DEATH OF A PORN KING
In December 2010 Mars, one of Joburg’s best graffiti artists, posted a comment on Flickr about his piece - “Even Art Fags Can’t Touch This” he painted in Newtown’s Theatre of the Mind.
“From 2011 I’m going to try incorporating more "themes / concepts" into my pieces,
I feel that my name is not enough anymore; I want to add more expression and perhaps meaning into my pieces... The obvious cry out for attention like "Hey look at me, I`m Mars” isn’t going to be on my list of graffiti priorities...
So we`ll see how that works out.”
For me it was a classic example of an artist evolving from maybe illegal tagging, then into large and intricate wildstyle pieces incorporating his graffiti name to something more - Social commentary, art-for-art sake, whatever.
I’ve become familiar with Mars’s “Angel Wings” wildstyle images appearing all over the city. When I noticed one of his first “concept” pieces at the Green Monster skate ramp in Parkhurst I did not recognize it as his work at all. Beautifully executed, with an almost anime or manga feel; showing great control of a spray can by an artist on top of his game with the message “We can all talk, but how many can think?” Obviously he developed a totally new style.
During the Painting With Light Photowalkers event on 29 January I saw a photograph on someone’s camera taken earlier that day in Troyeville of Mars doing a new piece in his new style. It was titled - “Porn King - Wats luv got todo with it.” It depicted a scantily clad woman holding a penis in each hand and also some other male and female reproductive equipment in the background. This piece made a powerful statement in my opinion.
The porn industry is booming. I read an interesting article recently via Mandy de Waal on Facebook that appeared in the Atlantic titled “Hard Core - The new world of porn is revealing eternal truths about men and women” -
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/hard-core/8327/
This article postulates that;
“…technology produced the Second Coming: the Internet. And then the Rapture itself: broadband. Pornography is now, indisputably, omnipresent: in 2007, a quarter of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Nielsen ratings showed that in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet users in the United States, almost 60 million people, visited a pornographic Web site. That number represents nearly a fifth of all the men, women, and children in this country-and it doesn’t even take into account the incomprehensible amount of porn distributed through peer-to-peer downloading networks, shared hard drives, Internet chat rooms, and message boards.”
Oh yes, porn is very much alive, also in South Africa, despite the untimely departure of the King of Sleaze, strip-club boss Lolly Jackson who was killed to death last year. He was allegedly shot by George Louka, alias George Smith, who’s nowhere to be found. But Lolly became filthy rich out of Teazers his “Adult Entertainment and Revue Bar”. Like hell it was anything else but a whorehouse. Fast women, fast car and excess, that was Jackson’s empire, but it had nothing to do with love, what has love got to do with the porn industry anyway?
That is what made the Mars piece so interesting. It illustrated the smoke and mirrors of the porn industry in an extremely powerful and visual way. I wanted to photograph it for my own collection of graffiti archeology. I went to Troyeville last Saturday to do so. The more graphic parts of the piece had been covered with chrome paint. The most intriguing of this “censorship” is that this had to be someone closely associated with the graffiti community who found the piece offensive - If it was officialdom the whole piece would have been removed.
I pointed the defacement of the piece out to Mars;
“I`m not surprised” he commented, "A lot of people found it ‘controversial’ and not suitable for the kids. The same kids who were calling each other ‘nigga’ and singing 50 Cent songs about ‘bitches’, telling each other to fuck off. As far as I`m concerned this is unfortunately as close as they’ll ever get to sex education.”
Herein lays the rub. The one thing I still don’t understand about the world of graffiti. Why would one put a work out there knowing full well that a carefully executed piece can be willfully destroyed? All the time, effort, creative energy gone in a flash.
Somehow the piece reminds me of Anton Kannemeyer’s painting exhibited in the Everard Read Gallery in Rosebank last year. In this painting cartoon-like black penisis depicts the South African Pale Males fear of their black counterparts in my opinion. It most probably sold for a lot of money. If Mars chose to do his Porn King work on a canvas it would have been snapped up by an art collector for sure - maybe Shaun Russouw who runs Teazers in Durbs as far as I know would’ve given it pride of place in his brothel, sorry, Adult Entertainment and Revue Bar.
I found an extremely informative essay by one George Stowers - “Graffiti Art: An Essay Concerning The Recognition of Some Forms of Graffiti As Art” which to a certain extent explains why these guys do what they do knowing full well that their work won’t last and will be seen by vandalism and defacement of public property.
“For some artists see themselves as revolutionaries reacting against the established art market or gallery system in that art is not only that which appears in the gallery as determined by the curator. Some artists also view their creations on public and private spaces as a statement against Western ideas of capitalism and private property. Of course, the majority of graffitists enjoy what they do and find it to be fun, rewarding, and exciting. Although these reasons are valid, they do not conclusively settle the matter as to why graffiti art is art or why it is a valid art form despite its illegal origins.”
http://www.graffiti.org/faq/stowers.html
I still struggle to get my head around the whole graffiti scene and what really motivates the artists.