Street art or eyesore? Montreal's graffiti is in the eye of the beholder – Montreal Gazette

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He was born Raymond Pilon, but it was his alter ego, Zilon, that earned him notoriety in Montreal and much of the world. And Zilon’s story speaks volumes about the evolution of street art here.

Zilon, who died in July, first made his mark — marks — as an underground artist in the 1970s with his punk-punctuated, message-laden work mostly showcased on walls around town. But like so many others in his orbit, his dazzling creations went on to become acknowledged in mainstream circles and also ended up at prestige galleries.

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Thanks to two recently wrapped summer festivals — Under Pressure Graffiti  and Mural Urban Arts — as well as image-seeking building owners commissioning works, our cityscape has been energized and has sparkled with magnificent murals featuring the likes of Leonard Cohen, Janine Sutto, Jackie Robinson, Oscar Peterson and the latter’s sister, Daisy Peterson Sweeney, plus myriad eye-popping abstracts that can rival almost anything at museums.

The irony, however, is that many of these same mural creators, like Zilon, began their careers as oft-vilified graffiti taggers — and, yes, some still continue with their covert scribbling ways by night. 

Life in this age of the mysterious English street artist Banksy — whose strong political messages have popped up around the planet — has turned previously held perceptions of art on its head. While the threat of arrest for illicit postings still exists around the world, there is now big money to be made in this genre. To wit: just the shreds of Banksy’s legit self-destructed piece, Love Is in the Bin, sold for $25.4 million U.S. two years ago in auction by Sotheby’s. A touring exhibition called Banksyland, which pays tribute to his works, comes to Montreal Sept. 8-16 at a yet undisclosed location.  

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Montreal street artist Monk.E, 41, who has been at the craft for 21 years, has yet to make a Banksy-like score. But he has followed a similar path, as have many others in his field. Once relegated to outsider status, Monk.E’s work has sprung up around town and 28 countries around the world on select building walls and in galleries. He is presently preparing a mural homage to Zilon in the courtyard of Les Foufounes Électriques, the base of the Under Pressure fest. 

“Zilon was such a pillar and a pioneer in opening the doors for the Montreal street-art movement,” says Monk.E, who characterizes his own work as “alchimiography,” combining ancient esthetics with contemporary urban art. “He started his career at a time when civil disobedience was a lot more controversial than it is now. But we’ve had a couple of decades to demystify what Zilon and others who were considered weird at the time were thinking.

“The Montreal scene is really exploding now. There is so much great talent and diversity here. But at the beginning, Zilon was the one to deal with all the heat and the judgments against his work, and he really helped pave the way for the rest of us.”  

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While Monk.E credits Zilon as the pioneer of the city’s street-art scene, he refers to Sterling Downey as its “godfather.” 

Yes, the same Sterling Downey, who has served as a Projet Montréal borough councillor in Verdun the last 10 years. Besides his independent councillor buddy Craig Sauvé — a heavy-metal musician who lured Downey into politics — there are few more intriguing characters on the municipal front than this borough councillor. Ever-engaging, ever-beaming, the distinctively bearded Downey, also an artist, ex-art director, ex-magazine publisher, musician, skateboarder and war-veteran activist, is the co-founder of the 28-year-old Under Pressure fest. In a former life, he was the prolific tagger known as Seaz and contributed his fair share of impressive murals.

“I prefer to think of myself in less grandiose terms as a spokesperson for the Montreal street-art movement rather than a godfather,” muses Downey, 50, in the Foufounes courtyard. 

Downey is quick to note, however, that while many view the proliferation of murals in the city as a bona-fide art form, plenty others see graffiti more as eyesores — mindless urban scrawls that can desecrate building walls, shops, bus shelters and even hydrants.  

“We use the term street art, but the word ‘art’ is in the context of that definition,” he says. “But when we talk about graffiti, it’s often just the act of spraying on a surface and has no other context. If you mix graffiti and add vandalism, you have a different context about writing without permission or damaging something, rendering it not useful.  

“Street art is interesting, because that’s a term that really appeared in the early 2000s. Prior to that, we spoke about it as graffiti and it was often paired with the notion of vandalism. Even revered artists back then still didn’t have the amnesty to do their art wherever they wanted. It still required permission on a public space or private property. But going back to the cave age, human beings have always had this inherent need to express themselves like this and to use walls to tell stories.” 

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So where do we draw the line? Downey is in an interesting and conceivably conflicting position here as both a champion of street art and an elected official.

“It’s not a complicated position for me. Even if I’m not an elected official, even if I’m just a citizen, there is a law that you’re not allowed to write on something without permission. A private-property owner can pursue you for damages. On public property, it’s the same thing. These people could get arrested, but are you going to put someone in jail for scribbling their name on a wall? So it’s usually just a slap on the wrist.” 

So graffiti, in whatever form and regardless of esthetic value, is still deemed vandalism when not sanctioned. 

“But It doesn’t mean that so-called vandalism can’t be art or creative,” Downey says. “When people understand the message or relate to the image, it’s not as threatening or as abrasive. There is a lot of truth in the saying ‘art is in the eye of the beholder.’ There are a lot of people who think that certain forms of vandalism are totally endearing, but it’s still illegal.” 

