The New York Post Seems Awfully Concerned About This Children’s Art Class
- Photo via Rookie Moms
This being the slowest possible time in the year’s new cycle, and the Post being the Post, and graffiti being an undisputed gateway into reckless life of crime, I guess this sort of makes sense. And if I’d thought of the headline “Spray It Ain’t So,” I’d probably have a hard time not using it.
Still, today’s write-up of an innocuous Park Slope art class for 5-year-olds is a little much, even by the Post’s standards, referring to a bunch of well-off little kids with cans of washable watercolor spray as a “next generation of taggers” “[armed] with spray paints” and “inspired by illegal street art.”
The same “street art,” one would think, that now sells for millions of dollars and hasn’t been a major concern in urban life for years. “We talk to them about how art can appear lots of places, not just in museums—we’re pushing boundaries,” said the teacher of the Private Picassos class, which also runs in Westchester and the Hamptons, and encourages kids to spray on tag board, not private property. “Kids see museum art that’s precise and classical — but they don’t necessary relate to it. It’s good to expose them to other concepts.”
It’s also generally good to keep small children occupied by letting them spray things onto other things while incurring a minimal amount of damage, in my limited experience keeping kids busy. But, who knows. Guess we can all agree to check in on these kids in 20 years or so, and see how much mayhem has ensued?
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.