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Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Unlike many other budget hotels, Tune Hotels encourages its guests to fill out an in-depth satisfaction survey that is once again more in keeping with a significantly more expensive hotel
Jean Honoré Fragonard - French, 1732 - 1806
Blindman's Buff, c. 1775/1780
West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 55
From a distance, we look slightly down into a lush park filled pairs and groups of elegantly dressed, light-skinned adults and children frolicking and socializing in this vertical painting. The color palette is dominated by celery and olive green and tawny, soft brown. An aquamarine-blue sky filled with towering white clouds and soaring trees fills the upper three-quarters of this painting. People gather in small groups around a fountain to our left, a balustraded terrace at the center, and a dining table enclosed by tall trellises to our right. On the terrace, a blindfolded woman in a butter-yellow gown stretches out her arms over several people leaning away from her. The people in this game with her and the others wear suits and dresses in warm crimson red, rose pink, goldenrod yellow, baby blue, or teal. The women’s long dresses have ruffled sleeves that come to their elbows. The men wear jackets over cream-white shirts, and some wear white stockings with knee-length britches. The base of the fountain to our left is carved with statues around the base. A jet of water sprays up from a shallow bowl above. Atop the tall terrace surrounding the dining table, a statue of a woman wearing a helmet looks down to our left in profile. Water cascades in a waterfall on the far side of the terrace below, presumably from a second, unseen fountain.
he monumental canvases of Blindman's Buff and The Swing [FIG. 1], which must be counted among the greatest achievements in eighteenth-century French landscape painting, have been associated since their rediscovery in the early nineteenth century. Nearly identical in height, they present similar views of vast and fecund picturesque gardens, peopled with elegantly dressed men, women, and children playing games, conversing, promenading, and dining in an exuberant natural environment. The myriad details in each — bubbling fountains, shadowy sculptures, overgrown flower beds, rushing cascades, soaring trees, and towering cloud-filled skies — put the viewer’s eye in constant motion in, around, and between the two compositions. Blindman’s Buff was intended to hang to the left of The Swing, as indicated by the trellises covered with red and pink flowers that appear in the lower right and lower left corners of each composition. When seen side by side the paintings can be appreciated as one panoramic composition, centered on a great mound surmounted by a geyser and flanked by dramatic vistas to either side. Laboratory analysis has dispelled the notion, first advanced by Pierre de Nolhac, that the pictures were originally a single canvas that has been cut in two.[1] The Swing, which is slightly narrower than Blindman’s Buff, shows indications of having been cropped along its left edge, so that originally the two canvases must have been precisely the same size.[2]
Landscape — particularly gardens — formed a significant aspect of Fragonard’s oeuvre. While little documentation or contemporaneous commentary have survived, such works were admired and appreciated during his lifetime and shortly thereafter, as his early biographer, Charles Le Carpentier, indicated:
When this artist wished to be true to himself, he created delicious landscapes where one always finds the memory and the image of nature. They are remarkable above all by their astonishing effect of light and the beautiful forms of their terracing. His trees are treated with taste. . . . Could anyone better understand the magic of the skies he paints so exquisitely, and seize the beautiful effects that nature reveals only after a storm, or when a cloudy and nebulous sky lets a few sunrays dart to the ground.[3]
