If Jonathan Jones’ opinion on Art as a whole even matters, then I have to say we are all screwed.  Art as a medium of communication, conveyance, or anything else, as we know it, is dead!  That’s because, in his summation, street art, and in my opinion, by proxy, anything less subversive, or alternative art forms, have become nothing more inspiring than a mortgage for a 2-up and 2-down in some suburban jungle of South-West London.  As if the likes of David Cameron made the genre of “Street Art” fashionable by merely taking a sample of work by Eine to the White House as a gift from one nation to another.  The reality is though, that Prime Minister Cameron rides nothing more than the crest of an existing wave, created by others, and that his rubber stamping of 1 specific artist, does not gloss over the credentials of the rest.

Jones’ published piece, Street Art is dying, is risible. The notion that Street Art’s acceptance by the middle class is simply killing it, is a joke.  Banksy might have become a by-word for respectability, as has Eine with his shutterfronts & murals spelling out any number of words in the English Oxford dictionary, but many an artist, or rather “vandal” sits beyond this perimeter.  The plethora of names to drag, kicking and screaming, out of the proverbial bag is enormous, perhaps even so long that Jones would be dead by the time it has finished being recited, but beyond this: what is dead about street art? I ask.

The kind of tripe that is written by Jones, can only come from the mouth of an individual who has no creative soul or emotional investment in any kind of art and who would find the likes of Dali too flaccid and Miro too evasive.  Who knows, maybe he likes to kiss the arse of many a living artist, any of which should remain nameless for fear of being outed (with lipstick marks freshly imprinted on cheeks for evidence).

When was the last time any self-respecting middle-class wonk opened a broadsheet to find out about the latest in the world according to #streetart? As if middle-class broadsheet-o-meter was any indicator of the ‘decline’ of street art.  By this projection, blockbuster shows by Titian and Turner, helping to fill the coffers of under-funded, under-valued and flagging institutions, not only represent truly dead artists, but also dead art forms.

The hubbub around these events that Jones simply dismisses as signs of a dying corpse may well not be in the printed media at large, but it has been covered by national/international television stations, and, more importantly in this day and age, it has cluttered up the inboxes, streams and feeds of those who actually care about these things.  In fact, the event specifically referenced, #seenoevil in Bristol, was a collaboration not just between 60 street artists from around the world, but with the council, to try and improve the state of a apparently decaying part of Bristol, which will have major knock-on effects beyond the event itself that took place, and it’s Jones’ rather 2-dimensional and cock-eyed view that causes councils and communities to lose out on the potential opportunity of these things.

Street art may well not be what it once was.  You can hardly blame it for the popularisation and spread of culture in a better connected world, but to claim it is dead and lacking in creativity is harsh:

Clearly there’s a fine line between street art and vandalism, and the defining lines appear to be the cheque book and/or expressed permission, but that being said, there will always remain an air of cool and respectability around defiance of the common marketplace and the culture of sell-out, and for every dozen Banksy’s there’s a legion of other street artists doing their work in dark corners at night.  So if you don’t like what they do, you can find yet another soul plying his trade in the same field. And if you are still dissatisfied, you can jog on to the taxpayer funded institutions that hang work by many a dead fella.  All that besides, perhaps before Jones goes pontificating on the longevity of Street Art, he should go about understanding the wider scene a little better, not least by picking up a book or two by Cedar Lewisohn.

To my mind, these events prove that street art is very much alive, kicking and taking no hostages. 50 somethings checking out the latest in the graff/street art scene might not be cool to Jones, but it’s a tad more accessible than Titian and his buddies, and generates better long term benefits for less money, and who is to say that’s not cool or representative of the death throws of street art.

All in all, Jones misses the point, and, in my rather brutal opinion, should really be demoted as some kind of “art” columnist for the Guardian newspaper.