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.
