NEWS and VIDEO: Graffiti Artist Adds Color to French Burka Debate

by: Caroline Rossiter

Nick Walker is a modern day “street artist”, a sketchy position that straddles glitzy art world events and covert decoration of public space. Using a combination of stencil and freehand work, Walker is amongst the pioneers of stencil graffiti, following in the footsteps of French stencil artists Blek le Rat and Jéf Aerosol. He began stenciling in the early nineties, in the midst of what has been dubbed the “Bristol Underground Scene”, the vibrant urban music and arts movement that spawned such artists as Massive Attack, Tricky, Roni Size and the infamous Banksy.

Walker recently made his mark on the streets of Paris with Le Corancan, a chorus line of Moulin Rouge style French can-can dancers, their faces hidden behind black veils. Walker came up with the idea a few months ago when he heard about the French government’s plans to ban the burka in France. He created a stencil in his studio before coming to Paris in March to stun unsuspecting passers-by.

Unfortunately the piece has already gone the way of much street art – removed at the behest of city authorities. This may be disappointing for street art enthusiasts. But isn’t the ephemeral nature the very essence of street art? From an artist’s point of view, it must be frustrating not to have control over their finished work.

When quizzed on the short-lived glory of Le Corancan, you might expect a vitriolic response, berating the over-zealous French authorities. Walker remains level-headed: “Once it’s on the wall and you’ve left the scene it’s pretty much fair game. If it stays up a week it’s a result. The aim is to get the piece up, document it and move on. This time the whole piece was filmed.”

 

So the act and the recorded performance are as important as the finished piece. But how does the transience of pieces like Le Corancan relate to the increasingly commercial genre of street art? Some critics argue that graffiti’s original impetus - rebellion - has been eclipsed by the rise of profitable street art. Can the two coexist or is there a danger of street art becoming an empty gesture when it’s no longer on the street?

“I get asked this question a lot…” says Walker [note to self: try to be more original]. “It’s just another genre that has now been accepted by the art world. Why do people want souvenirs from the sea side? Human instinct, and supply and demand.” He has a point. Think of the throngs of tourists in museum gift shops buying postcards, people always want to have a little piece for keeps. Street art at auction and in galleries is like a scaled-up version of buying postcards in the museum shop: it’s never going to be as good as the real thing but it’s nice to be able to take it home.

Even so, the street still seems to be the most inviting canvas for Walker, offering a visibility and scale that may be lacking in studio art, as well as a rebellious rush. “Nothing beats the thrill of getting away with an illegal piece especially when it’s quite a big production. Painting on the street in general is an important part of my art. The street is the biggest gallery you can wish for and if you find a spot in a busy area your work isn’t going to go unnoticed.”

At four meters long on a very visible wall, Le Corancan certainly got more attention than it would have done if it was in a gallery. Does Walker feel strongly about the controversy over the Muslim burka in France? “I believe that wanting to ban the burka is a crazy decision typical of a leader with far-right views. First he wants to ban the burka next he’ll be wanting to ban baseball hats or hoodies. Where will it stop?”

Despite the political impact, the humorous juxtaposition of Belle Époque and modern day France is amusing and visually arresting in itself. It is reminiscent of another of Walker’s risqué works: the Moona Lisa, in which Leonardo’s well-known sitter for the Mona Lisa reveals her pert buttocks from underneath her robes. Walker seems to enjoy humorously pushing the boundaries of taste. “Not all my pieces have political connotations” he says “most of my work has an element of humor in it or, like The Morning After series, a central character.”

The Morning After series follows a smart gentleman and his waggish acts of picturesque vandalism: painting the town, using a remote control giraffe to paint “vandal” high up on a wall, blowing up a colorful rat… The protagonist, in his pin-striped suit and shiny bowler hat is like a dandy-graffiti artist. Could he even embody the modern street artist – scrubbed up and smart for his new role as art world lovie? That’s not how Walker sees it: “He’s just a character – the city gent outfit is a decoy – no one expects anyone dressed like this to be up to mischief.”

