Dear Dana:
First off, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that despite using the phrase "art hating freedom despising scum like you" in the body of your e-mail you still were able to sign off "Very sincerely."
Secondly, it would seem based on yesterday's New York Times front page story of an unholy anti Dean alliance between Gephardt and Kerry, Dr. Dean and his supporters have a hole hell of lot more to worry about than my tongue in cheek letter.
Lastly, and most importantly, you and others may believe graffiti is art. But there are many New Yorkers who believe like I do that graffiti is vandalism. It's a long-standing debate. That debate will go on and I am not looking to change anyone's mind. I simply think it was in poor taste and judgment for Dr. Dean to come to NYC and feature a symbol of the bad old days of this City. I am proud of how we have changed the reality and the perception of New York during the last two decades. I cringe when I see an old movie like Saturday Night Fever that remind us of a day when every subway car in NYC was riddled with graffiti, our municipal government bordered on bankruptcy and the City was dirty, unsafe and a dark, dank place filled with disappear. It took a lot of hard work and money to change this town. It was particularly appalling (for me, not you obviously) that he was in Bryant Park which in and of itself symbolizes the revitalization of this city. What was once a graffiti laden site of lawlessness is a bucolic oasis from the rat race.
When I initailly objected to this a few weks back, folks like you assailed me and said how respected Blake was. Well, it turns out Blake made his bones defacing public property. Blake got his due and I got to have fun with it. And life goes on.
We disagree. Respectfully.
Stay well,
Jim
Dear Jim,
First off, let me say I was impressed by your measured and even-tempered reply to my admittedly irate, scurrilous and incendiary email. I was thoroughly surprised to have received a reply at all.
My email to you was not based on the NYT story you mention. It was provoked by an smug editorial in the NY Post crowing over the arrest of Blake Lethem. The editor of the Post received an email very similar to the one you got. And yes, Dr. Dean surely has "a hole hell of (a) lot more to worry about" than your letter or even Lethem's arrest.
Yes, I do believe some graffiti is art. No, I am not a graffiti artist. Probably due to personal history and my personal psychology, I become deeply angry when graffiti is stigmatized as nothing but vandalism, a crime against property. Out of this anger, I fired off my email. The last time I visited New York City, I was disappointed to find the subway cars shiny, clean, and bare of graffitti (though I had great fun riding them). I lived for a decade in Denver, and always enjoyed the graffiti that decorated the concrete retaining walls along the bike paths on Cherry Creek and the Platte River, and in urban waste spaces such as the abandoned mill building in the rail yards known as "The Towering Inferno" because of the visual riot of grafitti decorating every wall. A campaign was mounted against "tagging," and soon yuppies fresh from the 'burbs were enthusiastically and self-righteously whitewashing freelance urban art all along the bike paths. I experienced this as a loss. To me, grafitti artists perform a public service on their own time and at their own expense, creating meaning with color and image in urban waste spaces.
I can understand that you see graffiti as a visible sign of crime and decay, a reminder of the bad old days in NYC. There was a lot of gang related tagging in the high crime areas of Denver. Some of the graffiti "writers," who were in my opinion beautifying the urban landscape with their art, were also taggers, or had started as taggers. The line between "artist" and "criminal" was sometimes blurred. In Lethem's case, I think he is on the artist side of the blur, at least at this point, and I can't help seeing political retailation rather than deserved comeupance in his arrest on old charges.
Where you see lawlessness, I see a triumph of free expression over enforced barreness and sterility. Where you see vandalism, I see art. When I see artists and their work suppressed, particularly artists working outside the bounds and without the partonage of gallery, government, or museum, it makes me mad. It makes me think back to other times and places when artists and dissidents were silenced. You see criminals apprehended and justice done. Albert Speer and Leni Riefenstahl were state sponsored artists working for the benefit of society. Chagall and Picasso were degenerate criminals.
Yes, we disagree. And life goes on. I apologize for letting my anger get the better of me, and for the way I expressed that anger to you in my last email. But I am still angry. I do not apologize for that.
Sincerely, and respectfully,
Dana
