Street Art Against Bush is an observation by Jack Rusher, published here Tuesday, August 31, 2004. It is part of Objet Trouvé.
I found these on the wall.
New York is one of the best places in the country to observe the various forms of art generated through constructive civil-disobedience. The messages are mostly obscure and high minded or direct and vulgar, but the approach of the Republican National Convention has given these artists focus. Many forms of protest, from custom balloon fabrication to senseless shouting at men in suits, have arisen, but nothing has pleased me quite so much as the proliferation of protestant street art.
My mobile phone is equipped with a tiny camera. When I purchased the phone I couldn’t think of a good use for such a thing, but when I saw these stencils, posters and stickers, I knew what that camera was meant to do — sometimes one wishes to document, even in low fidelity, a thing that may not exist after a trip home for a proper camera.
These grainy pictures enhance the do-it-yourself, punk-rock aesthetic of the original images in a way that a better camera might not manage, working in the same manner as the soft candlelight of a trendy bar that shields a newly met couple from unwelcome visions until blood-alcohol assumes all responsibility for them.
I have enjoyed these pieces and others like them, but I nonetheless hope that the next four years are without so many opportunities for facile political humor. I would rather live in a country that is governed justly than one that is governed with comical incompetence.