Borderless urban art: how it started on the streets and managed to stay there

Borderless urban art how it started on the streets and menaged to stay there

Chiara Tesei Design Issues A.Y. 2020-2021

INDEX

........................ A brief history ........................ A new middle-ground ........................ The Berlin wall ........................ M.U.Ro ........................ The Bushwick collective ........................ The city of Helsinki ........................ In conclusion

A BRIEF HISTORY

Since the beginning of time, humankind has felt the need to express them selfs through figurative images. From the first cave paintings, dating as far as 44,000 years old, to the latest scribbles on the walls of a school done by some teenagers, humans have used this medium to take ownership of the spaces they inhabit.

This phenomenon, started in what would nowadays be considered a home, has slowly but surely moved out of it.

In the 1920s what was later called graffiti started showing up on train cars and walls. These were the work of street gangs who would “tag” specific areas of the town to claim them their own. During the fascist era in Germany, graffiti and street art became a medium to express subversive movements’ propagandas. An example of that would be many of the 1932 graffiti from the K.P.D. .

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the revolutionary act of writing on walls takes a central spot in the students movements, as well as in the sexual liberation movements and in the anti-war movements. It is in this moment that, for the first time, street art officially enters the academic world, with the 1971 New York City College graffiti exhibition. This first experiment featured works by the local collective “United Graffiti Artists”.

From that moment on, the liaison between urban artist and canonical art structures has been a topic of harsh discussion, seen by some as a fruitful resource, and by others as a denaturalization of the art in itself.

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A NEW MIDDLE-GROUND As in the true spirit of this phenomenon, an uprising movement started emerging, creating a sort of middle ground between the centuries old traditional art galleries and the work of isolated individuals spreading their art throughout the urban jungle. Certain areas of big cities became the place for a plethora of collective, ever-growing, art expositions.

1. KPD graffiti, Germany. 1932 2. Pictures of human-like hunters and fleeing mammals, Indonesia.44.000 years old

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THE BERLIN WALL

One of the earliest, most noticeable examples is the Berlin wall. First built in the 1960s to separate the East and West side of the city, it made for a perfect blank canvas, for West Berliners to write on. Most of those who wrote on the wall though, were not born-and-raised Berliners at all, but Turkish migrants, early settlers in the American occupied sector and anarchist punks, who would use the 14 feet tall canvas to express their dissent with the current state of society. This en plain air art gallery gained notoriety, attracting artists such as Thierry Noir, French writer who at the time was living in one of the squats near the Wall. All throughout the 1980’s, until its fall in 1989, the west side of the Wall flourished into the meeting point of young graffiti artists. Meanwhile, the east side stayed blank. This changed after the fall, when Berlin as a whole became home of many of the greatest urban art works, making the city one of the richest in this department.

Nowadays, what is left of the Berlin Wall, still houses many masterpieces, all admirable for free, in the true spirit of this art. Along with Thierry Noir’s cartoon heads, constituting an iconic part of Berlin’s landscape, we also find the controversial work of Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel.

Originally called “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”, but commonly known as “Fraternal Kiss”, in depicts a kiss between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German President Erich Honecker. First painted in 1990, it was then recommissioned to the artist in 2009, due to the deterioration and vandalism acts which had compromised the integrity of the work. Following the stream of many highly controversial works present in situ, Günther Schaefer gifts the wall of his “Veterland”, which translates to “Fatherland”. The mural, made in 1990, depicts elements of the Israeli flag superimposed onto the German flag. It was painted in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Night of the Broken Glass.

These works of art constitute three of the 150 murals, made by artists from allover the globe, making this once symbol of oppression into one of the largest open-air galleries.

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3. Thierry Noir painting on the Berlin Wall, Berlin. Circa 1980 4. Berlin wall, Berlin. 1973 5. Dmitri Vrubel, “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love” , Berlin. March 2009 6. Thierry Noir, No title, Berlin. 1984 7. Günther Schaefer, “Vaterland”, Berlin. 1990

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M.U.RO 9.

The example of sites such as the Berlin Wall did not go unnoticed and, in the following decades, many other urban experiments were brought up, often in a more organized manner. This is the case of M.U.RO , or “Museo di Urban Art di Roma” . This project, founded in 2010 by the artist David Diavù Vecchiato, is said to be one of the first examples of a museum fully integrated into the urban context. It hosts a series of site-specific works, poetically interpreting their surrounding, in order to bring into light the uniqueness of the place and its community. The open-air museum started in the roman neighborhoods of Quadraro and Torpignattara, then taking over the whole city.

The organizers and curators of this urban experiment offer guidance towards the artists, in order to ensure a higher understanding of the history and soul of the area that will house their work.

