"The community feels that this art was given to us, for free, and it's now been taken away to be sold for huge profit. I'm very angry about the Banksy going - we want our Banksy back!"

"The street art was stencilled onto the side of a Poundland shop in Wood Green in 2012 but disappeared last week." The chunk of wall has now been removed and is up for auction where it's expected to sell for over half a million dollars.

Poundland say they are not behind the removal of the artwork, which was behind a protective perspex screen when it was taken. A spokesman said: 'We're not responsible for either selling or removing the Banksy mural. We're currently investigating.'

A Met Police spokesman said the removal has not been reported as a crime.

There's a legal and a moral issue here. I assume that it was a crime to put the art on the wall and that whoever owns the wall owns the graffiti and can sell it. If these works are worth so much money and it was my wall, I'd want to have it removed before somebody stole it or damaged it. You'd think other graffiti artists would be tempted to paint over it.

But if removing these things is frowned upon by the very people who love it and imbue it with value, then it's not worth so much. I could picture the artist seeing this kind of wrangling over the commerce and preservation to be part of the artwork and part of the publicity game around the artwork. No one item is of real value to him. It's about giving things away, and the artwork itself depicts a child engaged in slave labor. It's all about the art. The people's emotional attachment to it and their despair as they lose it are all part of the art.

Or so I presume. Sorry, I haven't really been following the Banksy thing. It's the sort of thing I would normally be interested in, but somehow I've averted my eyes from this character. Here's his Wikipedia page if you need to catch up on him or correct me on my mispresumptions.

Racist, sexist graffiti in the new World Trade Center bathrooms.

Port Authority police are now investigating. Who wrote these things? The construction workers?

“Such slurs are offensive and have no place at the World Trade Center site or elsewhere,” PA spokeswoman Lisa MacSpadden said. “The Port Authority has zero tolerance for those who demonstrate intolerance.”

The construction company said it has an anti-vandalism policy which it would "reiterate" to its crews.

Hardhats who toil on the site said the foul writing on the walls is a fact of life at all job sites — and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Black construction workers, victims of some of the most repugnant scrawls, were furious but said they don’t dare complain when they see the N-word.

“You ask any black person on the job, and they’ll say, ‘What can you do about it?’ ” said an outraged Tyson Patterson, 35, of the Bronx. “You talk and you get fired. I have to be political and pretend it doesn’t bother me.”

"Live Free — Gary Johnson for President."

That was the graffiti on campus today:



(Zeus thinks the movie's about him.)

Maybe libertarianism is catching on amongst the younger people.



We walked all down State Street and around the Capitol Square to see if there were any Obama-related activities in anticipation of his visit tomorrow. We saw lots of barriers and paraphernalia getting set up...



... but no sign of any people pre-celebrating Obama. Presumably, they'll be lining up before dawn, ready to stream around the Capitol and into photo-op formation.

Get ready for the first annual "Diversity Week" at the University of Wisconsin.

We're told the idea is "to engage students who are not specifically interested in diversity issues to think about the issue on a broader level." So you want to interest people who are not currently interested by having some sort of events... over the course of a week?

Tentatively, the week will feature a sexuality day, multicultural day,  religious diversity day, women’s day and a disability day.

The group also debated how to address “intersectionality” between the different types of diversity.

The student chair of the Diversity Committee "said she hopes the event would probe students’ minds and make them think about how their own identities are 'compiled.'"

"We are trying to say to people that you don’t have to be a minority, you don’t have to be an underrepresented group to be able to feel like you’re diverse or that you have a unique identity... This is really for all students."

I don't think the word "diverse" should apply to an individual. I think you have to say: This set of individuals is diverse. Not: This individual is diverse. Sorry to be pedantic about words. Now, it's interesting that the Diversity Committee has arrived at the idea that it wants specifically to get the attention of the students who do not belong to "underrepresented groups." The students who were not pursued by the University in its effort to increase "diversity" might, it is thought, respond to the idea that they are part of the diversity too. I'm trying to picture Diversity Week events that would convey that message!

***

Here's some campus graffiti I photographed the other day:

"I will not be bullied into voting for a gay man simply because I am gay."

Said Kyle Wood, a volunteer for Chad Lee (R), who is running against Mark Pocan (D), for the House seat in my district here in Wisconsin. It's the seat being vacated by Tammy Baldwin (D), who is running against Tommy Thompson (R), for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Herb Kohl (D).

Pocan (like Baldwin) is openly gay. Wood says a man — "white, 6 foot 2, with curly brown hair, a broad nose and a muscular build" — entered his home at 8 in the morning and beat him up, saying “You should have kept your (f------) mouth shut” and that he had been “warned.” Wood says the "warning" was graffiti on his car that said “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

The police say they believe the injuries were "minor," but The Daily Caller report says Wood's "eyes were swollen shut by the beating, and he suffered a concussion along with neck and head lacerations." A photo at the Caller shows marks on Wood's neck made by what Wood terms "a ligature."