Mischief is a good metaphor for the role of street art today. Walker’s home town Bristol, also home to Banksy (there was even some speculation a couple of years ago that Walker was actually Banksy), is so proud of its home-grown talent that parts of the city now have the appearance of an open air gallery of street art. Is there anything particular about Bristol that makes it such fertile ground for this sort of artistic production? “It’s the cider” says Walker.

courtesy of: http://thefastertimes.com/visualarts/2010/05/14/graffiti-artist-adds-color-to-french-burka-debate/

NEWS: MCASD Street Art Show: Viva la Revolution, A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape

(Street artist Barry McGee’s graffiti-like mural covers nearly the entire side of the California Theater building along Third Avenue in downtown San Diego . The work, one of two huge murals on the abandoned building, is part of the exhibition “Viva La Revolucion: A Dialogue With the Urban Landscape” on view both inside and beyond the walls of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through Jan. 2.)

Don't think it's graffiti

San Diego’s urban landscape is the canvas in the first major American museum showcase for street art

By James Chute

, UNION-TRIBUNE STAF WRITER

Originally published July 17, 2010 at 3:11 p.m., updated July 17, 2010 at 3:40 p.m.

Most of the recent attention directed toward downtown’s California Theatre is focused on Barry McGee’s two huge, graffiti-inspired murals commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. But if you look a little closer, on one of the walls at the corner of Fourth Avenue and C Street, you’ll see a small mosaic replicating one of the characters from the archetypical “Space Invader” video game. Also commissioned by the museum, the French artist Invader has located them throughout San Diego, just as he has done all over the world in cities such as Paris , Amsterdam, Vienna and Los Angeles.

“It changes the way you relate to the city,” said Lucia Sanromán, the museum’s associate curator, during a stroll along C Street. “It makes it a more intimate environment where you have these moments (when you spot an Invader) that are only yours.”

It is no longer a place where every element is tightly controlled by the city’s power structure or the businesses that support and control it, she explained. “It is now your city, where you can build whatever narrative you want from this really small moment of recognition.”

(Shepard Fairey and his team work on his urban art piece on Fifth Avenue in Hillcrest. One of the ironies Fairey copes with is that his artwork that challenges our consumer-driven society has itself generated commercial demand for his work.)

For the next several months, there will be opportunities for moments small and large as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will be installing works by street artists like McGee and Invader throughout the city and devoting its downtown Jacobs galleries to the first major American museum exhibition devoted to street and street-inspired art: “Viva La Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape.”

During the course of the show, which opens today and continues through Jan. 2, the museum will be installing a number of public works in addition to McGee’s murals and the Invader installation. The 20 artists/collectives represented in public places and in the galleries encompass a who’s who of the street art. They include the genre’s superstar, Shepard Fairey, whose claim to fame includes the ubiquitous Obey Giant posters, the Obama “Hope” poster, and his arrest in Boston last year (on a warrant for tagginig property with graffiti) before the opening of a solo show of his work at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.

(Photo by Earnie Grafton: Atop scaffolding, Pablo Piedade, an assistant to street artist “Vhils,” works on a piece for “Viva La Revolucion.”)

The show also features the genre’s fastest rising star, Mark Bradford, who in two years went from being a beauty shop operator to winning a 2009 MacArthur “genius” Grant. Also participating are William Cordova, JR, Ryan McGinness, David Ellis, Swoon and Dr. Lakra, among others. Some are inspired by the urban environment and incorporate urban and pop culture elements into their art while others literally make art out in the streets. Many of them do both.

“As soon as you go outside your domain with an exhibition like this, you take on a lot of risks and potential rewards,” said Hugh M. Davies, the museum’s director. “I mean, the payoff could be great if people embrace it and the mayor says we’ve improved the quality of life in San Diego through commissioning these new pieces. Then it’s a home run. If the mayor says, ‘Who the hell is responsible for this graffiti?’ we’ll pull back into our walls.

“But I am really proud we’re the first (American) museum to do an international street art show of this scale and scope.”

NEWS: Street Art Moves Onto Some New Streets

By CHLOE VELTMAN

 

Published: May 7, 2010

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/arts/design/09sfculture.html

For a short while a few months ago, a mural by Eddie Colla enlivened an otherwise grubby stretch of wall in an alleyway in the upscale Hayes Valley neighborhood. The image, depicting two nearly naked and tattooed young women entwined in a sensual kiss, was a witty political message. The words “Just Married,” spray-painted in crimson above the couple, suggested the artist’s stance on gay marriage, while the six crushed beer cans dangling from strings attached to the women’s thighs like postmodern wedding garters conveyed his offbeat sense of humor. But like many street works — broadly defined as the stencils, murals, posters, tags and stickers that appear, often illegally, in public spaces — Mr. Colla’s mural didn’t last long.

