“If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission.” – Bansky
WHENEVER we feature a subject with a hip personality, one of the venues that we consider for our pictorial is Turtle’s Nest in Lahug whose walls are painted with thought-provoking images. Now, are the paintings inside Turtle’s Nest murals or graffiti? Quick answer: Murals. When we step outside of this bar and into the streets, we see similar artworks. Are they murals or graffiti? Answer: Graffiti.
But it doesn’t follow that all murals are situated indoors and graffiti is outdoors when it comes to wall art. Spanish painter Pablo Picasso has an outdoor mural in Plaza Nova, Barcelona. And then local artist Ben Salgado has a rock n’ roll mural outside of Twister Sister club on Mango Avenue.
Murals and graffiti—the biggest difference between the two is not the style, but the fact that murals are sanctioned while graffiti is not.
So if you are a graffiti artist and somebody pays you to paint their wall, your work is no longer graffiti but a mural. Thus the eye-catching works of Ubec Crew, which borders between nightmares and dreams can at times be murals or graffiti. Their works along the streets of Gorordo, Mango and Jones are graffiti, but the piece on the stairway in Henry Hotel is a mural.
Confused still? Murals are requested, approved and/or paid for by the owner of the property it’s painted on. Graffiti is done without the owner’s permission.
How about the theme? It can go political or apolitical. Though Ubec Crew hints at issues now and then (like depicting poverty with an image of a fishbone) and gave their all-out support to then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, their works are largely apolitical, at least to the disinterested everyday viewer.
Picasso’s Guernica was an anti-war statement. The works of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera are considered by many as political. And then England’s most famous graffiti artist, Banksy, is also very political. Like one work of Bansky depicts Steve Jobs as a Syrian refugee. But then again many skateboarders who dabble in graffiti have very little political agenda in their works.
How about their styles? Style, which could range from pop (Bansky) to surreal (Ubec Crew) to almost downright doodle (like in the Rizal library mural of the late Tito Cuevas back then) has little to contribute to their differentiation, In fact, style has more to do with the time frame the work was done. Rivera, for example, made an allusion to the then art vogue cubism in one of his murals. Or it merely reveals the artist’s personal leaning like Boy Kiamko’s cubist mural in Rizal Library depicting a jeepney. (The said mural has already been removed.)
But isn’t graffiti vandalism? This would be dependent on the perspective of the viewer and the owner of the property. If you are happy with what’s painted on your wall or gate, most likely you would consider it as artistic graffiti. But if looking at it ruins your day, then it’s most likely vandalism.
The works of Ubec Crew who have been around for about a decade now are far from vandalism. If only for the way they break the monotony of gray streets and walls of the city, their works should be cited.