Le Carpentier’s comment that such paintings evoked a “memory” of nature was astute, for Blindman’s Buff and The Swing are replete with reminders of the fabulous gardens that Fragonard first depicted when he was a student at the Académie de France in Rome from 1756 to 1761. Fragonard’s experience of Italy had sparked his interest in landscape drawing and painting, an inclination he developed on numerous drawing excursions throughout Rome and the Italian countryside. The most remarkable results of these efforts are the extraordinary red chalk drawings of the gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, where the artist stayed for several weeks in the summer of 1760 as the guest of the Abbé de Saint-Non [FIG. 2]. The towering cypresses and overgrown bowers, lively fountains, and stunning vistas that characterized the d’Este gardens reappear in Blindman’s Buff and The Swing, even if the works are in no way topographical. While it has proved impossible to find specific garden sources for the paintings, certain motifs — such as the sculpture — can be linked with known prototypes.[4] Fragonard’s method in his garden paintings was not to record a site precisely but to re-create imaginatively a sense of the character of a place he and his patrons may have visited. Attempting to identify the garden scenes in these two paintings would be fruitless and alien to the artist’s method and purpose.[5]
Blindman’s Buff and The Swing were produced long after Fragonard’s initial trip to Italy. The artist’s technique in these works is free and expansive, with little of the precise brushwork and devotion to detail that characterize the smaller landscapes he produced in Italy and shortly after his return to Paris in 1761.[6] The paint was applied thinly — some passages are nearly transparent washes of color — with only discrete areas of impasto in some of the brushwork defining clothing and foliage. This fluid technique recalls the fresh and confident ink wash drawings that Fragonard made for his patron, Pierre Jacques Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt (1715 – 1785), on a second trip to Italy in 1773 – 1774.[7] The example illustrated here [FIG. 3], representing an unidentified park probably in the vicinity of Rome, demonstrates the artist’s brilliance at capturing a sense of light and atmosphere and conveys the spontaneity and transience of nature more convincingly than the red chalk drawings made at Tivoli in the previous decade.[8] The drawing’s complex composition, with its artful massing of trees and combination of views peopled with a variety of figures, anticipates the style and imagery of Blindman’s Buff and The Swing, which the artist executed in Paris shortly after the second trip to Italy. It is probable that they date from the last years of the 1770s.[9]
The grand scale and broad, freely handled technique suggest that the paintings were conceived as decorations to be installed into the paneling on the wall of a salon.[10] As with so much of Fragonard’s oeuvre, the early history of these resplendent landscapes is unknown, and no contemporaneous comments about them have been discovered, yet they surely must have been one of the artist’s most important commissions, on a par with — in terms of ambition of design and execution, if not of patron — The Progress of Love series (New York, Frick Collection) executed in the early 1770s for Madame du Barry. Georges Wildenstein identified the paintings with two works listed in the estate inventory of the Abbé de Saint-Non, drawn up in 1792, which described two landscapes “made in Italy” with figures enjoying the game of La Main chaude (hot cockles) and playing on a Balançoire (either a swing or a seesaw).[11] Later scholars have rejected this association, however; the National Gallery’s paintings were not “done in Italy,” and it is highly unlikely that the game of blindman’s buff (in French, Colin-maillard) would have been confused with the very different “la main chaude” described in the inventory. Moreover, the two landscapes belonging to Saint-Non can be identified with other works by Fragonard.[12] The first confirmed record of the Washington paintings was made in 1845, when they were described in the collection of the marquis de Cypierre.
A clue to the paintings’ original purpose may be found in their relationship to another of Fragonard’s masterpieces of garden painting, the so-called Fête at Saint-Cloud, also datable to the late 1770s [FIG. 4]. This large canvas, which is precisely the same height as Blindman’s Buff and The Swing, also depicts a panoramic view of a garden or parkland populated by numerous figures engaged in varied activities amid fountains, sculptures, and lush foliage. The traditional provenance of Fête at Saint-Cloud — that it was commissioned by the duc de Penthièvre for the Hôtel de Toulouse in Paris (now the Banque de France, where the painting still hangs) — is uncertain, and the possibility exists, as Pierre Rosenberg first observed, that it was part of a larger decorative scheme that included Blindman’s Buff, The Swing, and perhaps two other garden scenes in the National Gallery of Art, A Game of Horse and Rider [FIG. 5] and A Game of Hot Cockles [FIG. 6].[13] Although their later provenances are different, the similarities in scale, style, and subject matter suggest that these five pictures were conceived as a series and, like the Frick Progress of Love, cannot be understood fully unless treated together as a decorative program.[14]
