6. Lorax (wheatpaste)

Lorax, Little Italy San Diego CA, July 2013

 

It wasn't until my third expedition that I found a wheatpaste street art example. My third expedition was to little itally. I knew that over the last decade that community has been renovated and has created an art scene. As San Diego native, I remember when that area was bit run down. It was during the real estate boom of the early 2000's that the space was reformulated as the space it is today. Its an upper class art scene. That's why I went there, hopefully that I could find an example of street art that I could clearly distinguish from graffiti. So when I saw the Lorax, I was elated!    

Little Italy San Diego CA, July 2013

The location as I mentioned is in the Little Italy community The building that its located on is one of the older buildings that has not been renovated yet. The building is clearly not inhabited, it and its parking lot are completed fenced off. There is graffiti all around the building, mostly tags, a couple of throwies, and 2 pieces, and this Lorax wheatpaste. According to Waclawek wheatpasting is a practice that really ushered in the Post Graffiti movement. Artist at that time were not so much concerned with their own skillz of rendering.. they were more concerned about the message.

Little Italy San Diego CA, July 2013

Wheatpasting was an easy and quick way to put out messages in the community without being concerned with all the traditions of graffiti. Graffiti was mostly an exclusive language that was meant to be shared and understood by writers not the public. These new types of street artist though were not as concerned with skillz and making a name for themselves as they were with activating political messages or subverting the constructs of the city. In other words, content trumped skill. That's not to say that any artist that used wheatpaste was not skillful. They were all skillful but since the age of digital reproduction had been established, the definition of skillful changed. Also many wheatpasted posters are still hand drawn. However the medium still lends itself more to digital means of appropriation, and that was just a sign of the times. With that in mind we have to consider this Lorax. When looking at this wheatpaste, what are we most struck by? Are we considering the skill of the artist to render the lorax? Probably not. I didn't. My first response is why a the Lorax? For those of you that I too young to know, the Lorax is a famous character from Dr. Suese books.

Little Italy San Diego CA, July 2013

He was this humble little creature that stood up to the capitalist machine that was consuming all the forest. I remember reading this story as a kid. It a had a huge impact on me. Dr. Suess did a great job of showing what our world would like without trees. And the Lorax was the hero that stood up to this "the machine". However this wheatpaste has not merely ripped of the character. Its not that the artist is purely stealing the image, what we have here is an appropriation. That is the artist is taking an existing image and changing it, modifying it to give a different message. Another example of this is Sheppard Fairy's Obey.. where he takes image of Andre the Giant and the Text from They Live and creates something new with it. So how has this artist modified the image of the Lorax? Well to start with the Lorax is holding a knife. That is a substantial modification as the original character would have never held a knife like that or posed the way he's been rendered. The Lorax looks threatening, his pose, the knife.. gives the impression that he's about to jump you. What does those mean? How does this change the character? Basically, it adds a level of menace to the character. Its like mashing the Lorax with a street thug. I think the artist was trying to convey the notion that the Lorax is a threat to the capitalist constructs. Maybe he's saying that he's got the same agenda as the Lorax but is willing to go to more violent measures to achieve it. Its like mixing environmental ideologies with an anarchistic methods.

Another very important part about this wheatpaste that should be considered is that somebody went over it. The "go-over" reads "Hipsters suck". Wow now that's a powerful statement there that juxtaposes and raises the contrast on the worlds of graffiti and street art. Clearly the person who wrote that is tagger. His message was delivered clearly and to the point... he sees the wheatpaste of the Lorax and thinks about the person who put it up as opposed to what its saying. He assumes that the person is a hipster? Why is that? What is the contention between these to street arts. I know that some graffiti writers don't like to be called artist but it still is a form of art. Why is there this divide? Historically, street artist tend to come from different class systems than writers. Its not a race thing at all but it could be a class thing.