Perhaps its fate might have been different had it appeared in the Mission district, where street art has long been embraced as a source of neighborhood pride. Works from that area are the subject of the recently published book “Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo” (Abrams), with a foreword by Carlos Santana. Precita Eyes, a Mission group that sponsors murals and runs regular tours of street art, and the de Young Museum are in the midst of a yearlong series of monthly events spotlighting Mission street artists, each attracting an average of 3,000 attendees since the series began in November. Several street artists associated with the Mission, including Shepard Fairey, R. Crumb and Barry McGee, are internationally renowned.

But with wider recognition, street art in the Mission appears to have lost a bit of its edge, though much captivating work is still being produced there. Now some of the freshest and most thought-provoking pieces are turning up elsewhere, like the spray-painted and stenciled images found in neighborhoods like SoMa, the Tenderloin and Bayview-Hunters Point.

Take Chor Boogie’s mural “The Color Therapy of Perception,” a riotously vibrant painting of a pair of eyes stretching along Market Street near downtown. It has the visual power of a kaleidoscope, and its subject matter is an evocation of the author and activist Jane Jacobs’s pronouncement on urban safety: “There must be eyes upon the street.”

On Commercial Street in Chinatown, works by the British street artist Banksy feature crudely drawn red peace and love signs next to an intricately rendered doctor checking out a heart symbol with his stethoscope, questioning if 1960s idealism remains in good health.

“In neighborhoods like SoMa, Bayview-Hunters Point and the Tenderloin, the work feels more expressive and free,” said Justin Giarla, owner of the White Walls gallery in the Tenderloin, which is presenting an exhibition of works by the graffitists Blek le Rat and Above. “The street art scene in the Mission is comparatively much more structured.”

Street art, both the legal and illegal varieties, has long found fertile ground in San Francisco. The murals inside Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill were commissioned as part of the New Deal’s first public art projects. The work and influence of the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera also helped to forge San Francisco’s passion for street art. The Mission became a hub for the form in the 1960s and ’7os partly because of its high concentration of Latino residents who brought in mural-making traditions.

The arrival of art-oriented organizations like Precita Eyes and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which view street art as a core component of their activities, also contributed to its rising visibility in the Mission. Street art has become so inextricably linked to the Mission’s culture that today it often has the blessings of the city and property owners.

“In the Mission there is a real respect for muralism,” said Luis Cancel, director of cultural affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Street artworks outside the Mission have not had the effect of those in that neighborhood, partly because of an absence of community interest. That perhaps helps explain why Mr. Colla’s mural, admittedly produced illegally, had a short shelf life.

Sometimes, even works by famous artists have been erased by accident. Last fall a monochrome portrait of a heavy-lidded man wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, made on a garage door at 1009 Market Street, was mistakenly painted over by a contractor working for a neighborhood improvement group. That piece, which the Luggage Store gallery commissioned in 1994, was created by Mr. McGee.

The city is working to promote street art in parts of town beyond the Mission through programs like StreetSmARTs, which aims to reduce graffiti vandalism by connecting established artists with landlords on mural projects. The local artist Jet Martinez is currently working on a wall-length mural based on Mexican floral textile patterns in collaboration with a Tenderloin bookstore owner.

The city’s efforts in this area are laudable, but they seem ultimately more concerned about reducing graffiti than promoting street art as a form of creative expression. There is also a danger that if the city plays too great a role in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, the works produced there might come to resemble their more establishment-friendly counterparts in the Mission, at the expense of their artistic edge.

VIDEO: Exit Through the Giftshop w/ Artepolitik and El Roberto Productions

Brought to you by artepolitik.com and El Roberto Productions

http://theelroberto.blogspot.com

VIDEO: Shepard Fairey and Robbie Conal on the Power of Political Art in Public Spaces

May 6, 2010

In this chat with fellow artist and long time fan Shepard Fairey, Robbie Conal discusses the use of public space for art and challenges us all to take action.

Best known for his unapologetic in-your-face style of political street art, Robbie Conal is ready to take us on a new journey with his new book Not Your Typical Political Animal.  But that doesn’t mean his ideas of creating art anywhere and everywhere have changed.

