The Church of Santa Maria Novella, The Opera del Duomo Museum, the Uffizi
Gallery. Florence is forever tied to Renaissance art history and shares its
cultural riches with the world daily, including an endless stream of graphic
design and art history students who study in this Italian city every year. The
only drawback is, there is often a complaint by people creating art today that
there is only proper reverence and space given to those dead artists in this
city – not the ones whose hearts beat today.
Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
Which may be why RUN and Basik had to run to a suburban area of the city to paint this new large scale mural. “Not much renaissance around,” RUN tells us. “Nothing like the center of the city with all the untouchable art from the past.” The Italian graffiti artist has matured into a fully realized modernist interpreter of form and sophisticated master of color on the street. Here he joins with Basik to depict a rumble between two wrestlers.
Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
The style of these wrestlers may not be evocative of the style of “Hercules and Antaeus” by Antonio del Pollaiuolo at Ufizzi, but it definitely commands modern Florencians’ attention on the street today – a spectacular example of art on the street for everyone, not just a privileged few. In fact, RUN tells us that these wrestlers are more of an allegory for the people and the struggles people are having right now.
“We feel that people here are put in a constant challenge to combat conditions of poverty and ignorance.” Seeing this work here we are reminded of something BSA has been saying for some time; It is evident with the work of Street Artists globally over the last decade and a half that we have entered into a New Renaissance, but this time it is happening around the world. It is exciting to see this latest example present in the outskirts of Florence to help us put it into context.
Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
Today we celebrate the life of and honor the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. on this very cold winters’ day in New York.
Among his many writings and speeches are the ones that ultimately identified the class system and the power dynamic that underlies systemic inequalities. While the country is now more than ever in the deadly embrace of an entrenched military industrial complex that looks to perpetuate its own income by starting wars, eating up the lions share of our annual budgets, we realize how some of MLKs harder truths about financial inequality were the ones that made him most hated as well because they threatened a status quo. As bad as it looks to you, it looks absolutely perfect to some.
Chris Stain’s “Winter in America” (courtesy the artist)
As we have watched a precipitous decline in the average American’s standard of living in the last 40 years, we can now see that the poor are poor not because of some moral failing but because the system is deliberate; designed to keep them there. With robots and other forms of automation preparing to sideswipe the workers of the world in the next five years, MLK’s ideas about a guaranteed annual income seem not only fair and wise, but also pragmatic and prophetic.
Seen in the NYC Subway
Banner photo credit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. locks arms with his aides as he leads a march of several thousands on March 17, 1965 in Montgomery, Ala. (Credit: AP)
We’re up to our necks in deep frosty wind-whipping winter, and yet the Street Art right now is verbose, detailed, bright eyed, distinct, political, critical, stylish, dense, richly colorful.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring Armyan, Captain Eyeline, Cash4, China, City Kitty, COMBO, CP Won, Food Baby Soul, Glare, Jaroe, Jaye Moon, Jazi, Marameo Universe, Plasma Slug, Rodak, Sara Lynne Leo, Smells, UK WC, and Winston Tseng.
Miguel Ángel Sánchez AKA SATURNO is an artist from a small town near Barcelona in Spain. A self-taught painter and illustrator, he’s become a recognized name in the European graffiti scene since he began in 1995, biting off a bigger piece of fame with each project.
Since 2012 he’s developed his own, unmistakable style that frightens and thrills in equal measure, and he has been painting his fantastical creations on walls big and small across Europe. With an illustration style that boasts ultra-real monsters and characters of exaggerated proportions and serious high gloss, he’s led and collaborated on many commercial projects and brands in the last few years with fire-breathing success.
The 2019 edition of Art Basel/Wynwood this past December allowed him to showcase his imagination and skills in quite remarkable ways on a couple of murals in Wynwood, Miami. One, in particular, is this astoundingly baroque beast dressed in the finest regal threads, dripping jewels, and saliva with bulging eyes and a voracious appetite for consumption.
Fans say Saturno examines the subconscious and darker aspects of people and behaviors with his work – which may lead one to conclude that this epic character is a thinly veiled metaphor for opportunist alligators whom you may meet here who are trolling flamboyantly through this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, regaling themselves with so many shiny baubles. Certainly this reptilian socialite is audacious and confidently showy, and Saturno has hit gold with a likeness that is both repulsive and compelling.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Dinner For Few.” A short film by Nassos Vakalis. 2. NYCHOS. Five Weeks Of Rabbit Eye Movement 3. Futura X Wynwood Walls. Chop ’em Down Films 4. Shok1 in St. Petersburg, Florida
BSA Special Feature: “Dinner For Few.” A short film by Nassos Vakalis.
“Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry of wonderful times to come,” an applicable bromide for all those folk who got the big Trump tax cut last year. Meanwhile, you are rationing your insulin.
“(The capitalist machine” solely feeds the select few who eventually, foolishly consume all the resources while the rest survive on scraps from the table. Inevitably, when the supply is depleted, the struggle for what remains leads to catastrophic change.”
NYCHOS. Five Weeks Of Rabbit Eye Movement
A road-trip film is an ideal vehicle for mythmaking and definition of persona, especially when accompanied by timely music choices and distracted stares into the burned horizon. This amber-tinged panoply of rockstar travel shots, nomadic spraycation side trips, behind-the-scenes production, off-the-grid hippy encampments, rusted detritus sculpture, post-apocalypse signposts, and the energized, intensely industrious, exquisite dissection of Nychos that puts his oeuvre under the microscope and behind the looking glass. Alternately elegant and violent, this is a laboratory sweep of imagined scenarios that can make the mind cavort with fear and lust, toil and soil, pensive thought and power chords, ready to be sliced and peered into.
Futura X Wynwood Walls. Chop ’em Down Films
A
brief look at Futura as he recounts his revisiting of a mural he made in Miami.
Calling to the fore his inspired abstractions that first set him apart from the
pack in the late 70s/early 80s, it’s a treasure to see engaged with his past,
his process, his futura.
Shok1 in St. Petersburg, Florida for Shine Mural Festival.
2nd in a row from Chop ‘Em Down Films, this look at the technique of Shok1, who reveals the world through his brilliant mastery of x-ray and fantasy, is a rare treat and a great way to close this week’s survey.
A
man of leisure these days, BSA contributor Lluis Olive-Bulbena took a three day
trip to Valencia, Spain to participate in the festivities of El dia del
Cabanyal.
El Cabanyal is a 333 acre (134 hectares) neighborhood in the old part of the city by the Mediterranean Sea, backed by a series of sandy beaches and a palm treed promenade. Its name is derived by the complex of barracks along the shore where the fishermen used to live when the town was purely a fishing village.
With the passage of time and change of the Spanish economy, El Cabanyal caught the eye of the leisure class who fill the streets with souvenir shops, cafes, and late-night clubs. The fishermen went someplace else. Not surprisingly perhaps, this tourist attraction is also a hot spot for Street Art – along with the greater city of Valencia for that matter.
We are told that many Street Artists have actually set-up studio here as well. Why not? The quality of life is nice, and the cost of living is much lower than in Barcelona and Madrid.
“O god, there are noises I am going to be hungry for” – Carl Sandburg
“The art world has always felt like a lottery to me,” Dont Fret says as he
paints one of his distinctively odd and fabulously mediocre characters across
the shiny gold scratch card from the corner bodega.
Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Starting 2020 off with an eponymous new book “Life Thus Far” and a
month-long stay at Bed Stuy Artist Residency, you may think the Chicago street
humorist has won the Powerball.
Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“As a part of my New York residency I’m doing my annual DF lottery,” he says
about the new collection of customized lotto cards he’ll be showing at the
reception for you that he’s hosting in this brownstone. Dont Fret says he’s
hoping you’ll strike it lucky too.
Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“Artists are looking for their big break, collectors are looking for an
“investment opportunity” –as much as something for the living room, and taping
a banana to a wall just gets you a lot of attention and a decent source of
potassium,” he says.
Save the date to come about this special event on the 30th, where
the artist will be happy to meet you and show you these stickers and some other
projects. He’ll also be signing copies of his new book along with BSA’s Steven
P. Harrington, who wrote the introduction for it.
Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“Each ticket is signed and numbered,” says Dont Fret. “On January 30 a
lottery will occur of distributed tickets and 2 winners will be chosen. Runner
up will win a signed copy of my book “Life Thus Far” and a GRAND prize winner
will win an original painting from my show in New York City ‘O God, There’s
Noises I’m Going To Be Hungry For New Work’”.
Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)Dont Fret. BedStuy Art Residency. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Amidst the fusillade of news from the Middle East these days, you may have missed that the young people of Baghdad in Iraq have been demonstrating in the streets against the government. They are fighting for pretty much the same thing that all people in every society eventually fight for – autonomy, fairness, freedom, liberty. Not surprisingly, Street Artists are helping give voice to the aspirations of the people, and possibly inspiration to them as well, with walls to the underpass into Tahrir Square serving as an open-air gallery of murals and slogans
Sajjad Abbas. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Artist and animator Sajjad Abbas says his artworks on the streets are addressing the desires voiced by the protestors, and giving voice to the fallen. “The main goal of the protest is the motto ‘نريد وطن ‘, which means ‘We want a homeland’,” he says. “It’s a motto that has a deep and clear meaning and indicates how open-minded the protests are. The protesters are also asking to isolate all the parties and to never elect them again.”
