Banksy brings the revolution to Los Angeles

Carlee JensenManaging EditorI can’t tell you what to think about Banksy.But that’s okay – you don’t need me to. In recent weeks, the world-renowned street artist has been zipping around the Los Angeles area, leaving his artwork on billboards, burned-out buildings and back alleys, giving Angelinos more than enough samples to help them form an opinion of their own.In one piece, a leering, unshaven Mickey Mouse clutches a martini in one hand while the other gropes a scantily clad model — the only legally sanctioned occupant of the Sunset Boulevard billboard on which the image appears. In another Sunset Boulevard piece, Charlie Brown tips a can of gasoline with an impish look in his eyes and a cigarette  between his lips.These pieces had short life spans, as street art often does; photos on the “LAist” blog show the model freed from Mickey’s lecherous grasp and the hole in the building where Charlie has been cut from his native wall.But another piece, dubbed “Crayola Shooter” – which depicts a young boy firing crayons out of machine gun – lives on in an alley behind a Westwood Urban Outfitters where it appeared sometime around Valentine’s Day. Rumors that the building’s owners planned to paint over “Crayola Shooter” sparked an online protest: a Facebook event titled “Protest against the removal of Banksy WESTWOOD/UCLA” garnered 7,977 confirmed “attendees.”Though it may seem counterintuitive, the street art movement is no stranger to this level of serious public support. Recent years have seen reputable establishments like Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) featuring street artists in their collections. In fact, it was the nomination of Banksy's film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” — the unsettling account of the rise of street artist Mr. Brainwash — for “Best Documentary” in the 2011 Academy Awards that brought the native Englishman to Los Angeles last month.In a 2003 interview with the London paper “The Sunday Times,” Banksy referred to himself as “a quality vandal.” But the influx of positive media attention and the steady growth of its fan base has elevated street art from its thuggish disrepute, casting it onto the world stage as a provocative development in a centuries-old debate: what is art?Critics of street art may dismiss the moment as glorified graffiti; and they may have a point. Street art, for the most part, is considered vandalism, and a violation of the law. As junior and art student Gus Graef pointed out, “Street art wouldn’t be anything without vandalism."Consequentially, many street art pieces quickly meet the same fate planned for "Crayola Shooter." According to Graef, this impermenance is simply a part of street art's natural life cycle.“[Painting over it] is not disrespecting or respecting the art – it’s what it is. It’s meant to be renewed,” he said. “Other people will put new stuff up, and then that will get painted over. It makes it more special, because you get to see it once knowing you might come back later and find it gone. That’s what it has to be.”For senior and art student Ariana Stultz, who spoke passionately against the integration of street art with more "respectable" art forms, the protest against the removal of “Crayola Shooter” was misguided.“If we have to choose whether street art will stay up or be taken down, it’s already lost,” she said.The technical skills involved in creating street art — which relies heavily on stickers, stencils and cutouts to produce pieces quickly — differ greatly from those traditionally needed to produce visual art. Some, like Stultz, find it difficult to decide how these unusually produced pieces should be treated.“Classical art was something people really worked on. It showed obvious skill. Now you don’t always have to have that. Art can be Andy Warhol silk screening a soup can. It can be anybody who wants to express something,” Stultz said.Street art is just one aspect of a movement which has begun to bear fruit in the past few years — a movement which removes art from the grand museums and theaters where it has traditionally been cloistered, incorporating it directly into the urban landscape.“Street theater” actors perform using public spaces as their stage, occasionally pulling passersby into the mix - as New York street theater troupe “Improv Everywhere” did in a 2002 act they called “No Pants Subway Ride.”In cities from Denver to Amsterdam, small coteries of revolutionary knitting enthusiasts called “Yarn Bombers” have tagged pipes, posts and other dreary urban staples with brightly colored “scarves” and “sweaters.”Motivations for bringing art into the streets are as varied as the artists themselves. Conceivably, though, much of the appeal of this movement stems from the growing desire to reclaim their impersonal, often industrial, urban environments.“I think a lot of people feel really disconnected from what’s around them,” former Samo student and yarn bombing enthusiast Kendal Blum said. “But these community streets belong to people, not to concrete. Yarn bombing is about reclaiming your community.”Clea DeCrane, a senior and drama student, said the development of art — in all its forms — is “definitely a social thing.”DeCrane described the escapist films of the Golden Age of Hollywood as a response to “what people needed” to endure the difficulties of the Great Depression and World War II. She contrasted the lightheartedness of films like “The Wizard of Oz” with recent popularization of more serious works like the 2008 family drama “Next to Normal." This, she believes, is a manifestation of a growing view of the theater as “less and less as a place to escape to and more as a place to find some sort of answer.”If art is, as DeCrane suspects, constantly developing to meet the needs of the society it reflects, one is forced to ask: is there a bottom line? What standards can be used to decide whether a person is an “artist,” or whether the work they produce is “art?”“I think it really depends on whether the person views themselves as being an artist or being an everyman,” Nate Hodges, director of Samo’s dance department, said. “If you respect and appreciate what you’re putting out — if there’s intention — then I think it’s art.”Graef, in response to the same question, simply laughed and shook his head.“That’s way too broad,” he said. “Everything’s art.”And where does street art fall in the development of modern art? Banksy presents his answer in “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” In one particularly memorable scene, an avid art collector leads the audience on a tour of her home. The camera flits over a large Lichtenstein, then melts down to a tiny Keith Haring sketch. As the woman leads the crew up the stairs, she reminisces about purchasing her first Warhol. Then, she stops.  At the top of the stairs, sandwiched between works worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is a stenciled outline of an angel.A Banksy.Street artist Shepard Fairey — best known for the red, white and blue images of Barack Obama which were omnipresent on the 2008 campaign trail – says in “Exit Through the Gift Shop” that art “gains real power from perceived power.” In other words, if the public believes an image is powerful, beautiful or meaningful, it will become so.Whether you believe in the power of street art; well, that’s up to you. I can’t tell you what to think about Banksy, or “Crayola Shooter,” or what it means to produce a work of art. And I don’t want to. Art is about what you think — whatever you think.What can’t be denied, though, is street art is on the rise.  In our alleys, newspapers and the Academy Award stage, it has pushed its way into the public eye – and street artists are taking the opportunity to show just what they can do.And though I can't predict the future of the street art movement, it's present force is more than enough to keep the mind and heart engaged. I can’t help thinking of the opening credits of “Exit Through the Gift Shop”: as hooded men run through an empty subway station, leaving bright lines of spray paint in their wake, Richard Hawley sings words which could easily serve as a slogan for every new generation of innovative creators: “Tonight, the streets are ours.”