There you have it. Real or hoax? I don't know, but I remember Ashley Todd from the '08 election season.

UPDATE: Wood has recanted. More here.

"Then we heard the sound of a pen, but by the time we turned around he was pretty much finished with his tag..."

"The pen ink then just dripped down the painting... They were really shocked when they came and saw what he had done."

A man wrote "a potential piece of yellowism" on Rothko's "Black on Maroon." I'm not going to dignify yellowism by linking to any manifestos.

ADDED: "A Russian artist who claims to have defaced a Mark Rothko mural in the Tate Modern gallery says he has engaged in a piece of art and improved the value of the multimillion-pound work...."

"I believe that if someone restores the [Rothko] piece and removes my signature the value of the piece would be lower but after a few years the value will go higher because of what I did," he said...

"I didn't destroy the picture. I did not steal anything. There was a lot of stuff like this before. Marcel Duchamp signed things that were not made by him, or even Damien Hirst."

He said that he admired Rothko, describing him as one of the great figures in art of the last century, but added: "I don't believe that what I have done is criminal. If the police are going to arrest me, then they are going to arrest me. I am OK with that."

"Peace/Tax the Profiteers!/Free Press/Free Speech."

A poster for Victor L. Berger, on display at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. Berger ran on the Socialist ticket.

Berger was a founder of the Socialist Party of America in 1901....



Berger ran for Congress and lost in 1904 before winning Wisconsin's 5th congressional district seat in 1910 as the first Socialist to serve in the United States Congress. In Congress, he focused on issues related to the District of Columbia and also more radical proposals, including eliminating the President's veto, abolishing the Senate, and the social takeover of major industries. Berger gained national publicity for his old-age pension bill, the first of its kind introduced into Congress.

Here's a closeup of the small poster at the corner of that display — replete with historical graffiti:

"If your freedom of speech has no limits, may you accept our freedom of action."

Graffiti.

What righties don't get about Manny Castro and graffiti.

Twitchy thinks it's leading a righteous fight, stirring up outrage about the "Tastes Like Hate" graffiti, spray painted on a Chick-fil-A by "Hollywood artist Manny Castro," who stepped forward to do an interview at HuffPo.

Castro said he vandalized the restaurant because Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was “the same thing” as “Christians protesting blacks marrying whites” 40 years ago.

Uh huh. Thanks, genius, we’ve seen the photos of those intolerant hatemongers enjoying chicken with their families.

Castro also told HuffPo, “It’s paint on a wall. It got removed in less than an hour. It’s not that much of a crime — it’s a protest.”

Not “that much of a crime”?...

Uh huh, thanks, genius to you, Twitchy... and to all the deaf-to-pop-culture dupes who run with this meme. Do you think there is any way that Castro can be hurt by this? You've put photographs of his artwork out there, you've planted his slogan "Tastes Like Hate" in our minds, you've promoted him as the bad boy he wants to be, and the more outrage that's expressed the more successful he is on his own terms.

You're quoting the police as saying they hadn't heard about it, but will look into it, which doesn't make it sound as though Castro's in a whole lot of trouble with the criminal law, and you're slavering with hope that you can change that, but you don't get it that an arrest would only further promote the art career of this erstwhile nonentity.

The most-liked comment over there, from one "lazypadawan," is: "When I last checked, tagging and other sorts of vandalism are crimes. Should we do a #arrestMannyCastroNOW hashtag until the PD locks him up?" Uh, genius, do you have any idea how stupid that is? Or is lazypadawan really Manny Castro or one of his "Hollywood artist" friends?

If you don't know about the various artists who have used graffiti to leverage a career, look it up. Here's a book called "The Faith of Graffiti." It was written by Norman Mailer. In 1973. But that was a long time ago. Maybe you remember this.

Please don't use the comments to instruct me about the scrumptiousness of bait.

Does chalking count as graffiti?

"A Virginia mom charged with vandalism must serve 50 hours of community service after she let her 4-year-old daughter draw on rocks with chalk."

But when it comes to vandalism, Ralph White, park manager for the James River Park System in Richmond, says “it’s all the same thing.”

“A couple of weeks ago, I was covering over pornographic drawings done in chalk,” White told WWBT. “It doesn’t matter what the medium is. It’s offensive.”

If you're going to ticket for the porn chalking, you have to ticket for kid's scribbles. Otherwise, it's viewpoint discrimination.

Previously on this blog: Confronting the chalking "Workers of the World Unite" on a Civil War monument.

