Arts, Man on Wire, and Bomb the Suburbs

Lilian Sun Maczynska The Literary Imagination 20 August 2012 cheats, Man on Wire, and Bomb the Suburbs go to Houston, Texas at night. On an episode of Stephen shaver in America, produced by Andre Singer, standing on a head in a dimly lit room, surrounded by Houstons elite, actor and comedian Stephen Fry speaks of the importance of the wiles. Oscar Wilde quite rightly said, All guile is useless. And that may sound as if that intend its something not worth supporting. But if you in truth think about it, the things that matter in manner are useless. Love is useless. Wine is useless. Art is the jazz and wine of life.It is the extra, without which life is not worth living. In contrast to Fry, on that point are hoi polloi who compliments the government would cut funding for the machinations. And so there are the deviceists. People who fight for the right to implement their fine art, whether they consciously know theyre fighting or not. People who will go to amazing leng ths to typeface their art, and their dedication and determination is what gets them menti angiotensin converting enzymed division after year after year. People give care Philippe Petit, the quirky cut high-wire artist who flew from France notwithstanding to walk on a wire across the duplicate Towers, whose life is ceaselessly immortalized in the documentary Man on Wire.People like William Upski Wimsatt, one of the most prolific Chicago-born graffito artists, who elysian a generation of graffiti artists to view graffiti as an art form in his concord Bomb the Suburbs. Using whatever methods they can, illegal or not, they both resolveed to achieve their imagines and send their message to the world. They managed to suck out people out of the bored outlook mentioned in Georg Simmels scholarly essay The Metropolis and psychological Life.One of the most prominent situations where an artists dream pulled people out of the unconcerned manner in which they carried themselves was the 1974 high-wire walk amid the Twin Towers by Philippe Petit. High-wire travel is a form of tightrope walk, often like tight-wire walking, which is the elementary art of maintaining balance eyepatch walking on a tensioned wire. The difference mingled with the deuce is that high-wire is at a much greater height. The amount of ingress and balance and individual must have to give this is extremely important in the art of tightrope walking. This s a testament to the level of professionalism and dedication that Petit had. Although he gained his notoriety in the US for walking in the midst of the twin towers, he was already gaining observations from various early(a) places in the world, such as France, where he walked in the midst of the two spires of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and Australia, where he walked among the two sides of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Petit realized his dream of walking between the Twin Towers when he was sixteen, soon after he had taken up high-wire walking, while in the dentists office and seeing an artists rendering of the towers as they would look when built.His passion for the art of high wire is best explained by Petit himself in the documentary Man on Wire enjoin by James Marsh. Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion to spurn to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to reiterate yourself, to see each(prenominal) day, every year, every theme as a true challenge and accordingly you are going to live your life on a tightrope. Because of his strong desire to be anything entirely boring, Petit put everything he had into his art.He practiced with family and friends, permitting them service him improve so that one day he would achieve that dream of walking between the Twin Towers. After numerous years of planning and many hours the previous night sightting up, Petit began taking his beginning(a) steps on the wire. They were all indifferent and did not noti ce, except the people who were in on the putsch (his nickname for the act). In 1903, German sociologist, Georg Simmel speaks of the blase positioning the sights and sounds of the city brought to its inhabitants in his essay The Metropolis and mental Life. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as the blase attitude. The blase attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. (Simmel par. 5) This is very much the attitude New Yorkers had when Petit started walking across the wire, on the Morning of August 7, 1974. Only after his then girlfriend, Annie Allix, began screaming and pointing to the people around them require Look Look, a wire-walker Hes walking did people look up and see him, this magnificent artist, walking on the wire, and they were astounded. Said the police officer, Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was sent to uplift him, I observed the tight rop e dancer because you couldnt call him a walker approximately half-way between the two towers. I personally figured I was watching something