Graffiti has historically been looked on as the pursuit of lower-class marginalized communities, a social ill (Dickinson 2008:34). It is often seen as ugly, unclean, or just not aesthetically pleasing (Dickinson 2008:40). The work I have chosen to share here speaks as a rebuttal to those presumptions. In this piece, a part of a larger effort entitled The New York Beautification Project, Ellen Harvey has brought elements of higher art forms to graffiti by recreating 18th-19th century oval landscapes in oil paints (Honigman & Harvey 2005:105). Harvey chose this style of graffiti because it is a noncontroversial signifier of art, a form understood by the majority as the quintessential artwork. While they were still illegally painted, these ovals were executed in a style that attempted to transcend the urge or need for public outcry that graffiti usually elicits. Harvey is playing with the idea of the idealized landscape brought to the wrong side of town, and found that the aesthetic characteristics of these pieces trumped their illegality, with most passersby legitimizing it by calling it art (Honigman & Harvey 2005:105-106).
Contrary to the lower-class, youth-perpetrated, masculinized picture of graffiti artists noted in Dickinson (2008), Ellen Harvey is a 30-something white female artist with a law degree (Honigman & Harvey 2005:103). This is relevant to her medium of choice – public spaces in New York City. Having studied law gives Harvey a unique appreciation (among artists) of property ownership, who is allowed to do what and where, and how society is structured. These issues consciously shape her work.
– Jessica Craighead
Honigman, Ana Finel, and Ellen Harvey 2005 Good Artist/Bad Artist: An Interview with Ellen Harvey. Art Journal 64(3):102-118.
Dickinson, Maggie 2008 The Making of Space, Race and Place:New York City’s War on Graffiti, 1970—the Present. Critique of Anthropology 28(1):27-45.
www.ellenharvey.info