Hogre: What's Hogre?

OK.  What's Hogre?  As this 2018 (San Lorenzo) image suggests, Hogre's a street artist, specializing in stencils and, more recently, in large posters.  Many of his early stencils feature Hogre's face, and it's likely that this What's Hogre? image is, indeed, Hogre--though perhaps years ago.  We would guess he's more like 40 now.

Hogre is from Rome, and we first encountered his work in 2010 (but heard about him as early as 2009), when we found this image of an angry, "I can't take it anymore" Hogre.

In these "early" years, Hogre's work was satiric, but quite unassuming--small in size and muted in
tone--though always identified as "Hogre."  Here are some other Hogre stencils and pasteups we found in Rome:

Achtung (2013).  Tor Pignattara.

Not sure what this has to do with Spam.  The image appears to be of the Vatican,
with a devil-like octopus hovering above.  Hogre was never fond of the Catholic Church, as
we shall see later.  2015

An Asian temple (?), atop the Coliseum. 

Ego, 2013.  Looks too old to be Hogre, as does "Achtung" (above).

Relaxing with a bottle of something.  Ostiense underpass, 2014.

"Look Inside Yourself."

Hogre's most famous (or infamous) Rome moment occurred in 2017, when he was arrested at an internet cafe in the city, charged under an obscure Italian law with a "public offense to religion," a crime carrying with a fine of up to 5,000 Euro and/or a 2-year jail term.  Hogre's sin was to use a bus stop advertising space for his "Ecce homo erectus (left, below) featuring Jesus with an erection emerging under his robe, his hand on the head of a boy kneeling before him.  Scandalous!  Hogre explained that the poster was a response to sexual abuse charges against Cardinal Pell, a high-ranking Vatican official.

"Ecce homo erectus" (left)

More recently, Hogre has been working in Warsaw and London, the latter a city he identifies with his new nemesis, the advertising industry.  "I declared war on kitsch supremacy, embodied in the ads, and definable as the refusal of everything that is considered unacceptable.  And London is the capital of this aesthetic ideal."  Put another way, Hogre detests the way today's advertising of "brand identities" suffocates individual identity.  Guy DeBord and Max Stirner are among his intellectual influences.

His campaign against the messaging of the ad industry (and those who use that industry, including government agencies) is carried out in two ways, each very different from the simple stencils that characterized his early work in Rome. One technique is to tear away at existing posters (or locating posters that have been torn--not difficult), then superimposing the text "SUBVERTISING" (that is, subverting advertising).  This technique appears to be an aspect of what Hogre calls "creative vandalism."

Hogre's second technique, more widely employed, is to replace existing posters--the standard ones, covered in glass and locked, mostly at bus stops, sometimes inside subway cars--with his own posters.  This work is usually accomplished with a group of co-conspirators, equipped with the 4-headed key required to gain access to the glassed-in, bus-stop posters.

Here's an example from Warsaw:

And one from London:

Much of Hogre's work is political.  One poster, mounted in Greenwich, featured an advertisement for Titan Deportation Charter Flights, with the slogan, "For Your Safety on Board You Had Better Be White."  Another, below, features the London police and the theme, "Help Keep Your Neighbourhood Paranoid."

"Social cleansing," also London.  Below, a worker imagines himself being swept away with masses:

Asked "What's next for Hogre," the artist replied, "I would love to shit on the tomb of Goebbels, and his legacy."  Stay tuned.  Hogre is not dead:

Looks like Rome

Bill

Hogre has recently published a limited edition book, Subvertising: The Piracy of Outdoor Advertising (Dog Section Press - "we make books with bite" - sold out as of this writing).  Much of his work can be viewed on Flickr.

Jessica Stewart's Street Art Stories Roma featured Hogre.

Jessica Stewart: Street Art Stories ROMA

Jessica Stewart, the talented photographer behind www.romephotoblog.com, has just published a remarkable small book, Street Art Stories ROMA,  that she describes as "The first book about the Rome street art scene!"

The "street art scene" is, in essence, graffiti.  RST is a great fan of Rome's graffiti, with more than 30 posts that mention it, and many that feature it (see some links below).  It's difficult in Rome to appreciate the "good" graffiti - that approaching art - given the ubiquitous "tags" that, frankly, dirty up the city.

Sten and Lex, working in Garbatella in 2010

By focusing on 30 street artists, Stewart draws our attention to the artistry of the form, distinguishing the work of the artists, and describing some of the artists' changes over time.
She acknowledges Rome stalwarts, like Sten and Lex, who do commissioned pieces (even at MACRO) and whom we have lauded in our posts, and she introduces us to a few of the artists who are active currently in the Centro, like Hogre (below, left), works of whom we found this week in Monti.

