Near where I live there’s a subway under the main road. I have to walk under every morning to reach the station. In the evening it is populated by the odd echoing busker or sullen pack of cider-swilling tracksuits.
The subway walls are painted an optimistic bright orange and every inch is graffiti’d and written on. There are large scrawls of literate anti-war stuff and the usual big, round-lettered tags. The surprising thing is the number of original and abstract pieces up there. Those responsible are clearly taking time to design and render their filthy art.
My personal favourite is the spraycan rendering of Henry from Eraserhead (photo to follow, promise). The daubing that prompted this post though was yesterday’s fresh Mondrian tribute, much like the front page.
You get a better class of vandal in Edinburgh (don’t you know). Note the pen scrawls after only 24 hours.
Or there’s the over-exposed shot. Quite cartoony.
04-Mar-04 at 8:39 pm | Permalink
I can so better that. Watch this space.
04-Mar-04 at 9:05 pm | Permalink
Is Mondrian your favourite artist? What prompted the front page? Jean-Michel Basquiat is my all time absolute favourite, who also died age 27. But lets not go there. Check him out. A lot of eminant artists since have sited him as a hugely important figurehead. Was mates with Andy Warhol, who played Eminem to his 50 cent, I guess. More lately, the idiograms on Radiohead’s The Bends and Ok Computer were clearly out of the same bag. His use of colour is pretty gaudy, but his monochrome stuff makes me come out in goosebumps. I’ve found the one I want to hang above my bed. It’s beautiful. Now I just have to get that job with Saatchi And Saatchi.
04-Mar-04 at 9:08 pm | Permalink
aww, baby. I have one on my bedroom wall. Come and have a look at it, if you like
04-Mar-04 at 9:33 pm | Permalink
Say hi to Jools, everybody. The girl from work who steals my chocolate. And my computer. Hmmm, Westlife, Busted, Orlando Bloom, Robbie Williams, Basquiat. Ecclectic. I’m not coming back until you pick your knickers off the floor…
08-Mar-04 at 5:04 pm | Permalink
> Mondrian … the front page
Not my favourite artist, but extremely well-suited to an exercise in resizable CSS. I wouldn’t like to try reproducing a Dali using only rectangle primitives : )
Got to see one or two of M’s originals at the Guggenheim in NY though. Which was nice.