Wednesday, 21 November 2012

OUGD401 - Lecture notes: Graffiti and street art

Graffiti and Street Art (Wall and Street)

Caves at Lascaux, France
  • Drawings and paintings on cave walls from the Paleolithic period (17,300 years old)
  • Discovered in 1940 by four teenagers
  • Depicting scenes of everyday life, hunting etc
  • Scratched with animal bones, natural pigments
Ancient Roman Graffiti
  • From Pompeii (Italy) graffiti on wall
  • Vulgar images
Kilroy/Chad - WWII
  • Engraving of Kilroy on the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C
  • UK slogan "wot no..."
  • The humour is about where it is placed
Paris May '68
  • Where the Paris riots occurred
  • Massive development for graffiti
  • Largest general strike ever in France bringing the economy to a standstill
  • Graffiti fuses the bodies together showing strength
1970's Urban Graffiti

1970's New York
  • Spray can graffiti
  • Evolves alongside hip hop culture
  • Making the language of the streets visible
  • Announcing a presence, and saying 'we will not be ignored
  • The purpose of spraying tube carts is for the purpose that it is spreadable and the messages travel with them. Having a voice on the street and a way of asserting a presence.
  • The hip hop scene and the disco scene were both around in the 1970's
John Naar, photographer 1973
  • Preserved the anonymity of the person on the photograph putting graffiti on the wall
  • A way of communicating a dissatisfaction with a difference in wealth in New York
  • Messages sent from deprived areas to the more affluent areas
  • 'The vast majority of these writers came from the most run down and neglected sections of New York'
Jean-Michael Basquiat (1960-88)
  • Starts as a graffiti artist and moves into the art school
  • Neo expressionist painting
  • Dies of Heroine overdose at 27
  • He fused the idea of a written message and a visual message
  • One of his graffiti projects was to produce phrases produced by SAMO (same old)
  • They had a poetic but confusing style ('life is confusing at this point') an element of humour, asking us questions but not giving us the answer
  • Appearing all over Manhatten
  • Grows into a cult - people were looking for the phrases to appear
  • In 1979 he kills the character - SAMO is dead
  • Unauthored statement because we don't really know if it the same person producing these poetic phrases
Warhol and Basquiat
  • General Electric with waiter, 1984 - comment of capitalism
  • One of Americas largest corporations
  • Collaborated towards the end of his life, Basquiat died of a heroine overdose 18 months after Warhol
Keith Haring, radiant baby, 1990
  • One of his most famous symbols
  • He is also a social activist as well as an artist
  • Works in the street in the subway
  • In 1981 he sketched his first chalk drawings on black paper and painted plastic, metal and found objects
  • In 1984, Haring visited Australia and painted wall murals in Melbourne
  • Gets commissions all over the world
  • Other commissions - Rio, Paris, Berlin
  • Often has a message about sexuality
  • Working at a time when AIDS/HIV was a huge subject
  • Popshop - closes in 2005 which was selling t-shirts, toys, posters bearing his signature images
  • It was a celebrity hangout
  • Closed because it was criticised for his commercialism and the fact he had already been commissioned
John Feckner, Broken Promises, 1980
  • Genre of word art used to make a social or political comment
  • 'Broken Promises' - political misuse of space in the city
  • Whilst people are homeless there are empty buildings
  • Stencilled words on a wall
Jenny Holzer Times Square Show, 1980
  • You may not necessarily realise that what you are looking at is an artwork as we are so used to looking at messages
  • Using digital art
  • She makes phrases which state the obvious but at the same time prompt you to think about the obviousness
  • 'Abuse of power comes as no surprise' - statements have an authority
  • We don't know where the statements are coming from and who they are coming from
Video game culture

