Many street artists discover themselves as artists when they come across the litanies of Basquiat or Haring. Making their way in the left-wing world of art, from network to network, from acquaintance to acquaintance, they draw their line in the accepted political correctness: defense of ecology, minorities, acute and passionate militancy for progressism.
They are rare conservatives who are fans of Trump, who have doubts about past and present health policies, about the capacity of a banker to govern France, or about the progressive logic that is not so much a fan of progress.
Conservative artists can be counted on the fingers of one hand: galleries don’t like them. The public criticizes them for not being like the others, and they are finally a minority in the intellectual sphere. To be a good street artist, do you have to be left-wing? No question for most of them who don’t ask themselves, too busy copying, once again, the Basquiats or Haring who pushed them to be artists. Hard.
The real evolution of the street artist today is presented before the eyes of the uninformed public: he proposes nothing. Of the wind. No ideas, no vision of the world. Color, stains, cartoon characters. One falls almost in admiration in front of the interstellar and intellectual emptiness which as one looks at their works take on the appearance of hyperbolic infinity.
Jesus, the Latin bible, and the apostles
It’s not good to be a Jesus fan in the art world. In addition to the old-fashioned side of the thing, one finds there all that the modern street artist hates: sense. Because it’s a fact, to be a street artist today, you have to offer everything, be open to everything, do everything, say everything, as long as it doesn’t make sense. As long as it doesn’t shock the opinion.
It is easier to claim to be an artist by exposing an anal plug in the middle of Paris, by draping the Triumphal arch or by making balloon dogs 3m high, than by attempting an abstract representation of Jesus. Conservatism does not sell.
It is easier to defend minorities, to attack the zealots of the cigarette than to question the possibility of a Trump able to avoid the current wars, and the geopolitical tensions, through a work of art. Trump does not make numbers in the sphere of graffiti.
Once again the galleries will not dare to exhibit. Once again, they would go against the movement and benevolence. Once again the conservative artist will be placed on the benches of anonymity. Once again, we will wait for his death to lay braids of praise for him.