Sets of landscapes often served for interior decoration in the eighteenth century. In the 1770s and 1780s Hubert Robert (French, 1733 - 1808) was among the most prolific such decorators, creating suites of landscapes and ruin paintings for the interiors of his patrons’ hôtels particuliers and maisons de plaisance.[15] Fragonard is known to have painted many decorative pictures, often in pairs or series, but no ensemble survives intact in its original location.[16] Regarding the five garden paintings now divided between the National Gallery and the Banque de France, Paris, Rosenberg has proposed that they may originate from the collection of Marchal de Sainscy, whose 1789 sale catalogue describes a group of landscapes as follows:
H. Fragonnard [sic]. Five large pictures by this artist, designed and executed to decorate the walls of a salon; they represent diverse landscape subjects with varied and graceful sites, and are embellished with interesting figures.[17]
While the identification must remain speculative, the circumstantial evidence assembled by Rosenberg is provocative.[18] The consignor of the 1789 sale, Louis René Marchal de Sainscy, had acquired much of his collection in 1782 from his father, Louis Pierre Sébastien Marchal de Sainscy, along with the family’s primary residence in the rue des Fossés-Montmartre in Paris. Louis Pierre fits the profile of the sort of connoisseur who was purchasing works by Fragonard in the 1760s and 1770s. A noted collector, he was governor of Abbeville, maître d’hôtel du roi, and econome general du clergé, a title inherited by his only son Louis René. The son’s own immense wealth was increased when he married into a family of fermiers généraux in 1779.[19] Yet both Louis Pierre’s and Louis René’s fortunes reversed precipitously in the wake of financial reforms initiated by Charles Alexandre Calonne, the king’s controller-general of finance, forcing father and son to sell their property and leave Paris in 1788. The subsequent sale of the collection in 1789 revealed their particular interest in large-scale paintings by contempo-rary French artists (along with smaller easel pictures by French, Italian, and Dutch masters), including numerous works that were clearly meant to be integrated into the architectural framework of the house. Among these are four overdoors by François Boucher (French, 1703 - 1770), two more of ruins by Robert, and three large scenes from the hunt, “made for the decoration of a salon,” by Francesco Casanova (Italian, c. 1732/1733 - 1803).[20] The five Fragonard landscapes were also described as having this purpose, although it is unclear whether they were designed specifically for the Sainscy residence or whether they had been purchased from another collection. The varying shapes and sizes of the Washington and Paris paintings (beyond the current reduced dimensions of The Swing, Hot Cockles, and Horse and Rider) make better sense if imagined surrounded by boiseries, windows, and doorways. Given that the Fragonard paintings can be dated on stylistic grounds to the late 1770s, the father, Louis Pierre, most likely acquired them from the artist. Rosenberg has suggested that the paintings do not appear in an inventory drawn up in 1782 on the sale of the house and collection from Louis Pierre to his son Louis René simply because, being mural decorations, they would not have been noted as separate property by the auditors.[21] The three Casanova scenes from the hunt, which are similar in scale and shape to the Fragonards and therefore may have been part of a complementary decoration scheme, went similarly uninventoried.[22] In the end, neither the large Casanovas nor the five Fragonards found buyers in the 1789 sale, possibly because of their scale (they were likely unframed) and the necessity of hanging them as a pair. The fate of the Washington canvases is unknown until they appeared at auction in Paris in 1845. Fête at Saint-Cloud may have remained at rue des Fossés-Montmartre (the site of the 1789 sale) and transferred to the Hôtel de Toulouse when the Banque de France acquired the Sainscy house in 1806.
