The Devil's in The Details

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

History is a present tense proposition. A creative reading of the past is ultimately an active search for meaning. Graffiti is unfinished business outliving its time, watching its social and aesthetic meanings sway into new formations as the original context disappears. It has to. It has nowhere to go. All memory is utopia.

Supreme edited moments magnify reality. So goes the process. Progress is not always advanced complexity it can be reduced simplification. Concentrated gestures rather than cumulative intensity provide projections of paradoxical spontaneity in carefully staged moments. Demons suddenly seem to take over, angels take cover.

Sometimes it's tough to love what you have. It's best to forget what's lost. In the end, what you miss is nothing more than missing information. Cycles of completion collapse at will, circumvent closure. As all data is replaceable, all derelicts deserve forgiveness.

Kidnapped souls speak to us, in whispers, between opinion pieces and re-run headline news packages. They seem to say, to martyr is to deny truth. The seduction of faith is greater than hope. Faith defies logic enabling martyrdom to thrive on mystification. Affecting change is not limited to lobbying for legislation or lobbing hand grenades. Although they certainly comprise a means. Doing nothing is often my favorite sport.

The devil's in the details is the apt catch phrase of the moment. Figureheads look foolish trying to figure it out. I value the moral and immoral alike, considering the source and reconsidering the context. Great bonfires blaze across sunsets and false vistas of experience.

Waxing romantic is stuff for revisionists and idealists. Neither party knows how to stay in time or keep the beat, so I set my thermometer to medium tempo and take charge with reckless disregard. Graffiti writers are too cool to get tanked up on wanton emotion. Best to let beefs settle and the wonton soup simmer.

The language of images freezes desire. I prefer to be surrounded by graffiti rather than fugitive imagery. False standards of what is and isn't desirable is an education in immediacy. Living beyond the conflict is the strata of the sophisticate. After all, situating oneself in history is often overrated.


Read more in Byline

Art Crimes Front Page