Art "The Window Washer"

Art the window washer & Snowball
Art Thou A Graffiti Artist?
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Madison history can answerthe oft-pondered question, "What is Art?" Answer: "Art is a window washer on State Street."Art was something of a local legend in the '60s and '70s. His singularvisage spawned T-shirts. Art had a drinking problem and a huge beer belly thathung over his low-riding jeans, but he made the best of things for years bygoing up and down State Street trading a window cleaning for a drink. Thiswould rightly horrify any responsible social worker but it actually worked OKfor Art, and for State Street, for that matter. He got his booze and thewindows got cleaned. Art's been gone for some time but I thought of him over the weekend onfinding myself in receipt of an e-mail from someone identifying him or herselfas mama rfk,eow. "I write on behalf of the graffiti artists in the Madison area," it begins.Actually, "artists" was spelled "artist's" but I am going to take the libertyof cleaning up the text of the message. Why bother to learn spelling andgrammar when you could be out spray painting a park bench? The e-mail is a response to all the media attention - including mycolleague Samara Kalk's piece Saturday - given to the current outbreak ofgraffiti in Madison. It's bad enough - in the eyes of Madison officialdom -that Mayor Sue Bauman appointed a 12-person Graffiti Abatement Guidance Teamto strategize on how to stop it. "We ask for you to see our side of this story," my e-mailer writes."Graffiti is a culture. We are not gangs or cults. Just teenagers and youngadults who share the same views on art. ... Graffiti is looked at as a menaceand ugly. I have not known too much art to be ugly." My correspondent has obviously never encountered abstract expressionism.
But to give my correspondent serious consideration - and there is nothingmore serious than an aspiring artist - I'll quote the e-mail one more time atsome length. In this passage the writer assesses the debate over whetherMadison should provide a public wall for graffiti: "We writers would love tohave some free walls around town. They serve as a place to communicate. Youcan learn a lot from graffiti on town cars or walls. People's emotions,feelings, what's going on in their life, personality. Many things emerge fromthe art form, and it's all expressed through graphic texture, motion, andwords." Let it be said that some smart people have taken graffiti seriously as art.Norman Mailer wrote a book on the subject called "The Faith of Graffiti." Thatwas in the early '70s when the movement peaked in New York with a show ofpaintings (the spray-painted canvases sold for up to $2,500) in a SoHo Galleryby a collective called the United Graffiti Artists. Which, of course, is what the graffiti artists in Madison should do if theyreally see themselves as artists. Get it down on a proper surface and show itto some people who know about art. You'll get a lot of rejection. That goeswith the territory. But if you persevere, and have some talent, you willeventually get a public viewing. Trust me on this one. If you have a great artistic vision raging insideyou, don't spray paint it on a bus shelter. Your audience will not be receptive. Most people are far too busy trying toget through the day without going nuts to stop and appreciate the finer pointsof your work. Then there is the matter of someone having to clean it up, which does notseem to enter my e-mailer's grasp of the graffiti issue. My correspondent onlyaddresses the cost of cleanup, which a Madison police officer estimates at$271 per graffiti incident. "(It) can be cleaned up by simply buying a can ofpaint and rolling over it. Paint is not $271 a can." But what artist aspires to have his work covered up? Here we have come fullcircle back to Art, the legendary State Street window washer. And I think wecan adopt a Madison-specific axiom about graffiti: If Art would have washed it, it isn't Art.