I watched with interest as the man selected a spray can, picked it up and began to empty its contents on the wall in short bursts. Even though I was not standing close, it didn’t take long before I caught a distinctive whiff, which even if I hadn’t seen where it came from, I would have instantly known what it was. It is one of those smells which is concurrently both agreeable and disagreeable; on the one hand there is the scent of promise, of renewal and the covering over of past transgressions, and then on the other the tang of disappointment, as one realises achieving an undetectable restoration is far more difficult than it looks. To be honest I probably would have barely noticed him before, and if I did, I would have tagged him as a vandal, defacing property with his graffiti. I never would have taken the time to stop and observe his work, let alone appreciate it. What has changed my mind?
No Graffiti
Over the last few months I have become rather more interested in tags, not because I want to go and spray paint a wall, but rather through developing this blog. I confess I still don’t quite have my categories and tags down perfectly, or even imperfectly; it is a work in progress. Categories are broader, tags more specific, and they are there to help guide readers in the quickest amount of time to the content they desire to see, before they lose patience and move on elsewhere. I know my categories and tags need some revision, and fortunately I can go back and amend them. But websites are not the only places we like categories and tags to quickly and easily guide us to a conclusion. We use them daily in every context of our lives, and once they are applied whether perfectly or more likely imperfectly, they are not so easily changed. We can try and respray with another coat but somehow either the bottom layer keeps showing through or the new layer after time doesn’t look so good either. The tags which perhaps are the hardest to modify are the ones we attach to each other and ourselves. Some we welcome, we proudly display let them hang out for everyone to see, but others we wish could be deleted and so we keep those ones hidden away. The cost of revealing them is too high. It is like when you accidentally find yourself in a shop you know you don’t belong, and how you know you don’t belong is because all the price tags are discreetly hidden. If you have to ask how much an item is you shouldn’t be there, the cost is more than you can afford, and so it is with our hidden tags, the cost of revealing them is more than we can bear.
There is also the question over the accuracy of our tags, do we get them right? Are they really an honest appraisal? I recently stayed at a VRBO and within a couple of hours of concluding my stay was bombarded with requests to rate my experience. I rated it highly because the owner was nice and also, I know they are tagging me with their evaluation of my “guestliness.” I didn’t mention the cramped bath with no mount for the shower wand requiring an act a contortionist would be proud of to wash. I will leave that surprise to future guests to tag.
I recently went on a walking tour around the Whitechapel area of London where a man left five gruesome tags 137 years ago. I find it hard to fathom why it is after all those years, people from all over the world are still interested, obsessed even, with him and his horrendous deeds. I suppose it is because the crimes were never solved despite the endless inquiries, and his identity remains a mystery. I personally have never been that interested in either his acts or identity, but this tour was recommended to me by a friend who told me it gives great insight into an interesting historical period and location, and indeed it did not disappoint in that regard. His name (not my friend), of course is “Jack the Ripper,” a sobriquet the murderer supposedly used in a letter sent to the Central News Agency of London boasting of his invincibility, which when published, secured that tag in the echelons of infamy. No matter the letter was in all likelihood a hoax, possibly even written by a journalist to boost circulation, the tag assigned to him endures.
The Ten Bells Pub, frequented by the Ripper’s victims
Many of the streets and buildings which would have been familiar to Jack and his victims are no longer there, German bombs in the Second World War levelled a good deal of the area, however a few sights remain. Our guide tried to focus the group’s attention on the victims rather than the perpetrator. Mostly they have been tagged as prostitutes and alcoholics, as if that somehow makes it more palatable for them to be the Ripper’s victims, it’s that “they had it coming mentality.” For certain they lived on the streets in abject poverty, making them extremely vulnerable, and although they all drank, most were not involved with prostitution, and none deserved their grizzly fate. Yet now it is the villain who gets all the attention while the victims are set aside; mere props for the promotion of Jack’s tag, and the tag of those profiting from them over a hundred years later.
Bordering Whitechapel is the trendy area of Shoreditch. My wife signed us up to do another walking tour with this one’s focus being on street art. I confess when she told me I was not overly excited, I had little enthusiasm to spend a couple of hours looking at squiggles. That really is how I viewed street art, if I saw it at all, which mostly I didn’t unless I boarded a tube which had been defaced with garish tags.
We met the group outside Shoreditch station, our guide, herself from the East End fortunately was full of enthusiasm for street art and began by telling us it all starts with a tag. Every street artist started off as a tagger, only able to scrawl graffiti like a toddler with a crayon, but then, those who stuck with it progressed as they mastered the use of a spray can. Next comes the use of stencils which help contain the picture and prevent overspray, and finally the skill develops into free hand. We didn’t have to go far to find the first examples; right across from the station entrance. Shoreditch is renowned for its street art, and indeed street artists are welcomed to paint on walls and doors. There is one building where four artists were invited to paint the whole thing; a side each. As the tour progressed so did my appreciation of the artists and their skills. I no longer saw them as just “taggers,” defacing property, causing owners to spend time and money in removing the stain. But rather, these are indeed skilled artists, conveying comment on the culture and politics through their work. I can’t even begin to do what they do, at most I could cover a wall in one colour, and even then, it would be uneven and the surrounding areas over sprayed!
Holywell Lane Building
Our guide pointed out how you can recognise the works of different artists; there would be some sort of signature tag within the picture or even the whole work would be a recognisable tag. For instance, you can find mushrooms dotted around London placed on roofs and tops of walls; the work of Christian Nagel. Another tag is by the French artist known as UFA (unidentified free artist), who leaves space invader symbols of various sizes on walls, liberating art from the confines of galleries and commercialism. “Street art is for everyone,” the guide told us, “anyone is free to paint conveying any message they want,” although I suspect not every message would be really welcomed.