Downey points out that a lot of what some perceive as annoyances are “signature graffiti” — an elaborate version of a tagger’s signature.  

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Monk.E. doesn’t disagree: “We can’t deny that calligraphy is an art form. It’s not completely devoid of creativity, even though the average citizen may see it as somewhat destructive.

“Many other wild urban scrawls are to me like the illegitimate brother of outdoor paid advertising. Even if the results are deplorable to many, they come from a feeling of wanting to be heard. I try to show some empathy, because it’s really not based in evil. It’s a reaction to over-commercialization.”  

Downey concurs: “Advertising on the métro system or on highways can be an eyesore to me. The city is riddled with this visual pollution, but it’s okay because someone has paid for it.” 

What really offends Downey, however, is hate graffiti. 

“It’s when people cross the line of freedom of speech and do things with the intention to harm, hurt or offend others. If I see a swastika on a wall, I take offence to that. It’s graffiti. It’s illegal. … There’s no place for that in our society, especially knowing that my father went overseas at 16 to fight against that. I draw the line on all hate-based anti-Semitic, homophobic, Islamophobic and racist graffiti,” says Downey, who is involved with the Projet Montréal file on street art. >

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Downey is also fully sensitive to the fact that small shopkeepers as well as office-building owners are frequently deluged with unwanted graffiti and that city ordinances require that these properties must be maintained untouched. He notes that the city does clean up the graffiti for free, but only with the permission of the property owners. Then again, it can take a long wait period for action and city crews tend not to perform these cleaning services in winter. 

Street art can also be a very risky business for its creators. 

“The two biggest risks in Montreal are either criminal prosecution or getting severely injured and far worse in action,” says Downey, referring to the deaths of the three teen taggers killed by a passing train under the Turcot interchange in 2010. “In cities like New York, there is an enormous amount of vigilantism, where graffiti writers have been shot. It hasn’t happened here.”  

“People may wonder why street artists go to such great lengths in the name of art,” adds Monk.E, also a world-beat musician with numerous recorded discs. “I think artists are there to comfort those in discomfort, but they are also there to shake up those who are too comfortable.

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“Because street artists like Zilon risked it all and had something to say, I believe that’s why this has become such an influential contemporary art movement. We have come from a marginalized, hated medium to one that I feel is the fastest-growing visual culture of our times.” 

Power-washing away hate, one scrawl at a time

With the serene gaze of Leonard Cohen peering over him — from a massive mural on the Main — Corey Fleischer is power-washing away some graffiti on the Bagg Street synagogue.

This time, it’s not swastikas on the front door he is removing, as was the case last March. But Fleischer has pledged to take down any scrawls that pop up on any house of worship in the city at no charge — as soon as it is reported. 

For 14 years, Fleischer has operated a side, pro-bono endeavour called Erasing Hate, wherein he literally erases all manner of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and racist scrawls sprouting up anywhere around the city. Word of his mission has since spread around the world. He is consulted by citizens and politicians alike on the best means possible to remove the offending graffiti.  

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Fleischer’s issue now is that he has been spending increasingly more time on Erasing Hate than on his own for-profit business, wherein he removes non-threatening graffiti from commercial and residential properties. 

Unfortunately, business has boomed on the hate front over the years.

“When I started with Erasing Hate, maybe I would get 15 or 20 messages a year for removal,” the 42-year-old Dollard-des-Ormeaux native says. “Today, sadly, it’s closer to 3,000 messages a year. Some days, I’ll get 10.  

“Over COVID, it kind of slowed down a bit. But as soon as COVID slowed down, there was a major spike. Sure, people could call the city to clean it up, but that can take a long time for results.” 

Fleischer estimates that anti-Semitic scrawls represent about 80 per cent of his erasures with homophobic graffiti next, followed by Black and Islamophobic scrawls. 

“It’s heavily swastikas, with the majority being anti-Semitic, but they’re also targeted to the LGBTQ+ and Muslim communities. It gets really nuts during election times, when scores of posters with the faces of the politicians are marked with swastikas. That’s when I really get anxious.” 

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Fleischer recently returned from visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was asked to remove nearly 50 swastikas in the area. 

“This is not going away, here or around the world. It’s everywhere,” he says. “My goal is to get the graffiti removed before anyone can see it, so it makes no impact whatsoever. It’s at least an attempt to stop the cycle of hate before it mushrooms. For me, that’s more powerful than anything I can do. 

“The reality is that I really shouldn’t exist. The city should be there to do this instead.”  

Fleischer is quick to point out that he is a huge fan of the city’s mural scene and that the vast majority of our street artists are not hate-filled. 

“I’ve never been anti-graffiti. Many of the mural visuals created here are simply amazing. It’s art.” 

In the midst of removing the Bagg Street synagogue graffiti, Fleischer takes an admiring glance at the adjacent Cohen mural — created by Kevin Ledo.  

“If I could bring just one-hundredth of the goodwill to this city that Leonard Cohen has brought, I’d be a very happy man,” Fleischer opines. 

Cohen would likely concur that Fleischer has. And then some.

AT A GLANCE:

To reach Corey Fleischer, go to Erasing Hate on all social platforms. 

bbrownstein@postmedia.com 

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