As a follow-up to my recent blog post about graffiti, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about the attempts to cover graffiti, or as I like to call it… graffiti veils.
Most industrial or commercial building owners have had to deal with their buildings being tagged. If the landlord has left over paint from the exterior paint job, then you might not be able to tell that the building has been used as a canvas for “guerilla art”. BUT, if the landlord relies on color memory, and tries to pick a color at the paint store that seems close, we usually see failed attempts at color matching. In all fairness, most exterior colors do fade over time, so we’ll cut them a little slack. Sometimes, the color combinations are copacetic and create appealing color fields, almost like a Rothko or Barnett Newman painting.
Sometimes, what looks like earnest attempts to blend in, ends up looking more like camouflage, and I think, “Well, they tried”.
I like it when you begin to see animals or other images, like you do in clouds.
Sometimes, the color and application of paint is so bad, you wonder why they even bothered.
I’ll leave you with images from both Rothko and Newman, two of our most famous color field artists. Maybe they developed their styles and color sense from painting over graffiti; doubtful, but something to think about the next time you drive by a building with seemingly unintentional color fields.