The underground street-art scene usually maintains an antagonistic equilibrium: graffiti artists bomb (i.e., paint) highly visible sites; civic groups buff (i.e., paint over) their handiwork. But new graffiti-style advertisements -- done, it must be said, by real-live graffiti artists -- for decidedly above-ground companies like Time Warner, General Motors and Unilever have lately upset that balance. Now it's angry artists who are protesting and even buffing, and marketing experts who are joining in on heated debates about selling out. For the advertisers, of course, (almost) any publicity is welcome. Reports from three new battlegrounds:
HUMMER H3: Shortly after the Tats Cru's murals for this General Motors vehicle began appearing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the advertising blog adrants.com reported that one had been overwritten with protests like, "No blood for oil." A commenter on the site asked just how authentic street art was "if it says 'street art' on the ad."
AXE DEODORANT: In late May, a graffiti-style billboard for Axe men's deodorant by Unilever replaced the usual concert fliers on a boarded-up building in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Ed Marszewski, who edits an alternative culture magazine, Lumpen, posted a video clip on Lumpen.com showing his ad hoc band of "Ad Blasters" painting over the Axe ad while making the deadpan admonition, "Any kind of corporate graffiti must be eviscerated." Mr. Marszewski wrote of the Axe mural, "It's not 'graffiti' & it's not art -- the power to inspire vaporizes once the viewer realizes they are simply being targeted as a consumer." Steve Lambert, on the Brooklyn-based media site Stay Free! (stayfreemagazine.org), argued that those who live by the street art ethos must be prepared to die by it: "It seems the Axe ad tried to be a part of the community by being at street level, using graffiti artists, etc., but wasn't respected enough in the community to last." The editor of Stay Free!, Carrie McLaren, wrote that when it came to the ad's target demographic, Ad Blasters had done Axe a favor: "By painting over the billboard, they made it more authentic."
TIME MAGAZINE: Last month Time commissioned the well-known graffiti artist Cope2 (cope2truelegend.com/) to repeatedly bomb a blank billboard at the corner of Houston and Wooster Streets in SoHo. After several weeks, the magazine's distinctive red border was placed over the accumulated tags. In declaring Time's campaign a success, Marc Schiller, who runs Wooster Collective (woostercollective.com), a leading street-art blog, dismissed the advertising vs. art dichotomy altogether: "Once something's out there," he said, "what matters is how well it's done." GREG ALLEN
The underground street-art scene usually maintains an antagonistic equilibrium: graffiti artists bomb (i.e., paint) highly visible sites; civic groups buff (i.e., paint over) their handiwork. But new graffiti-style advertisements -- done, it must be said, by real-live graffiti artists -- for decidedly above-ground companies like Time Warner, General Motors and Unilever have lately upset that balance. Now it's angry artists who are protesting and even buffing, and marketing experts who are joining in on heated debates about selling out. For the advertisers, of course, (almost) any publicity is welcome. Reports from three new battlegrounds:
HUMMER H3: Shortly after the Tats Cru's murals for this General Motors vehicle began appearing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the advertising blog adrants.com reported that one had been overwritten with protests like, "No blood for oil." A commenter on the site asked just how authentic street art was "if it says 'street art' on the ad."
AXE DEODORANT: In late May, a graffiti-style billboard for Axe men's deodorant by Unilever replaced the usual concert fliers on a boarded-up building in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Ed Marszewski, who edits an alternative culture magazine, Lumpen, posted a video clip on Lumpen.com showing his ad hoc band of "Ad Blasters" painting over the Axe ad while making the deadpan admonition, "Any kind of corporate graffiti must be eviscerated." Mr. Marszewski wrote of the Axe mural, "It's not 'graffiti' & it's not art -- the power to inspire vaporizes once the viewer realizes they are simply being targeted as a consumer." Steve Lambert, on the Brooklyn-based media site Stay Free! (stayfreemagazine.org), argued that those who live by the street art ethos must be prepared to die by it: "It seems the Axe ad tried to be a part of the community by being at street level, using graffiti artists, etc., but wasn't respected enough in the community to last." The editor of Stay Free!, Carrie McLaren, wrote that when it came to the ad's target demographic, Ad Blasters had done Axe a favor: "By painting over the billboard, they made it more authentic."
TIME MAGAZINE: Last month Time commissioned the well-known graffiti artist Cope2 (cope2truelegend.com/) to repeatedly bomb a blank billboard at the corner of Houston and Wooster Streets in SoHo. After several weeks, the magazine's distinctive red border was placed over the accumulated tags. In declaring Time's campaign a success, Marc Schiller, who runs Wooster Collective (woostercollective.com), a leading street-art blog, dismissed the advertising vs. art dichotomy altogether: "Once something's out there," he said, "what matters is how well it's done." GREG ALLEN