Anonymous

 

Seminar on Street Art 3: Anonymous. Essential to the wonder of street art is anonymity. It is a given that no one but the artist and close associates, the crew, really knows. It’s they who made all these endless extravagances. The public and constabulary are in the dark, even in broad daylight, Broadmeadows daylight, though it is likely the constabulary possess files of names caught red-handed with a spray can, indelible markers. It is itself part of the mystery how so many artists go to infinitesimal detail writing their impossibly obscure signature upon doors, walls, back lanes, freeways simply to declare their honourable anonymity. It is anonymity, indeed, that gives freedom to the artists to express themselves as they wish. They are not bound by expectations a famous name means to the voracious and unthinking public. Fame is fleeting as a car careering past, a glimpse while out shopping, a billboard stripped back to tin by the morning. Their real name is invisible behind their immense contrived street names, signed in original lettering across the city’s length, breadth and don’t forget height. How did they get up there? This is a profound conundrum, painted over high density urban spaces: the sight of hundreds of ornate signatures that are not the artists’ real names. Who are these people? Their desire to lay claim to the impersonal landscape with their personal Pessoan heteronyms is uncontrollable, and done at risk to their physical safety and civil security. The law takes a dim view of their brightest autographs. The law would return to dust-grey their flowery embellishments, using a heavy-duty city council paint roller. The uniformity of conformity. Yet the law itself has provided street artists with the creative restriction rule that garners such populous proliferations of anonymous prolixity: Thou Shalt Not Sign the Work. Their viewership assigns medieval cognomens to their inscrutable pseudonyms: The Master of the Sunshine Industrial Zone, Pudgy Budgie Member of the School of Pam the Bird, Looping Illuminator of the Mernda Line. ‘Foo Was Here’ is the germ of this superabundance of dancing signoffs. But this is about more than scrawling a peekaboo in the wrong location. The results of street art imply a most complex artistic premeditation, an unswerving determination, a clubbish anonymity. They display gift and the painterly training of Renaissance frescoists, those men and women who knew they had only 15 minutes starting Now to complete their unacknowledged masterwork before the plaster set.