps Giger and Banksy are not just artists but rather flavors to the eye to be enjoyed or at the very least, sampled.

References

Giger, H. R. (1997). Retrospective. (3rd ed.). (p. 9). Beverly Hills, CA, USA: Morpheus International.

Kent, P. (2006, April 8). Calling all conceptual artists. New York Times, p. 1. Retrieved From: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/resultsadvanced?sid=ddae20de-e90c-486f-94668e8a31d20fdf%40sessionmgr11&vid=2&hid=10&bquery=Calling+AND+all+AND+conceptual+AND+artists&bdata=JmRiPWFwaCZ0eXBlPTEmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl

Trebay, G. (2011, January 20). Designers Anonymous. New York Times. p. 1 Retrieved From: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=10&sid=a289468c-d0a04b3aa6cc4a99af122bb5%40sessionmgr12&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=57406303

Raised by Mom's Village

What defines a person if not his or her own upbringing? Even before we are born, the actions of our parents have an effect on us that lasts a lifetime. Those who raise us, whether they are parents, guardians or members of your extended family have an obligation to make us into the people we are today. While many are used to the simple life that 1950's television would show us that a child is raised suburbanite-style by a mother, father, spoiled by grandparents and harmlessly corrupted by uncles and brothers, the fabric of that Americana is far from the real world. Today's American kids are raised by usually one parent, most commonly a Mother. We have our rising rate of American divorces to thank for that and since its surges and slowdowns in the 1970's the average American family has changed (Are Americans still in love with marriage?, 1990).

I was raised by my Mother and Father for the first ten years of my life and for a time things were great. We had the American dream which included the house, the cars, and the family business. For many, this would be considered making it, but for my father, that wasn't enough. My family fell apart in the early nineties after my father had an affair. At my young age I wasn't aware of what was going on or that my father was cheating on my mom, I just kept thinking that dad was just going away for a little while, not forever. I would sometimes go out to visit my father on a weekend which was nice; however, he wasn't dealing with the separation very well. In retrospect, I believe that he was having a hard time with being divorced because it was his fault it happened. Visits went from every week to every two weeks, then to once a month. Child support checks came less and less as well. As a child and eventually a teen, how was this to define me?

Show your mother some love

My mother worked a lot and went to school. She had many friends that felt her pain, as they watched her struggle to raise me. In her circle of friends, many of them took it upon themselves to teach me things that young man is supposed to learn. One example was my driver’s education; a courtesy extended from one of my mom’s co-workers (though my fiance claims that mentor failed enormously). The most significant lesson learned was about the value of a hard day’s work- toiling alongside cooks at the restaurant where my mother waited tables. The most fun lessons learned was how to load and fire guns from a friend of my moms'; although this skill has yet to come in handy. My point is, having these replacement father figures was actually better for me and could also be better for other children growing up in single parent households.

As I was being raised by a village of my mother’s friends, my dad was too busy partying, getting drunk and spending time in jail for doing drugs. As my mother slaved away in supporting her son, my father was making himself a sick, twisted miscreant to society and the family. Was I supposed to take this as an example of what a man does with himself? Live like Charlie Harper of Two and a Half Men? My father never had a relationship last longer than two months and most of the time the loves of his life were either bought or borrowed. Even as a young man this never seemed right, and I knew this because my mother was so badly hurt from those actions. Fortunately, the rest of her village of friends gave me much better examples of how you treat a woman.

In those days, divorces weren't always so prevalent, so being raised by a single mom made me an outcast in my teens. All my friends used to tell me about how their paternal figures were such a hard case in discipline; but the truth is, I wanted that. I yearned to be told what to do instead of being left home alone while my mother slaved away to support me. It would have been nice to get a taste of what it was like for my father to be ‘disappointed in me’ rather than just ignoring his responsibility to his son. In my teens I had the tendency to be destructive or maybe even depressed, setting things on fire for fun or contemplating suicide due to a rough school life. Having a father to rein me in would have been more suitable than having to figure out on my own what was right and wrong.

           Another benefit in having a father: learning about the birds and bees from someone other than your mom. Those are fragile moments in a teenage boy’s life and a father makes all the difference. When it came to learning about becoming a man, my poor mom could only explain so much. I’m not going to drag any reader through the details of my working mother trying to explain to her son why suddenly girls seemed interesting, but one could make a sitcom episode of it just for laughs. Regardless, it was nice that my mother had many friends that gave me the advice that I needed so that I wouldn’t become a statistic of a shut in that wouldn’t ever talk to anyone. My father wouldn't have done very well anyways since he didn't know how to treat my Mother, let alone any other woman. A bathroom wall would be a better source of knowledge.

Through my experience I’ve learned that the famous quote based on an equally famous book, is absolutely right: “It takes a village to raise a child” (Gheaus, 2012 para. 1). Though my father bailed on me, I never felt too deprived. My father left me with one great example in life as well, see what he did with his life and do just the opposite. Don’t work in just one place all your life flipping pizza dough, never treat a woman with neglect or selfishness, and stay off the drugs (You’re a father, not Charlie Sheen). It feels pretty good to be me, a happily engaged, reasonably educated guy and not be a negative subject of a statistic in poverty. (Pickett, Kate, and Richard Wilkinson, 1996).

References

Are Americans still in love with marriage? (1990). Editorial research reports 1990. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com.ez.lakemichigancollege.edu/cqresearcher/cqresrre1990070600

Gheaus, Anca. "Arguments for nonparental care for children." Social Theory and Practice 37.3 (2011): 483+. Academic OneFile. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. Retrieved from:http://go.galegroup.com.ez.lakemichigancollege.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA265194308&v=2.1&u=lom_lakemich&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w Gale Document Number: GALE|A265194308 Pickett, Kate, and Richard Wilkinson. "Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson: poverty is the real issue here, not fathers." New Statesman [1996] 22 Aug. 2011: 24. Academic OneFile. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. Retrieved from: http://go.galegroup.com.ez.lakemichigancollege.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA266357526&v=2.1&u=lom_lakemich&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w Gale Document Number: GALE|A266357526