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A Short Declaration of My Love for Urban Art
A quick fact about myself: I was extremely close to applying to art school, and my major would have been Illustration. Gallatin won out though, and I can luckily include art in my concentration. This weekend, an illustration and graphic artist festival is coming to Berlin until the beginning of November (http://www.illustrative.de). Basically, this weekend will be like a microcosm of heaven settling down literally right within my grasp. For only €7.50 for an entire weekend, there will be a smorgasbord of artists, galleries, exhibitions, and a “draw-off”. If any of you are going to be in Berlin from October 16th to November 1st, please check it out (although it hasn’t started yet, I’m still recommending it because my hopes are so high).
I guess it’s redundant to now say that Berlin is one of the best cities in the world for contemporary art. There are so many museums and gallery openings that it’s practically impossible to keep track of every single one. The street art is unparalleled and even the graffiti is well executed and tasteful, especially in my neighborhood. There is so much talent in Berlin and it's accepted as part of everyday street culture.
A wall near my apartment
The most internationally acclaimed piece of street art is the East Side Gallery. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a large portion remained intact enough that the government invited artists from around the world to decorate it with their own interpretations of “freedom”, “unity”, and “peace. It’s only a 10-minute walk from our apartments, and I think it’s one of the best things to see in Berlin. In the morning when the sun rises, it hits the wall and you can just walk along the entire length of it for half an hour. Between the wall and the Spree River is a bank big enough that it forms parks and restaurants in some patches. It’s a beautiful piece of artwork. When I was visiting it for the first time, I saw an artist working on one of the murals. Whether he was actually licensed to that section of the wall was uncertain and probably unnecessary. Lots of sections were left undecorated and just as they were in the fall of 1989. They have since been covered in more layers of graffiti, tags, names, grit, and Sharpie scrawls.
This part of the wall is intentionally an interactive piece. I’ve always strongly believed that art should be for the public: free, open, and accessible without being watered-down versions of an artist’s real capabilities. Anyone remember the Keith Haring mural that used to grace Houston near Elizabeth Street? I think it’s gone now, which is just awful, but anyways – Keith Haring drew exclusively in public spaces, starting his career in the NYC subways in the early 80’s. That same spirit of creating art for the people, not for the galleries and museums, is still present in Berlin. This city is so open and expressive, which is just one of the many cultural phenomena that drew me here.
East Side Gallery
Me and a cute little guy 
Fish wheatpasted onto a wall
Location
Berlin
Ditto what everybody just
Ditto what everybody just said above. I gave my brother a book on Berlin street art awhile back, and it looks SUPER cool. It´s great that you´re getting to experience it in person. It really seems like street art is becoming more and more omnipresent and it´s now essentially unavoidable for it to be disregarded by the art world as true and respectable art. Keep taking cool photos!
I am glad someone did Urban Art
I am a big urban art fan as well. I thought the photos you posted were beautiful and intellectually stimulating. I wanted to do a similar post, but I could not get my act together fast enough to take photographs of all the good street art here in Buenos Aires. There is a grafitti tour of Buenos Aires, that some of my friends took and they said that Buenos Aires had some extremely cool urban art. I hope to go on that tour soon. I have seen only a small sample here, but it seems to be all very political and very anti-government. I look foward to finding more urban art as i spend time in Buenos Aires.
street Art
I really enjoyed what you had to say about the street art in Berlin. I think that there must be something about the mind frame of a place that dictates whether or not this form of art is acceptable. When it is "tasteful and well executed," as you described, I think it can be an awesome thing to see. I enjoy the colors and the open expression of opinions.
However, I definitely think there are some places where this is more acceptable than other places. I have never been to Berlin, but hearing you describe it as a mecca for contemporary art leads me to believe that this must be why the street are is prevalent (and actually enjoyable)
In Paris, I haven't really seen anything that I would refer to as street art. It's all just graffiti and I don't find it to be beautiful at all. The opposite, rather I think that it takes away from the beautiful and historical quality of the city. Every time I see graffiti somewhere it is an instant reminder that I am not lost in time and it makes me sad that someone wasn't as appreciative of the place as they should have been.