As I said, Shoreditch welcomes street artists because the art attracts visitors, visitors bring money, and what was such a poor and depressed area in Jack’s day has now become a hub of tourism and commercial activity. So much so, that companies are paying street artists to paint adverts on walls. Of course, I am not against artists being paid, but it rather seems to be against their principles when they become the mouthpieces of businesses. They have become tagged by the world.
Another principle of street art is it is not supposed to be permanent. No picture is sacrosanct, just because an artist finished a masterpiece on a wall doesn’t mean someone else can’t come along and paint over it. A wall might have one painting on it on Monday and a completely different painting on it by Thursday, like a rotating screensaver; each picture is a dynamic new discovery. Except some pictures have become inviolable.
Perhaps the most famous street artist not just in Shoreditch, London, but the world, is the artist know as Banksy, although no one knows his true identity. Banksy might be famous, but he is not necessarily popular, at least among fellow artists who view his use of stencils with some disdain, and then there is his fame and commercialisation. I saw him described as a “phenomenon rather than an artist.” In 2018 a Banksy work, “Girl with balloon,” sold at Sotheby’s for $1.4 million, but immediately after the hammer dropped a shredder hidden within the picture’s frame activated. The shredded painting was renamed “love is in the bin,” and was later resold at auction for $25.4 million. That is a valuable tag!
Wherever you find a Banksy picture you will also see that it is protected by a Perspex screen so no one can deface it with their tag. Next to Truman’s Brewery there is a pink car (Triumph GT6), sitting on top of a wall behind food trucks, it is driven by a skeleton and the pink is leaking down the wall from the tyres. The car is “protected” by a Perspex box, which is cracked and cloudy from age, the car is rotting and sad, the tyres are flat, and the paint faded to non-existence. Not much more than an eye sore these days, and certainly not the tag it once was.
Pink Car by Banksy
Some dream of waking up one morning to find Banksy has visited their property overnight transforming their bland wall into a work of art worth millions, but in reality it is rather difficult to sell a wall, and the cost of preserving it far outweighs any possible return his tag might bring.
Around two thousand years ago a woman went to a well to fill her bucket, not in London, but in a poor remote part of the world known as Samaria. It was around mid-day, and it was hot. Most women came to get water in the cool of the morning or evening, but not her. Life had not gone well for her; married five times and the bloke she was living with now was not her husband and so she lived on the fringes, unwelcome to join society, but she had it coming. It was a tag which also came with self-recrimination; guilt, shame, fear, bitterness and resentment even, too painful to bring out so she kept it tucked away. What could she do? She couldn’t repaint her life.
As she approached the well, she noticed a man sitting nearby. She immediately tagged Him as a Jew, a religious man, so she ignored Him because the Samaritans and Jews have nothing to do with each other, and neither do religious men and women like her. As she went about her business she was startled when the man asked her for a drink. A conversation ensued in which He offered “living water,” water which is an all-time thirst quencher. She jumped at the offer, never having to drag a pot out to this wretched well again; how great would that be! It would also be one up on all those stuck up people who ignore her. The conversation shifted to her hidden tag. It was uncomfortable and she didn’t want to reveal it, but the man drew it out of her. The exchange lastly landed on the painting of the future. What would it look like and who knew enough about it they could paint it accurately? “I know the Messiah is coming (he who is called the Christ). When He come, He will tell us all things,” said the woman. “I who speak to you am He” replied the man.
Jesus, the man who the woman was talking to had come to repaint the world. His Father was the original artist, but since then His perfect masterpiece had been painted over with all different kinds of ugly tags, so Jesus had arrived on the street to retag it. He is the ultimate street painter, painting with words or renewal, restoration and hope which give off a wonderful sweet aroma. His art was not hidden away in galleries or behind a pay wall but was out on the street available to anyone and everyone who wanted to be retagged. Not everyone did, just like there are posh areas in every city where any form of tagging/street art is seen as devaluing property and is forbidden, so there were those who wanted nothing do with His art. They valued their tags of wealth, social status and observance of religious rites and rituals higher than His painting. So, Jesus left their walls alone, focusing instead on those who were desperate to be retagged. It didn’t matter if their current one was self-inflicted or forced on them through their environment and circumstances, Jesus repainted them all. He painted a dynamic and vivid picture of glorious life as God designed it, covering over the past with mercy and grace. But what is the price tag for this paint job? It is priceless on the one hand, beyond anything anyone can afford, and yet on the other hand it is free, because the artist paid for it all!
Jesus is still out on the streets today, seeking those who want to be tagged by Him. It’s funny, but wherever I go now I notice Street Art. Outside Shoreditch station is large mural stating “Jesus loves you,” which many people are oblivious to as they hurry past to paint their day in whatever way they can, not realising they could be painted with perfection.
Jesus Loves You
In North London a couple of years ago a Banksy appeared on a wall behind a tree, it is of a figure holding a sprayer who has apparently just sprayed the wall behind the tree green resembling its foliage which then runs down the wall. Of course, nearly immediately it was covered with Perspex to preserve it, but already after just a couple of years it is beginning to look a bit tatty. The tree in front however, although pruned back hard, is pushing out new shoots and growth obscuring the picture behind. A tag of the artist who paints for eternity.
Tree by Banksy