In this chat with fellow artist and long time fan Shepard Fairey, he discusses the use of public space for art and challenges us all to take action. 

Venezuela streets brim with revolutionary art

(Reuters) - Blood drips from Hillary Clinton's severed head. The Virgin Mary cradles a machine gun. Karl Marx shares a wall with Hugo Chavez.

An explosion of "revolutionary" graffiti, posters and murals across Venezuela is spreading the Chavez government's ever-more radical messages to try to form a new generation of socialists and counter opposition propaganda.

"Given that capitalism has taken over the media and tries to distort reality, we are taking our vision onto the street," said Eduardo Davila, a young graffiti artist with a pro-government group called "Communication Guerrillas."

The often government-sponsored art fits in with a major push by the Chavez government this year to dominate the public arena, ranging from a presidential Twitter account to training youths in Web skills and painting the houses of the poor.

The profusion of murals, stencils and slogans on Venezuela's streets has a striking visual effect and a rallying impact on supporters -- even though Chavez's foes dismiss it as a shallow attempt to boost his sinking popularity.

Perhaps the most notable image to spring up recently is a politicized take on Italian master Caravaggio's "David With the Head of Goliath" that shows a young boy with a sword clutching U.S. Secretary of State Clinton's bleeding head.

Further illustrating the quick end to Chavez's early fruitless overture to Barack Obama, another image shows the U.S. president as a manic-eyed half-human and half-robot next to the slogan: "The Empire's New Toy."

Given the Chavez government's bitter political feud with neighboring Colombia, it is no surprise that Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's former defense minister and now a presidential candidate, appears on a wall with devil's horns and wild eyes.

Elsewhere, in murals full of bellicose symbolism, the Virgin Mary and Jesus carry AK-47s.

Those pictures illustrate the self-described Christian- and Marxist-inspired militancy of Chavez, who quotes as often from the Bible as he does from past revolutionary thinkers.

BRIGHTENING THE BARRIOS

One of the most frequent images to show up is a reproduction of a famous photo from 1989 street riots known as the "Caracazo," showing three men running through the capital's streets carrying the corpse of a comrade shot by soldiers.

"Not forgotten, not forgiven," says a slogan under one picture of the "Caracazo." The event brought vilification on the government of then-President Carlos Andres Perez, whom former soldier Chavez sought to overthrow three years later in a failed military coup.

Chavez himself shows up frequently in street art, his face on one wall in a line including fellow revolutionaries Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Simon Bolivar.

Street artists have formed groups in Caracas and elsewhere with one taking the name Communicational Liberation Army in a spoof of Colombia's guerrilla movement, the National Liberation Army.

Chavez and his followers also are taking their propaganda war to new fronts, including the Internet. Chavez's new Twitter account @chavezcandanga, for example, has become the most followed from Venezuela.

Dozens of teenage students have been formally enrolled and sworn-in as "Communication Guerrillas," taught filming, web and other skills to counter the traditional anti-Chavez bias of Venezuela's private media since he took over in 1999.

"These are our weapons: camera, microphone, recorder, the streets, the pamphlets, the murals," Dayana Serrano, 15, said at a training session for a government initiative that has outraged opposition parties. "We don't have pistols or anything like that and we hope they never give them to us."

Chavez's popularity has dropped this year but, he still retains a near-50 percent approval rating. Much of his popularity comes from social missions in poor neighborhoods -- providing free schools and clinics and painting houses for free.

The "Barrio Tricolor" or "Three-color Neighborhood" mission has gathered pace this year, with soldiers going into poor parts of Caracas to spruce up dilapidated houses with a fresh coat of paint, new roofs and other repairs.

Critics deride the initiative as a cheap, vote-winning tactic limited to areas widely seen from highways, and literally painting over communities' deeper problems.

But for the thousands of residents whose houses are now bedecked in bright Caribbean colors, the gratitude is genuine.

"No other president bothered to do anything for the poor. Chavez is the only one," said 60-year-old Clemencia Linares, as soldiers in T-shirts emblazoned with Chavez's face hammered away at her new roof in a Caracas shanty-town.

"This is nothing short of a miracle."

(Additional reporting by Patricia Rondon, Carlos Rawlins and Efrain Otero in Caracas; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)