When seen together, Fragonard’s five paintings share a vision of the garden and park as a commodious setting for all sorts of festivities and amusements as well as amorous dalliance. The various games and entertainments incorporated into Fragonard’s garden paintings were relatively common features of landscape painting in the middle and late eighteenth century.[23] They are part of a tradition made popular by Antoine Watteau (French, 1684 - 1721) and Nicolas Lancret (French, 1690 - 1743), who frequently included figures playing games and socializing in gardens or parklands. Lancret’s pendants at the Château de Sans-Souci, Berlin [FIG. 7] [FIG. 8], although much smaller than Fragonard’s grand landscapes, combine similar amusements — blindman’s buff, dining in the outdoors, and swinging — in a fecund garden decorated with terraces, sculptures, and fountains.[24] Fragonard himself treated the games depicted in Blindman’s Buff and The Swing numerous times, especially in small cabinet pictures like the famous Swing in the Wallace Collection, London.[25]
While such amusements undoubtedly were enjoyed in eighteenth-century France, modern scholarship has focused on the symbolic meanings that they must have conveyed to viewers of paintings. Fragonard’s juxtaposition of the games of blindman’s buff and swinging was pointed, for both activities have been interpreted as alluding to the progress of love. Blindman’s buff — with its blind protagonist awkwardly seeking a mate — corresponded to the difficulties of courtship, while the rhythmic motion of the swing — propelled by a companion who pulls on ropes — suggests the culminating act of love.[26] The lush, picturesque gardens, with their overripe blossoms, spurting fountains, and provocative sculptures, underscore the amorous associations of the games. The sculptures that Watteau frequently incorporated into his fêtes galante have been interpreted as commenting on the scenes of flirtation and love.[27] Fragonard may have intended much the same meaning: the fountain to the left in Blindman’s Buff has been described as representing Vestal Virgins, calculated to contrast with the folly of love, embodied in the blindfolded player who spins aimlessly.[28] The enchanting detail of the woman looking through a telescope in The Swing suggested to Eisler a contrast between “idle curiosity for what is beyond her with her oblivion to what surrounds her.”[29]
Nevertheless, the small size of the figures and their lack of detail might make them ill-suited as bearers of complex meaning, and it is possible that they were included to add visual interest to the landscapes themselves. These works occasionally have been described as characteristic of the sublime in nature, as almost protoromantic in sensibility: “What set out to be a topical scene [Fête at Saint-Cloud] . . . has become a wild poem about the strength of natural forces and puny man.”[30] Fragonard’s figures do indeed appear small, but they are fully integrated into their hospitable surroundings, and one could claim just as persuasively that his garden settings, far from posing a threat, encourage the pursuit of a host of idle pleasures, both public and private: carnival sideshows, swinging, aristocratic parlor games (hot cockles and blindman’s buff), rough children’s play (horse and rider), puppet shows, and picnicking. These paintings are foremost images of people enjoying the outdoors; that, after all, was the purpose of gardens and parks that, unlike wild nature, were to be accommodating to the promenader. Louis Carogis de Carmontelle, in his explication of the Parc Monceau, designed in the late 1770s for the duc de Chartres, insisted that “despite the charms offered by the countryside, it is only in the garden where one finds good living — the hunt, games, concerts, entertainments; that is what we desire and that is what we praise.”[31] Jennifer Milam has argued that the National Gallery versions of blindman’s buff and swinging, in which the landscapes dominate, should be understood less in conventional overt erotic terms and more as playful re-creations of the exhilarating amusements they represent. “The swing becomes a vehicle of physical and mental transport, serving to move the figure and the viewer into the alternative playlands of leisure and art.”[32] Leisure activities, whether playing games, promenading through a picturesque garden, or a combination of both, had come to define aristocratic culture in the late eighteenth century.
The five paintings are a summation of Fragonard’s lifelong exploration of the theme of the garden. Grand in scale, they are complex and elaborate visualizations of “unadorned” nature in which the compositions, chiaroscuro, brushwork, and activities of the figures re-create the infinite variety of motifs and range of effects that characterized the picturesque garden in eighteenth-century France. In these works Fragonard brought together a diversity of garden types, including a French public park in Fête at Saint-Cloud, a vast estate inspired by the gardens of Italy in Blindman’s Buff and The Swing, and two intimate corners of private gardens, one picturesque, one formal, in A Game of Horse and Rider and A Game of Hot Cockles.
