Lund is a small place but it seems to hold an endless amount of students. With this in mind I was curious to see the street art around the city. I must say that so far I am pleasantly surprised. Here are two pictures to give you an idea
The Punch
Love Communism
The New Yorker has published a long piece on Banksy, sub-titled “The invisible man of graffiti art”. Banksy is the famous, but anonymous, UK graffiti artist whose work is a mix of cheeky social commentary and plain fun. Not much is known for sure, but the article writes:
This much is certain: around 1993, his graffiti began appearing on trains and walls around Bristol; by 2001, his blocky spray-painted signature had cropped up all over the United Kingdom…
Since street art is ephemeral, he occasionally issues books filled with photographs of his work, accompanied by his own text. He self-published his first three volumes, â??Existencilism,â?? â??Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall,â?? and â??Cut It Out.â?? His latest, â??Wall and Piece,â?? was published by Random House and has sold more than two hundred and fifty thousand copies…
Ralph Taylor, a specialist in the Sothebyâ??s contemporary-art department, said of Banksy, â??He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.â?? Banksy responded to the Sothebyâ??s sale by posting a painting on his Web site. It featured an auctioneer presiding over a crowd of rapt bidders, with the caption â??I canâ??t believe you morons actually buy this shit.â??
Besides his own website and his books there are plenty of images on Flickr (over 18000 images) that have been attributed to Banksy. They may be originals or simply followers of the Banksy style.
Adding a haphazard artistic touch to most cities are the street artists. They apply their art in many different ways here it is in the form of a small flag tied up to the railing of a bridge in Göteborg. The flag bears the word “stress” but is it for or against stress?
Time flies. Actually I think it leaks away like water in a rusty bucket. Anyway I was intending to put some of my London pictures online when I got back but I seem to have been rushing around with no time at all. Days where my calender has looked deceptively empty have turned out to be full of stuff that needs to be done. Anyway here is a limited selection of my pictures.
The first is a picture of a Crazy Frog doll. I get the impression that it is more a dropped dolly than a statement but I do like the fact that the person who picked it up has placed it on the rim of a dustbin – somehow profetic of the move from obscurity to fame to obscurity again.
This is followed by a series of street art – the yellow rat was on a lamp post on Oxford Street
The next one was an interesting mix of shapes and colours, making the end result a collaborative work of art.
This stencil of two men was in a quite alley just off Tottenham Court Road.
The last one is significant of the lack of media plurality and was written in chalk on a newsagents box and bears the text “One source isn’t choice”
Not sure if the collection is representative – but it is what cought my eye when I was walking around.
Somewhere in the end of last year I became annoyed with Flickr. I used Flickr to upload my photos (original, ey?) but since I used too much bandwidth they started limiting the amount I could put online. One alternative would have been to pay for an account. But instead I just stopped posting my photos. Now I have decided to post them somewhere on my own site and stick a few in my blog. Most of my pictures are of street art from different places. Here are two from Stockholm that I took a while back – they don’t really have anything in common.
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Some London street images…
Click here for a full view of some of the street art I came across in London.
Yesterday I saw this poster.
Its an advert for an energy substitute. The basic premise is that many people have a banana in their training bags but the banana is not good enough to help the body get the amounts of carbohydrates and proteins it needs after a workout. Therefore bananas are for monkeys.
While I could argue about the eating habits of monkeys (not that many bananas) that is not what I want to do. The point of this post is to talk about advertising.
The inspiration for this poster has been taken from grafitti – this can be seen by the imitation of stencils and the mock access paint running down the poster. The ad-company has obviously been inspired by street artists, such as Banksy. This is one of Banksy’s works below.
My question is wouldnt it be nice if the commercial use of art in advertising was openly recognised and acknowledged?
Advertisers tend to rely on the outside world for their inspiration but see no need to admit the fact that they are borrowing from a wider culture. I realise that this is asking a lot but shouldnt advertisers acknowledge these sources?
I have begun to notice the development of a new (?) form of street art. Small decorative items turn up in the usual and unusual places. This is an example at the ATM on Vasagatan (G̦teborg Рareal photo)
Kind of cute…