M.U.R.O. has organized a series of initiatives, shading a new light onto forgotten sides of Rome. One worth mentioning is GRAART, a series of murales retelling the mythical history of Rome. The works, adorning the motorway ring Grande Raccordo Anulare, are a gift to the city by many national and international artists.

We see Lucamaleonte’s “Il martitio di Rufina e Seconda”, on Via Casal del marmo; “El sosiego de un futuro en deuda”, in Via Damone, by Kos Dos; Camilla Falsini’s “La vita e la morte”, in Viale Lucio Mariani...

This ever-evolving project is allowing citizens to experience public, free art in their everyday life. It is also creating new, decentralized tourist attractions, which will entice art lovers to discover these less known areas of the capital city.

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8. Lucamaleonte,”Il martirio di Rufina e Seconda”, via Casal del marmo, Rome. Murale, Jenuary 2017 9. Koz Dos,”El sosiego de un futuro en deuda”, via Damone, Rome. March 2017 10. Camilla Falsini,”La vita e la morte”, viale Lucio Mariani, Rome. December 2016 11. Mr. THOMS, “Il RisucchiAttore” , via Decio Mure, Rome. October 2012 12. Gary Baseman , “The Buckingham Warrior”, Largo dei Quintili, Rome. April 2012 13. Beau Stanton, “Esculapio” , via Lagonegro, Rome. December 2018

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THE BUSHWICK COLLECTIVE

Sited in Brooklyn, New York, the Bushwick Collective could be considered a kin-spirited initiative to the Roman one, previously mentioned.

Conceived and curated by the artist Joe Ficarola, the collective has deeply transformed the area of the city hosting it. Bushwick, a once grim industrial neighborhood, saw the murder of Ficarola’s father. In order to overcome his grief, he choose to give this district a second chance. In 2012 the Collective was born. The district hosts a plethora of works, by artists coming from allover the world. No masterpiece is permanent, in fact each work stays in place for approximately 12 months before being replaced.

Even though there is no theme for the artists to follow, there are a few rules: nothing offensive to children, women and local businesses.

The open-air art gallery is ever growing, with new murals being added especially during the annual Bushwick Collective Block Party, in June.

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14. Rosk Loste, “GIRL EATING A CRISP”, Brooklyn. 2019 15. Beau Stanton, “Kraken”, Brooklyn. July 2016 16. Sipros, No Name, Brooklyn. June 2017 17. Owen Dippie, “The Radiant Madonna”, Brooklyn.

18. Subway doodle, No Name, Brooklyn. 2018 19. LAmour Supreme, No Name, Brookly. June 2019

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THE CITY OF HELSINKI IN CONCLUSION

The relation between urban art and governments has historically been one of usual mutual dislike. The act of writing on public property, it being a meaningless doodle or a work of art, is against the law in most countries. This obviously doesn’t fit well into the core soul of urban art, which often ends up being unwelcome in the urban environment.

Helsinki is an exception to this rule. As in most regions, street art landed in Finland in the mid-1980. During the 1990’s, due to zero tolerance guidelines, graffiti started desappairing from the urban scene. So much so that between 1998 and 2008 almost all of the street art created in Helsinki had been eradicated.

In the past decade though, due to a new awareness of the value street art could bring, Heslinki started once again flourishing with masterpieces by artists from the local and international scene.

The city council has chosen to give value and promote this reborn phenomenon, by making walls available for valuable artists.

Neighborhoods such as Baana, Itä-Pasila, Kallio and Suvilahti, famous for their urban culture, take their well deserved spot onto the city map of places of interest, available on the official city website. Guided tours of the districts are easily bookable on the website, just as any other tourist attraction of museum ticket would.

The fine lines between public and private, art and vandalism, are engraved onto the groundwork of this artistic expression. It is not easy to fit a movement, fueled by its revolutionary origins, into century-old molds such as museums and art galleries. Here a question arises: should it?

The soul of urban art belongs to the concrete populating our cities.

In the past decades graffiti, murals, stencils have entered the world of mainstream art, but always as temporary guests. This art, which strongly relies on walls, has resulted impossible to be contained by them.

Instead the community of artists and art lovers has found new ways to communicate this long misunderstood phenomenon. Through the work of talented individuals, the common citizen is enticed to rethink their own surroundings. Through the act of “stealing” a wall to give back to the community, urban artist are ever investigating the true meaning of public property.

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20. Tasso and Hombre SUK, No Name, Helsinki. August 2019 21. Os Gemeos and EGS,No Name, Helsinki. 2017 22. Viva Granlund, “ZEN”, Helsinki. 2020 23. Unknown, No Name, Helsinki. 2020 24. Plan b, “What a nice day to consume!”, Helsinki. September 2020

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SITOGRAPHY

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