Fragonard’s innovative compositions reflect a remarkable sensitivity toward the character of the picturesque, or “English,” garden that was gaining popularity in France during these years.[33] The panoramic breadth of Blindman’s Buff and The Swing allows for the inclusion of a variety of distinct areas of visual interest, from the exhilarating vista, to a distant peak at the right, to the equally long view into the further reaches of the garden at the left, where a tiny group of strollers — captured in a beam of sunlight — parades among the trees (recalling the background boaters in Horse and Rider). In between, Fragonard has arranged a series of disparate focal points that the viewer is encouraged to examine as the canvases are surveyed: a game of blindman’s buff, lovers reclining in bushes, a group finishing a meal, a man and woman washing a dog in a fountain, a woman on a swing observed by companions, one with a telescope. Such visually arresting details are not centered on the figures alone. As in the other works in the series, Fragonard employed the vocabulary of the garden designer — trees, bushes, lawns, flowers, pathways, fountains, and sculptures — to draw the spectator’s attention, frame views, and lead the eye around the composition. With their multiple views, lack of visual unity, and range of brushwork, Fragonard’s gardenscapes present an image of the park that embodies the ever-shifting experience of the promenader in nature. Like his or her counterpart in actual gardens, the viewer of these paintings must “explore” the composition, forever changing direction, making visual connections, and taking delight at a series of seemingly unrelated details. As in the picturesque garden itself, unity and resolution is not imposed upon the scenes by the artist, but is left to the imagination and vicarious eye of the spectator.
This text was previously published in Philip Conisbee et al., French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue (Washington, DC, 2009), 195–203.
________________________________
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is a world-class art museum that displays one of the largest collections of masterpieces in the world including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 13th century to the present. The National Gallery of Art collection includes an extensive survey of works of American, British, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, Dutch, French and German art. With its prime location on the National Mall, surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, visitors often think that the museum is a part of the Smithsonian. It is a separate entity and is supported by a combination of private and public funds. Admission is free. The museum offers a wide range of educational programs, lectures, guided tours, films, and concerts.
The original neoclassical building, the West Building includes European (13th-early 20th century) and American (18th-early 20th century) paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and temporary exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art was opened to the public in 1941 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original collection of masterpieces was provided by Mellon, who was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and ambassador to Britain in the 1930s. Mellon collected European masterpieces and many of the Gallery’s original works were once owned by Catherine II of Russia and purchased in the early 1930s by Mellon from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, Ginevra de' Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery_of_Art
Andrew W. Mellon, who pledged both the resources to construct the National Gallery of Art as well as his high-quality art collection, is rightly known as the founder of the gallery. But his bequest numbered less than two hundred paintings and sculptures—not nearly enough to fill the gallery’s massive rooms. This, however, was a feature, not a failure of Mellon’s vision; he anticipated that the gallery eventually would be filled not only by his own collection, but also by additional donations from other private collectors. By design, then, it was both Andrew Mellon and those who followed his lead—among them, eight men and women known as the Founding Benefactors—to whom the gallery owes its premier reputation as a national art museum. At the gallery’s opening in 1941, President Roosevelt stated, “the dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on.”
www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/national-ga...
..
________________________________
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is a world-class art museum that displays one of the largest collections of masterpieces in the world including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 13th century to the present. The National Gallery of Art collection includes an extensive survey of works of American, British, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, Dutch, French and German art. With its prime location on the National Mall, surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, visitors often think that the museum is a part of the Smithsonian. It is a separate entity and is supported by a combination of private and public funds. Admission is free. The museum offers a wide range of educational programs, lectures, guided tours, films, and concerts.
