Public art should be art

Allowing anyone to leave artwork on the wall of the Wall Art Gallery in Ogden looked like a great idea on paper. It just didn't look so good on the wall.

In an effort to tap the city's grass-roots creative spirit, the gallery let local artists use its outdoor facade as a canvas for freewheeling self-expression. Now the wall will be whitewashed. Some are crying censorship. Most people simply see it as "taking out the trash." Art in public places should have artistic merit.

The wall project went awry for the reason most best-laid plans do: a lack of planning and oversight. Other Utah cities can take a lesson from that. Art in public places is a wonderful concept. But there must be a process — not in the name of censorship, but in the name of quality. Not all expression is automatically artwork. And ugly scrawling has the opposite effect on citizens that good art does. Instead of invigorating and stimulating people, ugliness numbs and depresses them.

In fact, other Utah cities that want to experiment with graffiti art in public might take a page from the sketchbook of Tecate, a little town on the Mexican border.

Tecate is a haven for graffiti artists, but there are rules — rules ranging from copyright restrictions to decency concerns. By monitoring the program, Tecate now has some of the most striking and provocative graffiti art around, as the accompanying photo shows.

Artwork can be challenging, threatening, even explosive. But when it becomes just the scribblings of souls more interested in defacing than in creating, it loses its power and its value to the public.

Ogden is right to start anew. Artists should never be censored. But only a fool would think there are no borders to govern what is appropriate and not appropriate on a city street.

Ogden learned that lesson the hard way.

Other cities and towns in Utah now may not have to.