"[Angel] Ortiz and a generation of urban latchkey kids who spray-painted their initials all over Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s and landed in the city's street art scene" are getting old.

"Fortunately, there's no forced retirement in graffiti," and life goes on:

For decades, Ortiz, 45, has been known on Manhattan's Lower East Side as LA II. A traumatic loss of a girlfriend brought him out of a 14-year hiatus from graffiti writing. He has since been caught three times spraying his tag on property, each time while walking a friend's dog.

"Everywhere that dog stopped to pee I would write my name," Ortiz says. "The streets were like my canvases. I just started writing my name everywhere."

The political appropriation of public property.

There's a "National Nurses United" sign — saying "Don't Cut Wisconsin/Tax Corporate Profits" — stuck in the blooming tulip garden in front of the state capitol:



And on the granite ledge around the garden, someone has written — in permanent black marker — "Capitalism needs to be destroyed/Solidarity Sing-Along Is Pro-Capitalism & Pro-Democratic Party/Russ Feingold is a Capitalist":



Can we not have a moment's peace?



Jesus said:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: A communist slogan on a civil war monument.

And an explanation of why "tea bagger" is "homophobic." The video is long, but it cracks me up every time, especially around 6 minutes in, when the guy with the Scott-Walker-as-Marie-Antoinette sign says, with disbelief, "homophobic?!!"

"[T]he police seemed oddly uninterested in the gang graffiti in the area, but were obsessed with the goats."

Said Ed Butler, "who runs a used-record store that was once an art gallery."

Others said the big white planters were an open invitation. “When I first saw those planters my first thought was, ‘They might as well leave cans of paint with them,’ ” said Eric Francis Coppolino, a local artist, journalist and astrologer. “You knew what was going to happen.”...

Monica Snell, a property manager in Wellington, Fla., said... “Every town has this nonsense going on... The ruling class is a bunch of boneheads.”...

Diane Reeder, founder of a nonprofit soup kitchen, the Queens Gallery, said... it was striking how the goats ended up saying something profound without trying to. “It brought so many people together....”...

The Kingston Times, a local weekly, wrote... “The red goat is a great symbol — simple, striking, edgy, easy to remember and easier to associate with a sense of stubborn defiance... People get paid a lot of money to come up with stuff like this, and here Kingston is getting it for free.”

A graffiti quandary.

Graffiti artist makes $200 million.

David Choe painted some walls at Facebook's offices in 2005 and — given a choice to be paid in dollars or company shares — took the shares.

The walls look pretty awful, by the way, but presumably they inspired the people in that place at that time, and how can you not feel good that Choe made the right choice?

At the Question Mark Café...

... I wonder what you can talk about.

Cy Twombly "avoided publicity throughout his life and mostly ignored his critics, who questioned constantly..."

"... whether his work deserved a place at the forefront of 20th-century abstraction, though he lived long enough to see it arrive there. It didn’t help that his paintings, because of their surface complexity and whirlwinds of tiny detail – scratches, erasures, drips, penciled fragments of Italian and classical verse amid scrawled phalluses and buttocks – lost much of their power in reproduction."

The critical low point probably came after a 1964 exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York that was widely panned. The artist and writer Donald Judd, who was hostile toward painting in general, was especially damning even so, calling the show a fiasco. “There are a few drips and splatters and an occasional pencil line,” he wrote in a review. “There isn’t anything to these paintings.”

But by the 1980s, with the rise of neo-Expressionism, a generation of younger artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat found inspiration in Mr. Twombly’s skittery bathroom-graffiti scrawl...

In the only written statement Mr. Twombly ever made about his work, a short essay in an Italian art journal in 1957, he tried to make clear that his intentions were not subversive but elementally human. Each line he made, he said, was “the actual experience” of making the line, adding: “It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.”

RIP, Cy Twombly.

At the Wisconsin Capitol today, pro-Scott Walker chalkings...

... photographed after the anti-Walkerites had modified them:





AND: Consider this the Walker-Chalker Café, where you can add your own graffiti.

Somebody has written "Workers of the World Unite" on the monument to Civil War hero Hans Christian Heg.

And Meade is not happy with that. This evening at the Wisconsin Capitol:



2 protesters — a teacher and a lawyer — arrive on the scene, and a hilarious argument ensues. This might seem long, but don't miss the "teabagger" part.

Using Craigslist to hire protesters at $7.50 an hour?

This is from Indiana and, as the first commenter at the link says, "Anyone can run an ad on Craigslist and remain anonymous. What a great way to try and discredit the protesters. Now I wonder who would want to do that?"

You can say the same thing about the "Stike Now" graffiti. Everything is possibly fake these days. Are the protesters fake or is the evidence of the fakeness of the protesters fake?