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Evocation

GRAFFITI, TAG, STREET-ART: an urban way of expression looking for recognition? Nov. 13, 2013

  • A signature

  • Valencia wall

  • Spanih painting

  • Asian influence

  • Koln train station

  • Istanbul

  • Valencia

  • Tour 13 Paris

  • Valencia

  • Famous in Pragues

  • Tour 13 Paris

  • Paris

    • Graffitis appeared long before the last decades. Remember the lessons at school about of pre-historical eras, and Lascaux caves. It was already a simple and instinctive art, an expression of a daily life on the walls, using simple materials, the bases for a new art.

    Moose, in the Bible, uses animal blood to paint on house doors as a benediction, a tradition we still find in the Germanic part of Europe, writing with chalk over the door entrance, at Epiphany time, the initials of the king’s names, surrounded with the year numbers (20+C+M+B+13).

    The graffiti leaves behind an ephemeral mark, on a medium belonging to the city, not always respecting the historical and protected monuments unfortunately. The idea is to leave a mark forever somewhere you have been!

    From the eighties, the walls in town, the trains, vehicles and underground corridors became the perfect media for spontaneous and enthusiastic graphical expression, inspired from Hip-Hop.

    In the New York underground, Keith Haring‘s chalk drawings on the black advertising posters were the beginning of a success story. Jean Charles de Castelbajac made angel’s appear here and there in Paris.

    “Keep in your hand the child you were” Cervantes wrote.

    Today street art is fully recognised as part of the Art world. Just follow the latest Branksy actuality, with his air spray work in New York, or the Tour 13’s phenomenon in Paris, requiring hours of queuing up to get in, and to see  how an outside art has invaded the whole inside space, on each floor, just for one month, before being knocked down, and making it a genuinely  ephemeral event, that will survive on internet only!

    Shall we have a chance to buy part of those walls signed by the artist at an incredible price?

    The simple signature’s graffiti, looking for its identity, is fading in front of a bigger scale expression that covers the entire façade of a building, offering the town and its habitants another dimension for this spontaneous expression (maybe not so spontaneous anymore!)

    Some over-scale reproductions of famous painting are also offered to our eye in the street, a sign that street art has entered culture on its own, digested it, and reinterpreted it differently in town.

    These urban paintings do not have any linguistic barrier. They are part of an international and cosmopolitan community, which offers whoever wants the surprise of discovering talents ! (Paris, New York, Toronto, Valencia, Budapest … and so many more places) 

    Photo credit: Th.Macé, C.Labbé, Ph.Ameller

    L'EXPO A NE PAS MANQUER A PARIS

    Expo DG

    ET CELLE CI AUSSI

    Olga

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