{"id":3424,"date":"2013-01-06T13:35:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T18:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/?p=3424"},"modified":"2013-01-08T06:44:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T11:44:36","slug":"sweet-montreal-graf-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/06\/sweet-montreal-graf-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Montreal Graf Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is not my first post about Montreal&#8217;s street art\/ graffiti. <a href=\"http:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/04\/sweet-montreal-graf\/\" target=\"_blank\">Back in June<\/a>, I waxed poetic at some length. Montreal is, as I said back then, a pretty happening place for street art\/ graffiti, with a lively and inventive scene.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 561px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  \" title=\"Montreal graffiti - waxhead - Plateau alleyway 2012\" alt=\"Montreal graffiti - waxhead - Plateau alleyway 2012\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-vIoAiyYePT4\/UOm8ZHoqieI\/AAAAAAAAGPs\/TakfcWZgjTo\/s735\/IMG_9255.JPG\" width=\"551\" height=\"735\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">waxhead &#8211; Plateau alleyway behind the Main<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Graffiti is a term rife with drama these days as people fight about legal versus illegal, street art versus graffiti, writers versus muralists versus taggers versus stencilists, and nobody ever really wants to acknowledge whether gluing things in public places, wheatpasting, stickering, drawing with chalk, scratchiti, or all kinds of other explorations really counts as graffiti or not.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" title=\"Montreal graffiti - Omen - Plateau Mont-Royal\" alt=\"Montreal graffiti - Omen - Plateau Mont-Royal\" src=\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/-CV7LJD2u0B8\/UOm7nWFFjjI\/AAAAAAAAGBc\/yfXj9um-o28\/s800\/IMGP2860.JPG\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Omen &#8211; Rue Coloniale on boarded-up windows, Plateau Mont-Royal<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the whole division between political graffiti and more traditional b-boy culture graffiti versus art graffiti. Personally, I don&#8217;t care. As long as it&#8217;s visual art (and I really do think that all these forms count as visual art) and it&#8217;s in the public eye, I applaud it. I am sick of the discourse of public visual space being dominated by advertising media, with the police and other authorities trying to suppress the discourse implicit in graffiti.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 990px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" title=\"Montreal graffiti - Labrona, Gawd, Peru and friends - Mile-End garment district\" alt=\"Montreal graffiti - Labrona, Gawd, Peru and friends - Mile-End garment district\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/-uwcIJeo3UzA\/TvTJPcbZ08I\/AAAAAAAAEKU\/Jl3NU7iy6U8\/s980\/IMG_6072.JPG\" width=\"980\" height=\"735\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Labrona, Gawd, Peru and friends &#8211; Mile-End garment district<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Sure it&#8217;s vandalism, but there&#8217;s tons of illegal billboards in every neighbourhood that somehow slip under the radar &#8211; how does a freaking BILLBOARD squeak through but a guy with a marker is suddenly considered the more serious problem, worthy of police crackdowns, special announcements from the mayor, and public advertising campaigns (oh the irony).<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 498px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  \" title=\"Montreal graffiti - Artung - advertising kiosk reclamation\" alt=\"Montreal graffiti - Artung - advertising kiosk reclamation\" src=\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/-aAbkHiO-_xo\/TvTIqBVwPbI\/AAAAAAAAEHQ\/XNlNqJ1LMAw\/s735\/IMGP0960.JPG\" width=\"488\" height=\"735\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artung &#8211; Plateau Mont-Royal advertising kiosk reclamation (these kiosks were declared illegal by the borough but the ad companies continue to use them while they counter-sue)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And yet, Montreal is one of the most graffiti-friendly cities I&#8217;ve seen. It&#8217;s one of the many things I love about this place. Back in June I said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Montreal is a pretty happening place for street art.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/102416180837899623869\/SweetMontrealGraf\" target=\"_blank\">Here is a selection<\/a>\u00a0of over 800 photos from my collection of Montreal street art \u00a0that I\u2019ve taken over the last 10 years (almost) \u2013 2002 to 2011. I haven\u2019t added in 2012 because it\u2019s not over yet, and there\u2019s always lots of fresh, new work every year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, now it&#8217;s nearly a thousand images: <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/u\/0\/photos\/102416180837899623869\/albums\/5628817597500440433\" target=\"_blank\">Montreal street art\/graffiti 2002-2012<\/a>. Enjoy!<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 561px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" title=\"Montreal graffiti - What Is Adam - Mile-End alley wheatpaste\" alt=\"Montreal graffiti - What Is Adam - Mile-End alley wheatpaste\" src=\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/-_6xILijkr5c\/UOm7_lx5-lI\/AAAAAAAAGHw\/s2oYePMaE1k\/s735\/IMG_9123.JPG\" width=\"551\" height=\"735\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">What Is Adam &#8211; wheatpaste &#8211; Mile-End alley behind the Main<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is not my first post about Montreal&#8217;s street art\/ graffiti. Back in June, I waxed poetic at some length. Montreal is, as I said back then, a pretty happening place for street art\/ graffiti, with a lively and inventive&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[628,348,196],"tags":[253,201,204,152,257,256,715,255,713,259,716,679,714],"class_list":["post-3424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-contemporary-art-2","category-street-art","tag-graffiti","tag-montreal","tag-mural","tag-photography-2","tag-spraypaint","tag-stencil","tag-stenciling","tag-sticker","tag-stickering","tag-street-art-2","tag-tagging","tag-wheatpaste","tag-wheatpasting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JDlZ-Te","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}