marking his territory January 22, 2008
Mark Folse has a new blog called Toulouse Street. He has a post detailing the goings-on of Fred Radtke, a.k.a. The Grey Ghost, a guy who has appointed himself to the position of New Orleans’ graffiti vigilante. Radtke has a vendetta going against an artist named Michael Dingler, who has been leaving temporary artworks around town on the theme of “Nola Rising.” You must read the story to believe it, but Radtke has involved the NOPD, the City Council and Freeport-McMoRan in his wrong-headed effort to cover graffiti with grey paint all over town, and to persecute this artist. Dingler has been making public art pieces that are entirely removable, from what I have seen. What could these people be thinking?
Personally, I’m not in love with graffiti. I’ve seen some stunning drawings made with spray paint on walls, but I don’t like the involuntary nature of it from the property owner’s perspective. A really talented artist would probably be successful in getting the property owner’s permission, if he/she made a decent presentation. Most of the graffiti I’ve seen lately in New Orleans consists of a profile of a cartoon penis with two testicles. Or perhaps it’s supposed to be a gun. Anyway, it’s not very original. I’m told that some graffiti is actually gang symbols, but I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.
I think graffiti also serves as a disincentive for commercial property owners to make their buildings look decent. It costs a lot of money to paint a building. Why should people spend that money if they know it’s going to have a penis/gun spray painted on it the next day?
So along comes Fred Radtke. He isn’t just annoyed or bored by graffiti, he hates it. He made a unilateral executive decision to cover all the graffiti he finds in New Orleans with an even bigger swath of grey paint. It is apparently impossible to get through to this blockhead that blobs of grey paint are NOT better than spray painted drawings, even if they are made by marginally talented people, or even if they consist of nothing but disembodied curse words.
Radtke’s vendetta against Dingler, whose removable art works are not the same thing as graffiti and are infinitely preferable to Radtke’s obnoxious slashes of grey paint, shows you what this guy is really doing. He is making his own marks all over town. If he was really motivated by a desire to clean up ugly and offensive defacements off people’s property, he would use different paint colors to more closely match the colors of the buildings he is “fixing.” But no, he doesn’t want to do it in your color, he wants it in his color. He wants everyone to know that Radtke was here. This guy is basically an aggressive dog, sniffing out the places where other dogs have peed, and peeing on top of their pee. That will show them!
If the NOPD wants this guy to paint on their property, that’s between him and the NOPD. Someone needs to clue them in, however, that by harassing Dingler they are doing nothing more than assisting Radtke in his efforts to eliminate his competition for outdoor artistic alpha dog. I am told that the City Council is no longer funding Radtke’s vast purchases of grey paint, and that’s a good thing. If the council still thinks that graffiti eradication is a pressing problem, with all we currently have going on, I suggest they appoint a committee of people who know what the hell they are talking about (y’know, like artists), and make Michael Dingler the chairman.
- Posted in : main, new orleans
- Author : dangerblond
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