Graffiti from the Berlin wall
  • Knocked down in 1989
  • Lack of technology available in the Eastern bloc and lack of brands
  • The symbolism of the wall coming down - at last we can have this influx of goods and technology
TATS CRU, 1997 for Coca-cola
  • Appeal to the youth buyer
  • Distortion of the idea of graffiti in a sense that we are being reduced to visual style and there is no act of rebellion or claim of territory
Graffiti investigated in gaming
  • Jet Set Radio (2000-2003)
  • Sideways New York
  • Grand Theft Auto-tagging
Invader
  • French artist, born 1969
  • First mosaic mid 1990's Paris
  • Mosaic tile which has permanency as it is weatherproof and more difficulr to remove than paper/paint
  • Tiles are pixel like
  • The 'invasion' spreads first across French cities then 22 countries worldwide
  • Inspired by 70's and 80's game play
  • In Montpellier - conceptual element: points on a map form a space invader - a form of real game play - sends you off on a mission to collect his work
Re-emergence of Street Art
  • Banksy Kate Moss - inspired by Andy Warhol
  • Shepard Fairey 2008
Parisian Photographer JR, Favela Morro Da Provienda - Rio, 2008
  • Makes photographic portraits of members of the community
  • Posting the photographs on the side of buildings
  • The idea is to highlight the social realities of what it is like to live in Rio in a tough environment
  • The mothers, sisters look down on the area in a protective way
Blu (Italy) and Os Gemeos (Brazil) Lisbon, 2010
  • A commissioned piece of work
  • The image covers the whole building and the building becomes part of the crown
  • Sucking the globe dry through a straw - sucking the world's resources
  • Social comment with some sort of agreement for it's production
  • He is really well known for his anumated graffiti (2008) Figures move across buildings and come alive
  • This was copied in the Vauxhall Corsa Ad in 2011 - man walks along the street with the car
123 KLAN (France)
  • Founded as a graffiti crew in 1989 by Scien and Klor
  • Have gradually turned their hands to illustration and design while maintaining their graffiti
  • An example is that there are commissioned to produce a t-shirt - names of the ghettos on one side bringing attention to the split in the urban environment
Paul Curtis (Moose) reverse graffiti
  • Tunnel walls in Leeds City Centre
  • He uses stencils to blast off with a water jet the dirt on the walls
  • Rather than adding to the environment which needs to be removed he does the opposite
  • Producing a forest of trees in a very concrete jungle
  • Beautifies them with a natural scene
  • Made by a team of people
  • Sound Clash record label
The global picture
  • Important aspect of graffiti as there in a crossing and erosion of boundaries. It can adapt a place and at the same time transcends it
Free Art Friday
  • Art movement - a group of people who work worldwide and invide artists to leave a piece of art for people to take away in the street
  • Portable and removable
  • You put a label on the piece of work that you are leaving out so that the person knows that they can take it away
Sam 3 (Spain) Murcia 2010
  • Uses only black paint to produce silhouette on a billboard
  • Responding to an existing environment - poster falling off the billboard
  • The city becomes a backdrop for a shadow puppet show
  • Seen as a stage where the narrative can be told
  • No attempt by the audience to explain the story to us
VHILS aka Alexandre Farto (Portugal) London 2008
  • The plaster is knocked away from the brick to form a negative image in a sculptural relief
Faith 71
  • Amsterdam
  • Red stickers round a natural hole in plaster
  • Bridges the gap between hyperealist art and hyperabstract art effortlessly
  • Quiet statement almost inviting you to join the dots to make the image yourself
Diva (Brooklyn)
  • Idea put forward that graffiti art is a way of escaping gender
  • It doesn't matter whether you are male or female
  • 'Diva' in pink and orange colours to show it is made by a woman
Fafi (France)
  • Playing on feminisation of the street
  • Cartoonist sexuality on the street
  • Her style often incorporates an element of animal representation
Herakut
  • Mythical character
Swoon
  • Studied paiting and her characters contain a folk character reference
Art of resistance
  • JR places his work on the wall in Bethlehem
  • An attempt to address the grimness of the object itself
  • Asking people to pull faces to put on the wall
Banksy 2005
  • Looking at the wall as an invitation of decoration
  • Stencils the image of the girl with the balloons rising up above the top of the wall escaping it
  • A dialogue - the idea of graffiti appearing and being added to 'Sister you need more'
  • Indigenous folk art - mural of a political concern to free Palestine
  • Ctrl+alt+delete - the impact of the wall has been most severe on rural communities - removing the wall through language






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