Sajjad Abbas. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Today we have images from recent protests as well as a few stencils by Abbas. You may recognize a style common in Street Art with political or social critique in cities elsewhere during the last decade and a half. The energy that is evident in these scenes is full of anticipation and emotion, the desire to express serious dissatisfaction that is evident in many sectors. In the disordered street and cafe scenes, you can also see a singularity of determination by some, a collectivity among others.
Sajjad Abbas. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
By creating a stencil portrait of one of the leaders who has been killed, a hero is being elevated – along with the values they are thought to have signified. Here you see an image of Safaa al-Sarai, one of the higher-profile activists/protesters whom news reports say was killed in October after getting hit in the head by a smoke grenade. In just a few short months his image on the street is transforming him to that of a martyr in popular culture and in memes – merging with imagery from sports culture as a protective goalie.
In fact, Safaa al-Sarai was a “goalie”, according to an account in the Times of London; “a human buffer armed with a wet sheet to intercept tear gas canisters aimed at protesters. ‘One hit the ground then bounced up into his head. He had a brain injury and was bleeding. They couldn’t save him,’ said his friend Hayder Alaa, a 21-year-old student.”
Sajjad Abbas. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
We asked Sajjad Abbas about his experience as a Street Artist in Baghdad during these tumultuous demonstrations and about his opinion of the role of art and artist in the street.
Brooklyn Street Art:Can you describe the protests in Tahrir Square and what issues people are focusing on?
Sajjad Abbas: The protests in Tahrir Square are hard to describe. The young guys went out on the 1st of October in 2019. In the beginning, they were mostly from Sadr City. The government faced the protests during the most intense action and they killed lots of the protesters. They used live ammunition and there were snipers and they took the young guys’ lives.
Through this time, after that, all people were called for protests, a million people marched on October 25, 2019. Together they were protesting about religious and secular topics of many kinds.
Sajjad Abbas. Tahrir Sq. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: Are the protesters mainly young people? SA: They are young guys who are tired of every chain that the politics and the religion men put on the people. They asked for a good life and freedom and presented their opinions to all the religious men and government people. This protest is against dirty government forces and the parties of the murders. Many of the protesters were killed and the government used smoke bombs and flash grenades as a way to kill. They threw these things directly at the protester’s heads, and some were injured pretty seriously, probably causing them a lifetime disability…
So far the government hasn’t answered protesters’ demands, but there has been murder and kidnapping.
Sajjad Abbas. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Most of the protesters are the new generation who were born in the early 2000s, but there are also different people from other age groups. What is good about the new protests is that there are also a big number of young females who were also in the protests – and they were in the front lines of the protest.
BSA: What is the name of the person in the stencil art with the beard? SA: The guy in this picture is Safaa Alsarai. He got killed in the protest after he got shot in the head by a smoking bomb.
Sajjad Abbas. Tahrir Sq. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA:Why is he important and what does he symbolize for Baghdadi people? SA: Safaa was a poet who also participated in many of the older protests. He was hoping that Iraq could become unified and be one and he was dreaming about making for Iraq an Iraqi country. Safaa became an icon for the revolution in all the cities in Iraq.
Sajjad Abbas. Tahrir Sq. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: The figure with the mask looks like he is playing soccer. Is he catching a tear gas canister? SA: The guy is a goalkeeper (“goalie”) who is trying to catch the smoking bomb. In this tunnel, a team was created to shut down the smoking bombs that came at the protesters – after getting it away from the protests in the area above the tunnel.
BSA: Why is it important to use art in the streets for you? SA: It’s like drinking water… it’s an expression of existence. Using the art in the street is to clarify and express my ideas about the policies and social aspects of those policies. Street Art is a revolution – It’s an imperative way to share your ideas, and you should have a statement about the “system”.
Sajjad Abbas. Tahrir Sq. Baghdad, Iraq. January 2020. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Finding an inner sense of balance when living in the chaotic city is not easy, and you’ll have to be determined to achieve it after you’ve been pushed and pinched and insulted and assaulted – just on the way to work, or even the corner deli.
Traffic, construction, muffled train announcements, blaring radios, and boisterous conversations between Bernice and Brandon and Betty and Bernardo batter you from the time you leave your apartment until you arrive bedraggled and exhausted.
Magda Cwik. Vibraising – Root Chakra. After Hours Project. Mexico City. January 2020. (photo courtesy of After Hours Project)
For Polish muralist Magda Cwik, the pursuit of balance
begins on a high note – and travels through your musical chakras. Here in the
in Juárez neighborhood of Mexico City she has been painting a series of eight
murals which she intends to assist urban dwellers to live in balance –
including via their ears.
