Composed Volcano

This blog is dedicated to all the anonymous artists whose work doesn’t ever seek any recognition or reward.

Palaisseau, a suburb around Paris is a nice, neat, quiet and serene place that can be reached in 35-45 minutes by metro. (Apart from the fact that I had friends here and was staying here, there is no place of importance or monuments!!) Once here as is my usual methodology, I set out on foot to explore the area & its surroundings. During one such walk I took a short cut through the slightly overgrown bushes, one can’t call them anything else, and came to an underpass of the main highway. And there to my surprise I saw some very colourful expressions on the walls. This obscure underpass was turned into a street art gallery!! Intrigued I walked on in that direction only to find some more complicated pieces of work by anonymous artists. I asked our friends about these brilliant & detailed pieces and came to know that these are done by boys who are simply spending their time with no monetary motives!!

One look at these creations and you know for sure that the artist is talented and has put in sufficient amount of time and effort to put the art piece together. Take a look and do note that all these are done with spray cans & the finishing touches that these guys have given is just superb.

Street art is a kind of art that is made in public places, an unsanctioned art form not recognized by the government or any known private body. Street art may include various kinds like graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, poster art, street installations, video projections,…etc.

Street art is a medium through which the artists communicates with the general public their thoughts and feeling about any general everyday issue. It can also be a way to mark your area when it’s the different gangs that are concerned; whether this was the reason behind the art we witnessed, we could not tell. Going by the face I would say, what I saw was an impressive piece of graffiti artwork.

Early graffiti can be dated back to 1920s, but the real graffiti movement started in 1960’s through the public activists and gang members. There are around 80 odd street artists who have been listed across various continents. Besides break dancing rapping and DJing, Graffiti art constitutes the fourth element of the hip-hop culture.

There was an exhibition held by the Washington Project of the Arts in 1981 dedicated entirely to Street Art. Tate Modern, one of the biggest art gallery in England held an exhibition in 2008 dedicated to Street Art. Many a established artists have their roots in graffiti and this art form has inspired many a graphic designers and digital photographers.

Where there is popularity, commercialization will follow. In 2001, IBM is said to have launched an advertising campaign where they spray painted the sidewalks all across Chicago in San Francisco with peace symbol, heart and a Penguin (Linux mascot nicknamed TUX) to represent ‘Peace, Love and Linux’. However the campaign bombed on legal issues. The artists were arrested on charge of vandalism and IBM was asked to cough up a whooping amount of $120,000 as against disciplinary action and also clean up costs! Sony tried a similar campaign in 2005 across 6 cities in the US of A. (Without making the history repeat itself, Sony paid the building owners an amount towards spray painting their walls hence taking care of all legalities!!)

In Asia, the graffiti art is still in a nascent stage. However, Graffiti began in China in 1920’s with Mao Zedong practicing this art form to vocalize strong opinion out in the public galvanizing the country’s communist revolution. Mao also holds a record for making the longest piece of graffiti depicting 4000 characters criticizing his teachers and the state of Chinese society!!

All said, Graffiti art with its bold letters and loud colors represent attitude that no other art form reflects the way graffiti does. Graffiti is very punk and very yo! Kudos to these unknown artists…..