Category: Pointless Digressions, Rants a.k.a. Commentary || By

(Editor's Note: This is an adventure in navel-gazing. People who don't care about listening to me bloviate should probably go somewhere more fun.)

. . .

On Wednesday morning, before I'd even finished my first cup of coffee, an article from the Post-Gazette got up my nose.

It talked about an incident at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch in Oakland. On one of the library's entrances, someone using spray paint scrawled a phrase from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Most of the article, headlined "Line from T.S. Eliot poem intrigues literature buffs," speculated on why that particular poem was chosen, noting that it had "stirred the whimsy of the city's literature buffs."

Over at The Burgh Blog, PittGirl was aggravated, too. She imagined the internal monologue of the vandal or vandals: "This is why we do what we do. The chance to be famous. To be somebody. The chance to see our art in the newspaper and to have that newspaper speak to college literature professors about what our motivation might have been for that particular choice of a quote."

Yeah, that's about how I reacted, too.

. . .

So I emailed the author:

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but I find nothing intriguing or poetic about someone spray-painting the steps of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

As a journalist, I understand that this story was worth covering. But with respect, I question whether your piece in this morning's paper struck the right notes. I had to read to the eighth paragraph before you called this incident what it really is --- vandalism. (The Tribune-Review nailed it in the first three words.)

If a bank robber quotes Shakespeare after pistol-whipping a teller, I wouldn't compliment him on his tortured artistic soul.

By quoting literary experts, you're granting legitimacy to something that is essence a crime --- and one against an important public institution. Our RAD tax money will be spent to scrub away someone else's "art" when it could be spent on after-school or literacy programs.

When I think of the few hundred dollars that it costs Carnegie Library each time some "street artist" makes a "meta-allusion" to T.S. Eliot, it doesn't "stir my whimsy." It just makes me mad.

Ah, I love the smell of righteous indignation in the morning!
. . .

Now, I usually ignore the crank email that I receive. But to her great credit, the author wrote back.

It turns out that she's a journalism intern at the Post-Gazette. An art history student at Yale, she's writing a senior thesis about graffiti, and that's why she took the slant she took.

Anyway, she tells me:

I set out to write a human interest story with a personal twist. On its own, an instance of vandalism simply isn't newsworthy.

Because it was a "riff" (to use my editor's words) and not standard journalism, I took full liberties to indulge my own views.

That puts the story in an entirely different context, and makes me feel like a perfect twit.

But why didn't the Post-Gazette note that in the story? Who knows?

. . .

I wrote back:

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and I understand more where you're coming from.

I realize that we're coming at this from very different viewpoints. But as you work on your thesis, I think it's important to keep in mind the feelings of the people whose property is being transgressed by "graffiti artists," and yes, I'm using scare quotes, because I don't consider it "art."

I hope you're interviewing some of the recipients of this "art," because many of them feel violated, just the way someone feels after their home is burglarized.

All meaningful art is transgressive of some boundaries, but where a provocative poem, painting or sculpture might disrupt someone's emotional viewpoint, graffiti "art" causes actual physical damage to their possessions.

Maybe the victims of "graffiti art" get upset because they have an unnatural attachment to their objects, but maybe they also get upset because they're on a fixed income, and the graffiti "artist" has just cost them time and money they can ill afford.

I can understand why a graffiti "artist" might lash out at an institution like the police or a major corporation, because they represent authority figures and possible repression.

Targeting a library or a private homeowner, however, seems less like a statement about society, and more like needless cruelty and thoughtlessness.

Most artists create to express something in their souls; if graffiti vandals are "artists," and feel the need to inflict pain on people to express themselves, then there's something very ugly inside them.

. . .

She responded: "Thanks Jason. Definitely all things I've thought about and will continue to do so."

I just wanted to say that while I still don't think graffiti is worth studying as "art," it's awfully refreshing in this day and age to have a disagreement with someone via email that doesn't devolve into a flame war.

And I'm definitely glad that I decided to send email instead of acting out on my first impulse: I was going to spray-paint my comments on the side of the Post-Gazette building.