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| Photo by Half my Dad's age via Toronto Life |
The Graffiti Panel, made up of three or more city bureaucrats, will meet in September, to view photos of markings on Toronto walls. They will decide which are graffiti vandalism, meaning building owners must scrub them off at their own expense, and which are graffiti art and can be left alone.
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The new panel emerges from the graffiti management plan city council passed unanimously last July. (Council at the meeting exempted “Graffiti Alley,” which runs just south of Queen St. W., from Bathurst to John streets, from its graffiti bylaw). The plan seeks to strike a balance: crack down on tagging and encourage graffiti art.
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“They are doing stupid things like bullying small business,” says Tom Beltsos. His customers signed his petition saying the markings on his wall were art. The petition went to Toronto and East York Community Council, which put off a decision. (Councillors created the Graffiti Panel because they don’t want to decide what is art and what isn’t.)
This March, Const. Steve McGran of Toronto Police 55 Division approached the Beltsoses as part of “Project Picasso;” volunteers used paint donated by the local Canadian Tire and Benjamin Moore to repaint the offending Beltsos wall in white. Even Const. McGran admits “it would be a good new canvas” for taggers.
Sure enough, on Monday Christopher Pacheco, a bylaw officer, came by and warned Tom that the garage must remove a fresh tag from its wall.
If all of this strikes you as insane and unworkable you are not alone; Toronto city council's approach to graffiti is typically schizophrenic. On one hand, graffiti serves as the cool and edgy backdrop for countless ads and tv shows, as a basis for youth outreach programs, as a tourist draw and magnet for the creative class. Two examples from the same newspaper as above:
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| Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post |
The alley and the show share a similar look: it’s a marriage of vivid colours and dark, urban grit. Tucked behind store fronts on Queen Street, west of Spadina, the architecture is alive with colour. Garage doors and concrete walls are covered in names written in bubble letters. Random signatures, hearts and RIP messages are scrawled on existing graffiti. A black and red butterfly settles on the art. It looks at home.National Post: Lilian Nattel: My camera
Mixed amongst the names are cartoons of Mayor Rob Ford with a worm for a body and giant beady-eyed rabbits with long, slim teeth. Kucherawy says these rabbits have been multiplying across the city. “I’ve seen that rabbit before!” Aravena says though she’s only been in Toronto for a week. Both actors are New York-based but have never seen this much graffiti.
In my off hours, camera in hand, I am a hunter of urban secrets—the beautiful, the strange and the hilarious. For example, there are my sightings of tofu graffiti. Someone in Toronto likes to spray paint “TOFU” in large grey letters on incongruous surfaces like the wall facing a bocci court, where salami eating, elderly Italian men were taking a break between games at the picnic table next to the court.
Yet graffiti is also an anti-social menace! An eyesore! Vandalism, not art! How dare you touch my precious garage door! Graffiti is so terrible that an "internationally known" artist took it upon himself to chase after kids with a baseball bat and brag about it in local left-wing weekly Now Magazine, while proclaiming that what they do certainly isn't art:
NOW: Take on tagging
The interventionist artist, the graffiti artist, does not tag, does not paint pretty pictures, but intervenes in the social, political dialogue through a visual introjection in the urban fabric. Graffiti artists make a mark not to inflate and inflict their own ego, but like all true artists, to engage in a cultural exchange.
And I can’t give it up. I follow the four. As they approach Ossington, they get into a cab as I frantically try to memorize the licence plate. They’re getting away.
Falling into bed later, I consider how even in my Duchampian, inclusive definition of art – anything done by an artist – these boring curved lines of spray paint, in their total lack of inventiveness and dexterity, are anything but.
What a sorry spectacle. It almost makes you feel bad for the true downtrodden in our society – the landowners, politicians and corporations – but not really. After all, we have the profits of the graffiti removal industry to think of.
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In a similar vein, city bureaucrats aren't the only ones trying new anti-graffiti measures. Toronto Hydro is following the lead of Canada Post:
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| Photo by Toronto Hydro via Canada Newswire |
[A]s part of an anti-graffiti pilot program, Toronto Hydro's Tanya Stefanidis does final inspections on the second transformer box that has been wrapped. Approximately 10 transformers will be wrapped across the city as part of the pilot.
I'm drooling over the artistic potential of these hydro boxes, just like those life-sized cutouts of Queen Elizabeth the National Post recently printed. My message to media companies and big landlords: regardless of the anti-graffiti strategies you choose, I will always see one thing – an artistic opportunity.
Vandalism is art.