Mark Bradford and Anonymous Walls on the Streets of Los Angeles

A month or so ago, I was checking out the "hot galleries" of Los Angeles, specifically those located in the Culver City area. While I am sure I saw art of all technical, philosophical, social, and visual natures in these galleries on that day, it was perhaps what I saw outside the galleries as I was walking back to my car that had the most impact. Call me crazy, but here I had just witnessed some of the "hottest" art in some of the "hottest" galleries in Los Angeles and yet when I spied this "wall art" near my car, I found it to be as compelling as anything I had just witnessed in the "sanctioned dominions" of artistic culture. I was moved by the freedom, the rawness, the spontaneity, and the rather utter lack of care that this wall piece expressed. As seen above, I reference it in comparison to a compelling piece by the esteemed Los Angeles artist, Mark Bradford. In no way am I trying to take anything away from the Bradford piece for I find Mark Bradford to be one of the more original and thought provoking artists of the day, not just here in Los Angeles, but the world over. But I use his piece here as a reference point. How is it that Bradford (the lower piece of the two above), in my opinion rightly so, has gained the notoriety that he has while this "anonymous" artist (top piece above)goes on without even a mention? How is it that the "corporate" art world has constructed itself so as to define what is "real" art, and what is perhaps only the markings of a deviant being? Given the right location, I can easily see this street art being successfully exhibited so as to provoke compelling discussion just as the Bradford piece has done. And yet, one artist is flourishing while who know what has become of the other artist, or even if that wall was the work of one person? The point is is that how often does the average joe, with no art historical training, view both pieces, listen to the various blurbs on the attributes of Bradford, and then look at the street art and have the confidence to deem that work just as valid, or just as compelling or, shall I say even beautiful?

Sure, one may say that the street art hearkens back to a more referential nature of 1980's "neo-expressionism" the likes of Schnabel, Basquiat, etc, but can one not say that could be equally true of the Bradford piece if we were to take into account that it has referential ties to the "new geo" movement also of the 1980's? And regardless of either argument, who is the one who 'metes out" whether one piece sits higher than the other on the ridiculous ladder of hierarchical art status?

I guess what I am trying to get at is that too often the average person who walks into a gallery easily feels intimidated by the heavy and reverential like silence of most nearly all art galleries, and therefore in their blameless naivete, will too often give too much weight to what hangs on a fancy gallery wall, in comparison to what may be existing on the public streets surrounding those very same galleries. And yet as a seasoned viewer of gallery shows across the nation and abroad, I say with great confidence that the general person without an art background needs to somehow know that random anonymous art on a nameless wall may be just as savvy as that that exists in the "sanctioned" formal gallery space. And until this is rectified, if it ever happens at all, the viewing of art will sadly still be akin to the ranking of the status quo and who may be the current celebrities or top corporations of a given year...That is not the way art is suppossed to work at its core. It is only the human capacity for construction of subjective heirarchies (read as gallerists desire to hype a piece so as to gain possible fame and fortune) that keeps art at a distance from the very public the gallery artist may be attempting to reach...