that somebody else would never see once more in the world. Thought it was once in a life sentence. By following his dream, no matter the adventure (falling to his death, getting arrest d for trespassing), Philippe Petit brought to the world, his own little piece of art, forever immortalized in history, and will ceaselessly be known as the man who fixed in the clouds. Fast forward twenty years, and youve wandered into the time period of William Upski Wimsatt. A poor white boy, growth up in the ghetto of Chicago, he was gifted with the art of graffiti. graffiti is a form of normal art, unre trailably spray painted on walls, lamppost, mail boxes, or any other public surfaces, originally use as a form of marking territories between gangs. As time progressed, it became less of a mark of territory, and more of an art form.When graffiti emerg ed as an art form in the late 1960s in New York City, it was immediately a contentious topic. (Bowen 22) The connotation with gangs and vandalism have fueled the media to paint it in a negative light, and many graffiti artists, or writers as many of them consider themselves, feel that if they wheel spoke up about it, they would be patronized for their art and passion, especially since so many artists came from the ghetto, so instead, they however continued to quietly graffiti on their own, further signing their pieces with their signature, or what is known in the graffiti world as a tag.Above William Upski Womsotts tag (left), A piece by Upski entitle Upski (right) A 20-year-old Wimsatt saw the injustice behind this and set out to be a pioneering graffiti writer, to be a hip-hop organizer in Chicago, and the be a hip hop journalist. (Wimsatt 164) in regularize to revel in the art of graffiti. He writes lets notice the city. lets celebrate the ghetto and the few people who ar ent running outside(a) from it. Lets stop fucking up the city.Lets stop fucking up the ghetto. Lets start defending it and making it work for us. (Wimsatt 11) On the surface of it all, it seems as if Wimsatt only has a strong personal vendetta against suburbs, but he also supports the art of graffiti in a strong way, being an artist himself. With the publication of his book, he shaked a generation of graffiti artists in the 80s and 90s to not overcompensate their art, but to display it proudly and have pride in it and they city in which they live.Although the act of vandalism is illegal (Wimsatt tells of stories where he had to hide and run from the police, or what he perceived to be the police in his paranoia), Wimsatt encourages the act of graffiti in spaces where it can be seen, writing to a winnow and fledgling graffiti artist, Choose spots that maximise the good impact of the work, while minimizing its bad side-effects. maximise public exposure, surprisingness and daring of a piece, while minimizing its insult, and cost to people of the city.The best targets for piecing are usually abandoned buildings, rooftops, and neighborhood permission walls, especially in unexpected places. Questionable targets include all public or private property that gets buffed and raises the cost of living. (Wimsatt 57) With this, he deliberately proves that he wants to bring recognition and fame to the bag of the art of graffiti for the art, and not for any annihilating reason. Petit and Wimsatt have both brought fame to themselves, and their humanities.They both risked getting arrested by the police to be able to showcase this, to inspire a nation, and to motivate a generation. Through diligence, commitment, and persistence, artists every day, not just Philippe Petit and William Upski Wimsatt, contribute to the life great power of the arts, as more and more people sire aware of the importance of the arts, and rally to support it. Petit and Though, yes, the arts are not necessary to live, and not every person needs it to be able to keep on a job or anything of the like, however, if one would just imagine the works without art, it is a bleak world.No paintings, no music, no tv, no fashion, no anything that makes this world one worth living in. Like Stephen Fry said, Art is the love and wine of life. It is the extra, without which life is not worth living. 10 Philippe Petit and William Upski Wimsatt unquestionably believe that. Works Cited * Bowen, Tracey E. Graffiti Art A Contemporary Study of Toronto Artists. Studies in Art Education41. 1 (1999) 22-23. Print. * Fry, Stephen. Mountains and Plains. Stephen Fry in America. Dir. John-Paul Davidson and Michael Waldman.BBC. 02 Nov. 2008. Television. * Man on Wire. Dir. James Marsh. Prod. Simon Chinn. By Igor Martinovic, Michael Nyman, J. Ralph, and hex Godfrey. Magnolia Pictures, 2008. DVD. * Simmel, Georg. Altruists International 404 Error Page. Altruists International 404 Error Page. N. p. , n. d. Web. 23 Aug. 2012. http//www. altruists. org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and%20Mental%20Life%20(Georg%20Simmel). htm. * Wimsatt, William Upski. Bomb the Suburbs. New York, NY Soft Skull, 2000. Print.