Street Art at Middle Age

It seems to us graffiti is now middle-aged. In other words, it’s comfortably in the mainstream of art and has been for some time. Coffee table books have been published about it, some of the artists fetch 6-figure prices for their works, and mainstream museums hold shows. One can question if this, then, is real graffiti (see note below), but in the meantime we’ll just enjoy it.

As we did this past week when the Rome community of Garbatella hosted an opening of the work of several well-known Roman and French graffiti artists, artists that were in essence commissioned to do works several stories high in several cases or several buildings long in another.

The works ranged from Sten & Lex’s stencil art of Rome soccer star Francesco Totti (the “star” deserves a footnote – see below) mixed with the Rome she-wolf symbol, to wallpaper-like (and we don’t mean that derogatorily) Mideastern designs of Fefe. Our friend Jessica Stewart of Rome Photo Blog (http://www.romephotoblog.com/) is as entranced with this work as we, and she’s a wonderfully gifted photographer. So we recommend you click onto her site for a closer look at this exhibit. Jessica, who was around for much of the mounting of these works, explained how some of them were done in a post to me (see second note below) - fascinating!

Garbatella is a perfect place to mount these works, we think, because it is a tight, leftist community that supports anti-authoritarian activities. The works will be up as long as the weather permits. Because of the rain, some of the paper already is peeling; so get there soon. The works are all on the walls of the block enclosed by via Caffaro, via Persico and via Adorno. Your best starting point is where via Caffaro and via Adorno meet. There you can also see JB Rock’s Mamma Roma, a portion of which is visible in the photo above.

And there is an ending party, with more graffiti art, in the Ostiense locale of the now defunct Rome wholesale markets, on June 15 at 6 p.m. (via dei Magazzini Generali). For those who follow the “Let’s ‘Chattare’” blogs here, you’ll appreciate this ending party is billed as a “Finissage” – which is taking the French word, vernissage, used frequently here in Rome to describe opening parties, and, well, bending a bit. I must admit I kind of like the new bastardized word.

Which brings us to our notes. Note #1: Is it graffiti if it’s in an authorized place, sponsored by, among others, the city and province, and kicked off like any other art opening (the opening was in the large restored 1930s Palladium; photo). See our blog that includes our talk with Maria Teresa Natale, Oct. 27, 2009 http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2009/10/graffiti-rome-primer.html.

Note #2: from Jessica Stewart "Sten and Lex handpainted every panel that they put up. They told me that it took them a little over a month to do it all. JB Rock's was printed and then he painted over it once it was stuck on the wall (filling in the hair and shading). C215 and L'Atlas also had theirs printed. I think Sten and Lex are pretty unique in actually having the patience and perseverance to handpaint something so large. The paper they work on is so thin that you couldn't print on it. "

And, finally, we have to note that iconic soccer player Totti –passionate but also known as a good sport - intentionally kicked an Inter player very late in a frustrating– for Totti and Roma fans - Italian cup game last week. His unsportsmanlike act – “the big kick” – caused national hand-wringing, an outpouring of emotions and questioning of national values, hyped as only Italians can do it. So would Sten & Lex have used Totti in their piece if they had known about his unsportsmanlike conduct before they started drawing?

Dianne
You can try the website for this graffiti project - in English, but it didn’t work for me. www.out-door.it/en. And there's a video in Italian and French at http://www.muvideo.biz/play.php?vid=872

Graffiti: A Rome Primer

Although New York and Los Angeles are the most famous graffiti sites in the world, Rome is an active center of this controversial art form. Like Los Angeles, Rome is a city of stucco walls, perfect surfaces for graffiti artists, and they've taken advantage of these canvasses--and other surfaces, too, covering the city with drawings and paintings. Although much of it still strikes us as the work of talentless adolescents with too much time on their hands, we vowed to learn more. We were blown away by Steve Grody's book, Graffiti L.A. (Abrams), which taught us the basic terminology (tags, signatures, crews, fill, simples, throw-ups, shout-outs); convinced us that many graffiti practitioners are serious artists; gave us a sense of the culture and politics of graffiti; and even raised the disturbing possibility that all the junk that Rome's tourists complain about may be a "necessary" preliminary to the production of the good stuff, the "real" art. The blogsite www.reallyrome.com/blog has some nice 2007 examples of Trastevere graffiti. The one at lower right features two tags, one by Lucas, the other, in the center and less obvious, by Croels. Tagging is a controversial aspect of graffiti writing, because it seems so much like scribbling. The upside is that by writing his name 5 times on this wall, Lucas is developing his talent.

Jessica's Rome Photo Blog also has some good graffiti pix - put "graffiti" into the search engine on her blog.

In Rome, we met with the city's queen of graffiti, Maria Teresa Natale. While not herself an artist, Maria Teresa knows more about Rome's graffiti scene than any one else, with the possible exception of Gabriella Tarquini, with whom she manages the website lascia il segno (leave the sign), essentially an online, annotated graffiti library, focusing on Rome, Milan, and Berlin, and housing more than 11,000 images. There's another link to the website on the right of this site. (And, don't bother with "English"; all the good stuff is pictured in the Italian parts of the site.)

Over coffee in Monteverde Vecchio, Maria Teresa told us about the Rome graffiti scene. Rome, she explained, is the only city in the world where both regular trains--she mentioned the ones that run from the Ostiense station to Lido d'Ostia (to the beach) and the metro cars--are "decorated," as she put it. In Milan, she said, graffiti writers were more likely to be designers who functioned like regular artists, presenting their work in gallery exhibitions. Rome hasn't reached that stage, although its better educated artists, some of them engineers or architects, are often working with posters or stickers, while the poorer and less educated are more likely to be doing the spray can thing, making letters or figures ("puppets," in the English translation from the Italian).

Among Rome's notable graffiti artists are sprayers Thoms, Bol, Soeww, and Genuine Crew; the letterer Kemh; and street artists Lex, Hogre, JB Rock, Diamont, and Sten (not to be confused with Stan), whose puppets are legendary. One of Sten's atypical yet iconic puppet figures for the Teatro Vascello, in Monteverde Vecchio, is at left. The works of these artists, and that of others, is likely to be found in train stations (Maria Teresa mentioned Nuovo Salario and Appiano) and Centri Sociali (social centers), notably Forte Prenestino (see Rome the Second Time for a description and directions).

Most graffiti writing in Rome is against the law. The liberal, reform-minded former mayor Walter Veltroni initiated a "conversation" with graffiti artists, likely in an effort both to recognize the artistic merit of the form and to bring it under some control. He offered the artists about a dozen "legal" walls, each about 100 meters long, outside the city center, and other walls--some in train stations--for which artists could sign up to paint and control that particular space for a three month period. In retrospect, those were the good old days. The 3-month wall program has been suspended, and heavy fines are levied on anyone caught painting train cars.

Maria Teresa told us that most of the best graffiti is located far outside the Centro, where artists are less likely to interrupted by the police. Still, we've found several worthy, close-in sites. For political graffiti, we recommend the left-leaning community of Garbatella, easily reachable on Metro B. See the subtle example at left, one of several on the building.

On the other end of the political spectrum is the graffiti sponsored by businesses that would rather have a nice drawing on their saracinesca (metal shutter) than messy tags.

Another good site, described in Itinerary 10 in Rome the Second Time (p. 150), is Forte Braschi, located in Parco del Pineto, where the art work lines the outside perimeter of the military installation.

The third close-in site is an underpass on via Appia Antica, less than 100 meters outside the city wall. The art that opens this post, at top left, is from there.

Bill