Art: murals old and new

Since the time we lived in caves, we've been drawing on the walls. Sometimes Mom gets mad, sometimes the drawings are works of art. The first cave drawings were likely made using charcoal from the fire or stone tools harder than the cave wall. As humans progressed drawing became painting on the walls.

From the Minoans to Renaissance Italians to the present, frescoes have been the preferred method. In frescoes the pigment is laid down on fresh or wet plaster. As a side note, oil paintings on cave walls have been discovered in Afghanistan that date to the  mid-7th century CE (Common Era, also Current Era or Christian Era).

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Bamiyan Oil Painting, CAIS

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In more recent times Diego Rivera held the spotlight for murals, as well as a dispute with one patron that resulted in the destruction of his work "Man at the Crossroads." Here's one of his works still available for viewing.

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Rivera Mural in the National Palace, Mexico

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Often murals are considered decorative art, as stated in the article Reassessing Artworks of Ancient Rome. Pictured in the article is the fresco below. It may have been merely decorative (or commemorative) at the time, but has with the passing of time taken on more meaning.

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The Aldobrandini Marriage, NY Times

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Murals can be political statements, certainly in artist Rivera's case. In my view, street art often qualifies as murals, although they generally are more transitory. Here's a photo essay of The 50 Most Stunning Wall Murals From Around The World. Note that some of Rivera's pieces are included. The image below appears to me to be a statement some might call political.

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Berlin art at Oberbaumbrucke Bridge, The Scenic Sidewalk

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-- Marge

Street art and the life cycle of a neighborhood

LMNOPI, Portrait of Nasir Kidbreak Malave (photo © Jaime Rojo),, Brooklyn Street Art

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No, this is not an advertisement for street art in New York or the New York neighborhood of Bushwick.  It is a piece celebrating how art can change lives.

Life in Bushwick in the '80s was grim. The excerpt below describes a young man's experiences there:

After all the factory workers went home for the day, a rotating cast of prostitutes worked the block, withering under their addictions. As a boy, he thought the book “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” had to be some kind of joke.

When you ask him today if he has any good memories of the neighborhood, where he lived just up the block, Mr. Ficalora comes up empty. (New York Times, Bushwick Gets a Fresh Coat, 2006)

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Joseph Ficalora, the area's curator, NY Times

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Today Bushwick is ranked the 17th best neighborhood in Brooklyn by StreetAdvisor; for some reviews by locals, take a look at the Bushwick page. (Note: be sure to check the date of the review.) For an opinion piece posted at the New York Times site, take a look at 5 NY Times Articles That Changed Bushwick.  Also published by the NY Times, is this slideshow of works to view in Bushwick. The Bushwick Collective has a Facebook page.

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Dasic at work, Bushwick Collective, Facebook

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Two websites--Brooklyn Street Art and StreetArtNYC--offer views of art in Bushwick and other neighborhoods in the city.

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Dasic Fernandez and Okuda, Street Art NYC 

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-- Marge

Taking it to the street

While watching a video about spray painting techniques the other day, I realized that the artist was working on the street somewhere in Asia and that doing artwork on the street has elements of theater.  Wanting to know more about this aspect of art, I turned to Google search.  However, a search on 'street art', yields graffiti (tagging).  Zeroing in on the term 'street performer', I go closer but still not quite there.

But I did find an interesting article, "5 Crazy Street Performers (Who Happened to be Geniuses)," at Cracked.com.  The 5 performers are shown below, but please be sure to read the article -- it's well-written and a hoot.  Here's a sample of the writing, this part about Moondog:

A lot of street performers start off with a hard luck story, and Thomas Louis Hardin, or Moondog, was no exception. He was blinded by dynamite at age 16 ... aaaaand that's where his hard luck ended. Because despite performing with made-up instruments and making his living on sidewalks, Moondog was apparently a really influential musician. And also a little bit of a genius.

These videos of the performers were found on YouTube.

The first is Charlie Barnett, a contemporary of Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy, and mentor of Dave Chappelle.  Here he's performing in New York's Washington Square Park.  (Alert: rough language.)
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Then there's Moondog, who had Benny Goodman testify on the quality of his musicianship and performed with Julie Andrews.
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The story of Guy Laliberte -- accordian player, stilt-walker, and fire-eater -- who originated Cirque du Soleil is, well, inspiring.  Here Barbara Walters interviews him.  (Note:  ABC is exerting its copyright claim, don't be alarmed.)
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Here's a visual report on what happened when a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, played at a metro stop at rush hour as an experiment.  (Looks like the video went viral.)
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Then there's the guy with flaming whips, Adam Winrich. 
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Give a cheer for YouTube.

-- Marge

Street Art vs. Illegal Billboards

There's a war going on in Los Angeles between artists and corporations over what populates the city's outdoor surfaces.  An article in The Atlantic, titled "The Convoluted Path to Ending Los Angeles's Mural Ban," by Nate Berg gives some details on the issue.  Again corporations have demanded citizens' rights in the form of freedom of speech.  (For a somewhat biased, but accurate, description of corporate personhood, take a look at Josh Clark's article "Why do corporations have the same rights as you?")  As stated by author Berg --

In the late 1990s, the city was sued by the outdoor advertising industry, which argued that the city was unconstitutionally privileging one type of protected speech – murals – over another – advertising. As a result, the city enacted a ban on signage – including murals – in 2002. The rules were then adjusted, creating "sign districts" where signs and murals and billboards would be allowed. But what tended to happen in these districts is that large developments included space for signs, and that space tended to be allocated to paying advertisers rather than non-paying artists. As a result, large ads and billboards started popping up all over these areas, prompting outrage from many residents.

Another result was a crack-down on street artists. There's a movement afoot to save the murals, as you can see at the SPARC Save LA Murals site and in the videos below.  SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) is "is a non-profit community arts center based in Venice, California."

Below is a three-part series by Voice of Art that was published on YouTube that gives the artists' viewpoints.  i am OTHER is "is a new channel and cultural movement dedicated to Thinkers, Innovators and Outcasts."

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As street artist Lydia Emily explains in Part 2, political art can be a difficult experience.

-- Marge

This Land Was Made For You and Me...

With a nod to Google's 4th of July doodle, taking a look at street art, AKA grafitti.

Let's start with Art Crimes - The Writing on the Wall, a site devoted to grafitti.  Their subtitle pretty much says it all.  However, many tag (another word for grafitti) artists that start with writing on the wall and move on to successful careers in art.

An example of an extremely successful move to "serious" art is KAWS, former tag artist.  In the video below are some good views of an artist's studio and what having a gallery show is like.

Grafitti is a world-wide phenomenon.  I particularly like some of the Brazilian artists, such as Os Gêmeos.  Here's a review of Os Gêmeos from the New York Times and a pic from the review:

Please take time to look at the slide show of Os Gêmeos' work.

One of my all-time favorite videos shows a group of Japanese artists working on a wall (uhm, large surface?) for a week:

-- Marge