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How graffiti evolved from an eyesore to an art

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Who’s responsible for graffiti in 1986?

37 years ago

Duration 1:24

A proposed bylaw would compel building owners to clean up everything from tags to political messages, but not everyone supports the wording of the bill. Aired on CBC Toronto’s Newshour on Feb. 28, 1986.

A new exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explores the work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who first emerged by making graffiti with his friend, Al Diaz, in the late 1970s.

There was no mention of graffiti as art in the Toronto of 1986, when city council considered compelling property owners to remove words, pictures, drawings and the like on their buildings. But as the CBC’s Jay-Dell Mah reported, the proposed bylaw singled out only “slogans and markings” that were judged to “deface” buildings. The problem was in the interpretation: inspectors could apply the bylaw not just to tags, but also to political statements and commercial signs like the ones seen at the time on Honest Ed’s department store.

“We don’t want to become thought police down here at city hall,” said Coun. Jack Layton. “If it was a major problem across the city, then perhaps we’d have to look at something. I don’t think it is.”

‘Cartoon fungus’

 

Getting paid to make graffiti in 1996

 

Young artists employ cans of spray paint for their summer jobs. Aired on CBC’s Big Life on Sept. 20, 1996.

Just 10 years later, the CBC-TV lifestyle program Big Life explored the confluence of graffiti and art. Host Daniel Richler described graffiti as a “cartoon fungus” that was treated harshly by authorities in New York and L.A., but more gently in Toronto. A young artist, who got paid to paint over unwanted street scrawl, said she took issue with the distinction made between fine art and graffiti art.

“I don’t really think there’s much of a difference,” she told Richler. “They just use different mediums.”

Graffiti for a living

 

From 2002: How murals combat graffiti

 

A Toronto cop describes efforts to keep the city clean of graffiti. Aired on Canada Now in Toronto on Nov. 4, 2002.

In 2002, Toronto police still regarded graffiti as a blight that people often associated with crime, reported the CBC’s Linda Farr. But a police spokesman said murals in public spaces dissuaded vandalism. There was even a program that paid graffiti artists to paint in certain areas, said Farr. And artist Durothethird, profiled in her report, was making a living from graffiti.

“Sometimes I pay my entire rent in a couple hours,” he said. “So that’s pretty cool.”

Man and woman in front of colourful graffiti
A man and woman admire new graffiti art in Graffiti Alley in Toronto on Sunday June 7, 2020. Artists spent Saturday painting large murals with anti-racism messaging. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca

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A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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