CHICAGO — We forget we are in a conversation with public art until something happens.
Then we are reminded that, in a sense, we never stop talking. We never stop admiring or flinching or scowling or puzzling over or, more likely, failing to even notice public artwork anymore (itself a response). That’s the burden of public art. It is the wallpaper of our lives, and most of us are unaware we’re in a conversation.
But then a week ago, a mural of Kanye West on Lake Street in Fulton Market was painted over by artist Jason M. Peterson, who had created the mural and collaborated with West on projects and was known for his monochromatic aesthetic. Peterson was tight-lipped on the alteration, but he told the Tribune that Scott Wilson, the founder of design company MINIMAL, which owns the building, asked that something be done about its north-facing wall. So Peterson painted a silhouette over the Kanye part. It made news last week, then was just as quickly sucked into the hailstorm of responses to West’s antisemitism.
What you didn’t hear was how Peterson gave his work more poignancy.
When I visited the mural, the day after it was painted over, I looked and thought, I like this. I liked it more than the ‘70s-esque Shaggin Waggin, photorealistic custom van-style portrait of Kanye that had been there. Minus its subject, but not the details that surrounded West, it now resembled an American flag overrun with the ye-olde font of a Yeezy brand T-shirt. And in place of West, there was only his silhouette, a sad cave entrance of an empty space. It contained anger, melancholy, profound disappointment.
If you’re a fan of West — if you’ve been proud West is a product of Chicago but felt his recent remarks have been a bridge too far — this new mural seemed truer to the man himself.
Now it held pride plus recent history.
Or rather, love plus rejection.
But then, in the week since Peterson altered his mural, the chatter has only ping-ponged. Not about West’s personal grave-digging — many artists and Chicagoans were quick to denounce him — but around the repainting itself. Last weekend, the blocky, bulbous lettering of old-school graffiti was tagged to the bottom of Peterson’s silhouette.
Now added is a large “F.DUB,” and in tiny lettering, a rebuttal: “West FOREVER ...”
The conversation goes on.
Indeed, a few blocks away on Fulton Street, there is another piece of Kanye art, painted a while ago, that now finds itself in a quiet conversation with the Kanye mural on Lake. It was painted by Chris Devins, who, unlike Peterson, was not working on a commission from the owner of the building. His street-art image — Kanye in a dapper suit, with a squared handkerchief, flashing a Rolex — is there because Devins had thought of West the way many of us have for decades: as an influential, multi-hyphenate whirlwind of creativity and provocation. His Kanye, he told me, came out of a dinner with a friend who was collaborating with West on an opera. They were eating at the Time Out Market down the street, and immediately after, inspired, Devins grabbed his paint and created the Kanye. Peterson’s Kanye mural went up last year, and Devins’ was painted just last summer.
After the Lake Street mural was silhouetted, Devins said he refused to alter his Kanye.
He was uneasy at the idea of one artist erasing the image of another artist. He told me, “This guy has had a major impact on music and art and fashion, and it’s too meaningful to cover up.” Yet, he added, he was also open to the ongoing conversation around this.
That was wise, because soon after Peterson altered his mural, someone came along and touched up Devins’ painting. It was less dramatic, but like Peterson’s changes, it brought an added depth to West’s image that was closer to a lot of conflicted feelings.
Someone painted — vertically, down West’s suit — the word: “TRASH.”
I stood in front of this and called Devins and he said, “Well, that’s too bad. But then again, it is kind of cool. It’s a public conversation that should be had. I’m conflicted because it’s a problem for me, but ‘TRASH’? Vertically no less? It’s sort of interesting...”
Yup.
Then a day later Devins painted over “TRASH.”
I wish he hadn’t altered the graffiti that was painted over his own graffiti. Not unlike Peterson’s silhouette, “TRASH” said far more than a plainly hagiographic act of civic pride. “TRASH” could be read proudly — as a resilient pushback of cancel culture — or more literally, as the value of a once-beloved artist who reduced himself to junk status. Plus, this wall is on an empty building and is considered something of a “permission wall” by Chicago street artists, meaning their paintings and images (sophisticated and often colorful and even sweet) are preferable to emptiness; there’s been no move to erase them.
Here is an ongoing dialogue.
One firmly in line with art history. Artists painting over the art of other artists — in protest or commentary, usually to create a new piece of art — is far from unheard of. Most famously, Robert Rauschenberg erased some of his own drawings only to decide that something was missing from the act. So he asked Willem de Kooning to lend him a new work that had been finished. This was in the early 1950s when de Kooning was making his greatest pieces, and yet de Kooning agreed and gave Rauschenberg a drawing so dense de Kooning doubted Rauschenberg could erase the whole thing. But he did, and “Erased de Kooning Drawing” stands now as one of Rauschenberg’s best-known works. The wealth of examples is bottomless. A few years ago a cultural heritage scientist at Northwestern University proved Picasso’s 1902 oil painting “The Crouching Beggar” was not only painted over another Spanish artist’s work but had incorporated parts of it.
Of course, it’s understandable why MINIMAL — itself a design company full of artists — wouldn’t want its very facade covered in a billboard of Kanye. Just as it would be understandable for street artists who find themselves alongside Devins’ Kanye to have second thoughts. Irony of ironies, Devins’ Kanye stands alongside the familiar street art of Rich Alapack, known for his simple declarative rainbow message of solidarity: “WE ALL LIVE HERE.”
Alapack, who lives in Fulton Market and passes these walls daily, started his “WE ALL LIVE HERE” campaign in 2015, partnering with Chicago schools and libraries to spread a gentle note of unity through public art. That message is now ubiquitous across the city, found on walls in hundreds of places. He calls Devins a talented painter but was not thrilled his Kanye went up alongside a “WE ALL LIVE HERE.” Alapack said: “Part of what ‘WE ALL LIVE HERE’ means is different people and different ideas exist and are allowed to exist, and sometimes things happen that are not what we agree with but we allow it. That said, when (Kanye) crossed into hate speech, it’s no longer free speech.”
He expects the wall, and building, to be demolished.
Still, right now, however informally, the results are richer than they were a month ago, when all we had was a couple of celebrity likenesses splashed across Fulton Market.
As I stood in front of the Lake Street mural, a guy in a Blackhawks sweatshirt snapped a picture of the Kanye silhouette with his phone; this was before it was tagged. He said he understood why the building owners would be upset and not want to look at this every day, “but it’s like you can’t say anything anymore. I hate that this is happening but I feel there’s truth behind what Kanye says. It’s all crashing down, but the guy’s always said outrageous things. I heard he was going to start his own city. Which sounds like Kanye.”
As he continued, I felt someone behind me.
I turned. It was another guy photographing the silhouette. He asked me if I was the artist who erased Kanye. I said I was not. He said, “Oh — because I was going to thank you.”
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