Magda Cwik. Vibraising – Root Chakra. After Hours Project. Mexico City. January 2020. (photo courtesy of After Hours Project)
“I combined specific colors, images, music and
intentions to rise up vibrations of people on the street,” she tells us of a
campaign she calls “Vibraising”. “The wall focuses on reactivation and
connection with Mother Earth and grounding,” she says, and she includes a QR
attached to the wall for you to scan and listen to music that corresponds to her
desire to help you rebalance.
“How
often do we walk with our bare feet to connect with Earth? Do we live in
harmony with Her?” she asks. “Earth provides us with everything we need to
sustain us if we live in balance. By connecting with Nature we can heal
ourselves, and listen to the teachings of our ancestors.”
Magda Cwik. Vibraising – Root Chakra. After Hours Project. Mexico City. January 2020. (photo courtesy of After Hours Project)
For one example of the music, you will here, below is a colorful world vibrating in the key of C (for the Root Chakra) by artist Stephen Mahoney (@dj_stephenmanhoney)
Magda Cwik. Vibraising – Root Chakra. After Hours Project. Mexico City. January 2020. (photo courtesy of After Hours Project)Magda Cwik. Vibraising – Root Chakra. After Hours Project. Mexico City. January 2020. (photo courtesy of After Hours Project)
It’s hard to even comment on this bellicose war-loving president and his military industry profiteers all ginning up a war against Iran – except to say, “Fool me once…”. Wait, how does that go again?
This week we take you back to the Wynwood neighborhood in Miami, where Primary Flight started a huge graffiti throwdown in the 2000s, later picked up by Tony Goldman to create Wynwood Walls. The current fare throughout the neighborhood is record-setting: from the sheer number of murals and art installations, to the parade of families and friends coming here to take tours and selfies. Catching a shot of a piece without people in the frame is like trying to run in between raindrops.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring 1UP Crew, BK Foxx, BustArt, Cranio, Cush Kan, Dam Crew, Dia5, Komik, Quake, Ripes, Sipros, Starve, Thomas Danbo, and Urban Ruben.
“Are you from the media? Tell the prime minister to go and
get f**ked from Nelligen,” yells an exhausted firefighter out of his truck
window to the TV cameras.
“This is fine” by artist Lush (JAMES ROSS/EPA-EFE/REX)
“Stand down now. You don’t deserve to govern. You knew this was coming. It’s been coming for a few years. You’ve been totally ignorant of it,” says another firefighter on a TV news interview as she lays bare her contempt for the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the wake of the worst fires ever sweeping the country. He’s been facing a lot of angry voices lately.
Morrison hits the high seas with bags of money while the forests goes up in flames in this wheatpaste by Huggies.
Surrounded by unprecedented fires and animal deaths that are widely predicted and attributed to the climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels, the PM nonetheless went to Hawaii for a vacation over the Christmas holiday while half of his country was in flames during the bushfire crisis.
A handmade sign rates the PM’s response to fires.
Naturally, Street Artists have been creating works to
address the issue, as well as to accuse him and others of being employees of
coal companies, especially in light of his perplexing denials of any
relationship between fires and those related industries.
Scott Marsh’s depiction of the Hawaii paradise that the PM enjoyed while his own country was engulfed in a bushfire crises back home.Artist Van T Rudd surmises on his instagram @van.nishing that the profiteers of the coal industry are responsible for the fires.@van.nishing
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. SpY / Full Story / Takin Over Public Spaces In The City 2. Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019 3. Bomb Shelter/Pete Kirill/Wynwood, Miami
BSA Special Feature: SpY Takes Over Public Spaces
The brilliant Spanish interventionist is profiled here by a brand – but its not obtrusively involved in the video. His approach to the city is educational, humorous, full of adoration and witty simplicity. A graffiti writer who challenged himself to interact with the public spaces in new ways, he credits those early years bombing with his heightened understanding of the urban environment, and how to skillfully disrupt it.
SpY / Full Story / Takin Over Public Spaces In The City
Matth Velvet at Parees Festival 2019
A new video from PareesFest 2019
featuring a painter on the wall, and demonstrating the entirely different
approach a mural is when realized with brushes. A tribute to historical
Olloniego mining, the artist is Matth Velvet and the video is by Titi Muñoz.
Bomb Shelter/Pete Kirill/Wynwood, Miami
Taking the trip local, Pete Kirill tells you about his project in Wynwood, Miami – a graffiti and art supply store, gallery, and community hub that is rooted in graffiti and of course spreads out far from there. A unique opportunity to see this transformed neighborhood through the eyes of Miami folks – a mini tour of one spot just after the deluge of art fans and tourists during Art Basel, which happens in Miami every year at the beginning of December.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