Tags.  Not fine art. 

By allowing us to distinguish and appreciate these artists, Stewart brings shape and a sense of wonder to Rome's street art scene, making it possible to separate the genuinely artistic from the wall "tags" that do little more than mark up the city's buildings.  We should point out that Stewart's book targets stencil and paste-up art almost to the exclusion of spray painting and use of painted letters and text that we consider the more basic graffiti.

The text runs along breathlessly, as Stewart provides the chronology of her involvement in the street art scene. She's more of a chronicler than an analyzer of street art.  But some analysis there is, and she's attentive to the making of the street art and the reactions of some neighbors.

And, Stewart's may be the first book, but Maria Theresa Natale has a long-standing Web site (in Italian - www.lasciailsegno.it) on graffiti internationally.  Natale focuses more on the painted scripts, as one can see from her Rome photos:  http://www.lasciailsegno.it/index.php?it/164/roma.

There are several current exhibitions of street art in and near Rome, obviously acknowledging it has entered the legitimate artworld - perhaps to its detriment.

A portion of Alice Pasquini's "Cave of Tales" at the Casa
dell'Architettura

"Cave of Tales" is a powerful meditation on urban life from one of Stewart's more painterly artists, Alice Pasquini.  The show, through 30 August, is at Casa dell'Architettura in piazza M. Fanti (the ex-aquarium - a great building, btw).  See the bottom of the site's Home page for hours.  The exhibit is in the basement (floor -1) and one accesses it from the elevator inside the portiere's office just on the left as you enter the building.

The town of Gaeta, south of Rome, has its own street art festival:  http://www.memorieurbane.it/. This year's version included a week of just women street artists, among them Pasquini.

"Urban Contest Gallery 2012" has an exhibition open every day (noon - 7 p.m.) at via di Pietralata 159, at the ex-Lanificio complex.  The current exhibit by Biodpi is titled "I am Anna Magnani." It merits a visit if you can get yourself out there. Don't miss Pasquini's artful trailer in the courtyard of this ex-wool manufacturing facility.

ADDED (10 May) - C215 (Christian Guemy) at Wunderkammern Gallery in Portonaccio through 24 May.  Sabina de Gregori’s new book “C215” (Castelvecchi), with the participation of Jef Aerosol, Obey, Logan Hicks, Martha Cooper, Sten & Lex, and Wooster Collective, will be presented for the occasion.
For the opening Guémy painted walls around Rome, some in collaboration with NUfactory.
Address: via Gabrio Serbelloni 124, Roma.
Opening hours: wednesdays to saturdays from 5pm to 8pm.
Or by appointment at +39-3498112973

And then there's Greco's angry nurse (there are two, actually), on the wall of the Fascist-era post office on via Taranto. 

Stewart's 100+ page book has text in both Italian and English and over 100 photos, each identifying the artist (no mean feat itself).  Street Art Stories ROMA is available at the Feltrinelli bookstores (look for a special display), as well as amazon.it.  List price: Euro 14, Mondo Bizzarro Press.

Some prior RST  posts on Rome graffiti:

A primer on Rome graffiti (from 2009): http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2009/10/graffiti-rome-primer.htmlhttp://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2009/10/graffiti-rome-primer.html

A post on the 2010 Garbatella street art exhibition, including outdoor installations:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/05/street-art-at-middle-age.html

Graffiti at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, and in Rome:  http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/06/graffiti-good-bad-and-ugly-moca-and.html

Deciphering neo-fascist graffiti on Rome's walls:  http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/12/deciphering-romes-walls-neo-fascist.html

And a few specific artists, locations, and types:
Howen:  http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/08/graffiti-report-howen.html

Refuse trucks:  http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/11/refuse-truck-as-art.html

Via Appia Antica:  http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2009/11/rst-top-40-39-graffiti-via-appia-antica.html

For more, search "graffiti" on the blog.

Dianne

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

Gidget takes on the Skinheads

In a comment on our recent "Found Art" effort, Jessica mentioned Rome's stencil artists, about which we know nothing--or almost nothing. We offer this smallish piece of stencil art (maybe 18 inches high), found during a giro around the university district, at the corner of viale Regina Elena and via Tiburtina, across from the cemetery. Pony-tailed, mini-skirted chick tossing swastika into trash basket. Visions of the 1960s? Gidget goes to Rome? Third-wave feminism?

Bill