Notice the "For Lease" sign in the bottom picture. Probably what happened was the tenant who had commissioned the artwork moved out.
I saw something similar to this happen in my hometown. An artist collective had a space they were renting, and they had painted a huge mural on the wall outside. When they moved, a church took over the space, and they painted over the mural.
My home town in Sweden has started commissioning artists to paint murals like those in the top image on a lot of otherwise boring and ugly buildings, and I couldn't be more proud. Really makes the town beautiful and unique.
One major reason cities do this is because most fellow spray can wielders will respect the existing work, thus resulting in a nicely painted instead of randomly tagged building.
Whats interesting is that most people would consider the original to be art, and most people would consider just the cocks to not be art, but are the cocks with the statement of intent art or naw? If just the cocks are not art, and the cocks with the statement are, then do the cocks become art if the artist knows about the art that used to be there? Do they become art if the viewer knows about the cocks and infers the missing statement? That's the interesting question here, because it implies that the piece can be art to one person who knows the context and not art to another person who is only aware of the cocks.
Yeah, it feels kinda like OP is really wondering if what's there now is just as good as what used to be there because it might still be labeled "art". Not all art is equal, and I'd much rather have nice looking art than art that says "this used to look nice but now it's just dicks". But, given that some asshole decided to just paint over it with monocolour, I'd rather have that "fuck you" than to see it left blank.
I hope the 2nd artist has the determination to put it back if the owners try to get rid of it again, but the patience to wait until they stop watching it so they don't get caught. Or make them spend money on a surveillance system and someone to monitor it but still put it back one or two lines at a time. Until the owners have an aneurysm and it eventually ends up in the hands of someone more chill.
I find that it makes most sense to me to answer "is this and that art"-questions with a yes by default. Is it made by a human with the intent to convey a message? Art. Any other approach always seems to end in questions of taste.
what makes "hehe I'm drawing cocks on the wall" invalid? let's examine a situation where the person who painted the cocks didn't know that there used to be traditional art there, but I do. I see the cocks, think about what used to be there before someone "fixed" it, and I receive a message even if none was intended. Is it art in that case? If it is, did the person who just wanted to doodle some dongs create it, or did I?
Exactly. The message here is more along the lines of "pity this was painted over so boringly, this is what you get". It is not just a wall, it is the wall with the original artwork still underneath a thin layer of paint. I call art.
Even with just the "hehe", I'd say it still has the old meaning of any mark made on purpose anywhere: "I was here." (That seems to be the main point of tagging.)
To me, what would make it art is a little statement on the side for the viewer to discern who the cock artist was, when it was painted and materials used, and the vision behind it.
The funny thing is that it all began as a revolt against old art for being too elitist, but now regular folks cannot enjoy todays art because they are esthetically awful and would need a full book collection to understand why that piece of rotten banana is art, so just the elite can enjoy it. The rest just pretend to look fancy
It's the Duchamp problem. He said "You guys are so far up your own asses that you'll piss in a urinal if it's in the bathroom but you'll praise me as a genius if I move that same urinal to the gallery" and the art world was like "Joke's on you, fucker, I'll start the bidding at $1.2 million for the pisser!"
In my neighborhood for a while someone (probably a group of people) were sticking vulva drawings everywhere. Building walls, lamp post, mail box, etc. They were all unique and hand drawn too.
It's BS. They converted several city owned buildings in the last city I lived in to open face "mural invites." Best thing ever. Every city should try it. Beautiful art all over.
My city has a huge bridge which is designated as graffiti area. Government even gives them paint sometimes. We use to have yearly competitions on it. These days every now and then new work shows up, but it's mostly inactive. That said, people are still allowed to paint there. It looks great what otherwise would be boring gray slab of concrete.
I would only have the leftmost ... the Goofy-Blinky hybrid with a chain kink is just weird/too random to make much sense (or probably it's just me not getting something)
You can see by the sidewalk lines the the angle is pretty drastically different. That plus a differing focal length would explain it, as well as the dramatically different visual size of the wall.
My highschool did something like this. There was a massive memorial dedicated to a African charity event we did. New headmaster came and the fucker god rid of it.
This is true every time there's a change of hands of power. The new leader busy assert themselves about their role, and reorganize a system, even if it's perfectly functional. What is good must go, for the zealot has need of your suffering.
From someone who draws comics, general comedy\humor is quite difficult to make for the general audience. Different people find different things funny all around the world. To "hit one out of the park" is rare. And funny-all-the-time is virtually impossible. A universal oddity. 👍
Yeah i think it is picture with the nicer grafiti is just taken much closer you see the bor holding up the corugated steel roof on the right and the part that sticks out on the left.