I was warmed to see last night, Will Gompertz’s review on BBC Newsnight of the new Hepworth Museum in Nottingham.  Although the architecture and the contents were awe inspiring, as is all good artwork, the main point of interest was the cold hard economics of the equation.

During the course of the piece, Gompertz talked about how the visitor count to the new Hepworth had been double the anticipated total, and that the majority of the new visitors had been “young” and “from the city”.  Moreover, the new influx of visitors as a result of the £30M investment to the museum, had in the first year alone generated an estimated £8M to the local economy.  In effect “Modern Art” was going to pay its way in under 4 years at that rate, assuming that the unabated success of the Hepworth merely stayed static, but with such good press, who could imagine that?

This kind of story explains the reasoning behind the slew of new modern and contemporary art institutions popping up all over the country, the first of which was likely the Baltic Centre in Newcastle, and most recently the Turner Contemporary in Margate, as well as the massive expansion of the Tate Modern in London.  Clearly modern art “sells” in droves.  We live in a cold, hard, capitalist economy, and when there is money to be made, even in the cultural sector, whose ethos isn’t to merely pander to populist demand, then it seems hard turn a blind eye, especially when councils the length and breadth of the nation need to cash in on something, and improve the long term prospects of their own localized and squeezed economy.

This, in a round-a-bout way brings me on to my favourite topic of street at and graffiti.

I think that the response to LA MOCA’s current exhibition Art in the Streets, is also real proof that there is a voracious appetite for contemporary art, and more importantly street culture and that again there is a real trick being missed by many institutions and galleries.  The Banksy show in Bristol, the Cans Festival on Leake Street in London, the series of events organised by Mutate Britain, all “eaten for lunch” by a massive number of people, and yet street art, despite it’s slow ‘mainstream-ification’, though the likes of Banksy and Shepard Fairey continues to be vilified as the enfant terrible of contemporary art because of it’s association with graffiti.

It’s an interesting read, Cedar Lewisohn’s Abstract Graffiti, the only book on street art I have, as yet, purchased for myself based solely on its content, much as a piece of good artwork.  He presents the case on both sides, on one part talking to the likes of Sweettoof and Futura 2000 about said topic, as well as  the Honourable Judge Hardy, who himself has sent down a number of ‘offenders’, a process which only enhances the credibility of the graff-head!  Maybe we should be putting their work galleries instead? hahaha

As street art and graffiti voyeurs and navel gazers, we consume our product in the streets.  We are driven by passion and a love, though this seems to be at odds with everyone else, most of all the councils who spend time buffing walls at tax-payer’s expense, and the legal system who of course has an obligation to protect private property. Who could disagree?  But when you have a plum opportunity to harness creativity and ‘legalise it’?  Not only that, but to get the attention and the voice of the youth of today and reflect it back to other generations, then why sit on your arse and twiddle your thumbs?

I imagine that we will see our first million dollar Banksy in my lifetime.  Pocket change, when Mister Damien Hirst will no doubt encrust enough diamonds on something to convince an erstwhile mug to part with the better part of 1 billion dollars and have no change left afterwards.  No doubt a gallerist in New York is licking his very moist lips at the prospect of commission on that sale.  But with all that said and done, even that million dollar price tag won’t buy immediate respectability for lesser mortals.

For each and every ‘graffeur’ who claims of sell out, every ‘good boy’ has to pay his way somehow, and when it’s a million times harder to rack your spray and the cost is exorbitant, then the option of “selling out” or earning a living from being an “artist” becomes a harsh reality.  The business of street art is growing, perhaps in direct correlation to the number of ‘throw ups’ and ‘street art’ galleries. One thing is for sure, it’s certainly not going to go away any time soon, and the long term separation of it from “graffiti” and the acceptance of it as an means to improve and inspire people lives, both in the street, and in a gallery, will only compound year-on-year.

It has been a long journey to this point, started, though not conceived by the likes of Basquiat, Haring and others, though they ended up sidling up to respectability and modern art with our good friend “Andy” and we no longer view them as street artists.  It seems a tad odd that we are, even now, still talking about street art as the outsider and that it still has a long way to go.  Who knows maybe it hits a peak every time and then fades away, purely due to the resistance to the so-called ‘criminality’ of it.

Despite all the grand-standing by police and the right wing contingent around the LA MOCA facility hosting the street art exhibition, the figures again speak for themselves, and businesses are reaping the rewards thereof, not just of locals coming to the exhibit, but people flying through international airspace to go see it and spend their hard-earned dollars in doing so.  Business is up ten-fold.  Any good Republican would acquiesce and be heartened by that kind of pay day, even if they had to put up with a little excess graffiti in the ‘hood for a short while, something which city budget will pay to clean off anyhow.  Let’s just call it the ‘cost of doing business’.

So there you go. I like to think that street art and its influence knows no bounds and is going to continue on an upward trajectory, even more so now that artists have their audiences in social networks and can side-step ignominy of selling out to a gallery, though even that comes one day as a practicality of wanting to remain a creative mind, not a business one.

I am looking forward to more art galleries, museums and the like jumping on the “Street Art Bandwagon” and helping the cause, if not themselves in the process.

Bristol here I come!