Street Artists Transform Nomentana Train Station

This artist has a number of pieces of a similar nature in the underpass.  They're presented in homage to street artist Blu.  The artist may work under the name qwerty.

Most of the "letters to the editor" that appear in the newspaper La Repubblica are from citizens complaining about something: potholes, garbage collection, bus service and the like.  But this one was different.  It was a feel-good story, about a place--an underpass serving the train station at via Nomentana--that had been filthy and a bit intimidating for years, but that had recently been fixed up--by volunteers.  So we went.  We had our doubts that there still was a train station in Nomentana, since we'd never heard of it.  And we knew we'd have trouble finding the underpass.

Wrong on both counts.  There is, indeed, a via Nomentana station, and the underpass was easy to find: on viale Etiopia, just south of the circonvallazione and just east of Piazza Gondar.

One of several by the artist LAC 68.  

Urban scene.  By BOL?

Lots of affection here, but also bla bla bla

Thelma senza (without) Luise (Louise), aqueducts as background.  LAC 68.  The figure at right is a regular feature
of the artist's work, as is the shopping cart (which also appears frequently in Banksy's drawings).  

Dianne with bird, who's been reading
The Jungle Book and appears to be
a commuter

What we found was inspiring.  A group of street artists have decorated hundreds of feet of passageway--the main passage and long side ramps, too.

Save the whales.  

Animal images--rhinos, Moby Dick, fish, a wolf--- abound,
giving much of the space a playful look.  "Love" is another theme.



Some of the art is not up to "international" standards, in our opinion, but some of it very good, indeed.  We especially enjoyed the broad brushwork and humor of LAC 68, and the evocative stick figures of the artist we identified (perhaps incorrectly) as qwerty.












We talked briefly with two artists who were working on one of the few unfinished sections before moving on to another town (Pavona, if we remember correctly).

All the artists were brought in through the efforts of a retired railroad worker, Francesco Galvano, who, as one article stated, created this as an homage to the station in which he spent his working life. The overall project is to decorate 120 stations, under the heading Arte in stazione e citta' a colori - Art in stations and cities in color, coordinated by the group Nucleo Sicurezza Ambientale (perhaps the best translation - Secure or Healthy Environment Group), of which Galvano is the Roma Nord head.  More pics below.

Bill

Side ramp

Another side ramp

There are things to read, too

Mermaid with red hair.  LAC 68

Northern entrance.  No longer intimidating.

C215: Street Art Caravaggio in Rome

C215 painting, San Lorenzo

We first encountered the work of street artist C215 (pronounced C two one five) on an amble through San Lorenzo in July 2012.  The work was on a sidewalk-level electrical access panel.  Our attraction was an obvious one; we recognized the content: a version of Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593-94).  The signature--C215 in a cube on the right of the artwork--was there, too, but we didn't know yet how to "see" it.  Now we do. 






Our next contact with C215 was in one of Rome's emerging hotbeds of street art, the suburb of Tor Pignattara.  We must have learned something about the artist in the months since our first sighting, because we went there to catch a C215 exhibit at the Wunderkammern gallery, a great space doing its best to nudge Rome onto the world avant-garde art scene.
 Wunderkammern opened a new show last night - November 30, of works by Rero, a French conceptual artist.

When we were at Wunderkammern, the space was given over to C215's work, which included at least two more versions of Caravaggio's Boy.  One was painted on a red postal box (on this day, there were bottles and wine glasses on it, testifying to a party the night before). 

Another, perhaps based on a different Caravaggio painting, had been done on a metal plaque.









It was clear from the exhibit that C215's work was not limited to Caravaggio; he also had a fondness for cats.  In a short visit to Rome that coincided with the Wunderkammern exhibit, he had

Street cat by C215

produced some wall paintings in Tor Pignattara, including a piece for the bar across the street from the gallery (left). 

Most revealing, we learned at the gallery that C215 does his work using stencils rather than individual brush strokes, a technique that makes it possible for him to work quickly and generate lots of product.  Despite our appreciation of C215's work, we were oddly disappointed to know it was done with stencils, and quickly.  Somehow that made it seem too easy, though that perspective seems unreasonably "Protestant." 

C215 in London

For reasons that will go unexplained (we are hardly jet-setters; we flew Ryanair, which is something like inhabiting a continuous, yellow advertisement) London was our next C215 stop.  It's a city serious about its street art; one of the stars of the "scene" paints the gum spots on the street.  Seriously. 

Anyway, we were fortunate to have a first-rate street-art tour, and on it, in an alley somewhere in East London, we found C215--another boy, but not, apparently, based on Caravaggio.  And just fifty feet away, a Banksy piece that must be worth millions (if you could move the wall it's on).  Indeed, C215--Paris-based, his real name Christian Guémy--has been referred to as the "French Banksy."  He may not be that, but his work is not cheap.

Bill

Chewing gum street art, London. Not C215.  Rome has some catching up to do. 

The Art World: When a Copy is just as Good--and a lot Cheaper

As it relates to art, forgery has a long and complex history.  Not so long ago, a brilliant artist could make a virtually perfect copy of an existing work and be rewarded rather than jailed.  Andrea del
Sarto produced an astonishingly good reproduction of a Raphael painting and presented it to Pope Leo X, who was fooled--and delighted.  And Michelangelo was a prolific forger, having once made, buried, and "rediscovered" an ancient statue of Cupid. 

Today, forgery, in the sense of copying a work of art with intent to deceive the buyer or recipient into thinking it's an original, is illegal.  But just copying a work of art, with the understanding that the result is only a copy?  That's OK.  Indeed, in Rome one can make a business of it.  In the heart of city, not far from Piazza Barberini, up via Francesco Crispi from the icy Gagosian gallery, and next door to the city's contemporary art museum, there's a shop where you can get anything copied--anything, that is, except currency, or certain documents.

At Alessi, they'll make you a perfect copy of the grand masters, or so the sign says.  Or bring in a photo. 

Conor Fitzgerald's The Fatal Touch (2011), a police/detective novel set in Rome's Trastevere, offers an entertaining--and detailed--introduction to the complex art of copying.   Bill

Okay, but who's the grand master?

 [Since we published this post, readers have let us
know that the painting is The Singing Butler (1992), by Jack Vettriano, a Scottish artist.
It's enormously popular in the UK (and likely elsewhere) and has been the subject of numerous
parodies, including one by London artist Banksy, below]