The original neoclassical building, the West Building includes European (13th-early 20th century) and American (18th-early 20th century) paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and temporary exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art was opened to the public in 1941 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original collection of masterpieces was provided by Mellon, who was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and ambassador to Britain in the 1930s. Mellon collected European masterpieces and many of the Gallery’s original works were once owned by Catherine II of Russia and purchased in the early 1930s by Mellon from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, Ginevra de' Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery_of_Art
Andrew W. Mellon, who pledged both the resources to construct the National Gallery of Art as well as his high-quality art collection, is rightly known as the founder of the gallery. But his bequest numbered less than two hundred paintings and sculptures—not nearly enough to fill the gallery’s massive rooms. This, however, was a feature, not a failure of Mellon’s vision; he anticipated that the gallery eventually would be filled not only by his own collection, but also by additional donations from other private collectors. By design, then, it was both Andrew Mellon and those who followed his lead—among them, eight men and women known as the Founding Benefactors—to whom the gallery owes its premier reputation as a national art museum. At the gallery’s opening in 1941, President Roosevelt stated, “the dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on.”
www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/national-ga...
.
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See it at CyPhrons.blogspot.com
Seit ihrer Eröffnung im Jahr 2004 bildet die Leica-Galerie Frankfurt einen wichtigen Bestandteil des Kulturprogramms des Rhein-Main-Gebiets und leistet einen Beitrag für eine Kommunikation über Fotografie und Kunst in Frankfurt. Bei den abwechslungsreichen und innovativen Ausstellungen, die in der Leica-Galerie Frankfurt stattfinden, werden nicht nur die Werke von national und international bekannten Fotografen dargeboten. Auch junge, viel versprechende Talente erhalten die Möglichkeit, ihre Werke auszustellen und gewinnen so in der Welt der Fotografie an Bekanntheit.
Die Rahn AG sieht sich „im Dienste der Kunst“ und bietet neben den Fotoausstellungen auch Seminare zum Umgang mit analogen und digitalen Kameras, Fotografie-Exkursionen und Kunst-Reisen für die Kunden an. Im Mittelpunkt der Reisen steht selbstverständlich die Fotografie und die Gäste können vom Fachwissen der mitreisenden Foto-Spezialisten profitieren. Ebenso finden zweimal im Jahr Photographica-Auktionen in der Leica-Galerie Frankfurt statt, bei denen neben fotographischer Kunst auch Sammler-Kameras versteigert werden. Quelle: www.leicastore-frankfurt.de/Ueber-Foto-Rahn/index.html
This image forms part of the digitised photographs of the Ross and Pat Craig Collection. Ross Craig (1926-2012) was a local historian born in Stockton and dedicated much of his life promoting and conserving the history of Stockton, NSW. He possessed a wealth of knowledge about the suburb and was a founding member of the Stockton Historical Society and co-editor of its magazine. Pat Craig supported her husband’s passion for history, and together they made a great contribution to the Stockton and Newcastle communities. We thank the Craig Family and Stockton Historical Society who have kindly given Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, access to the collection and allowed us to publish the images. Thanks also to Vera Deacon for her liaison in attaining this important collection.
Please contact Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, if you are the subject of the image, or know the subject of the image, and have cultural or other reservations about the image being displayed on this website and would like to discuss this with us.
Some of the images were scanned from original photographs in the collection held at Cultural Collections, other images were already digitised with no provenance recorded.
You are welcome to freely use the images for study and personal research purposes. Please acknowledge as “Courtesy of the Ross and Pat Craig Collection, University of Newcastle (Australia)" For commercial requests please consider making a donation to the Vera Deacon Regional History Fund.
These images are provided free of charge to the global community thanks to the generosity of the Vera Deacon Regional History Fund. If you wish to donate to the Vera Deacon Fund please download a form here: uoncc.wordpress.com/vera-deacon-fund/
If you have any further information on the photographs, please leave a comment.
Contrails forming a Saltire above a poignant message in Brussels, just days before we were removed from the EU.
"of the cold and noisy nights, of the depths of the emotions, of the darkness of the soul and life. a sordid, hypnotic work of strong and energetic rhythms, with basses that reference in this digital age the decadent notes of the 80s, the dark cyber punk synths, cold wave, garage post punk, the abandoned floor, voices heartbreaking, sensual and energetic of our underground mental world, our most abstract and dense thoughts. Mental abstractions, immersed in our analogue digital synthetic atmosphere of emotions and noises, lost among electronic scrap, between technologies, neon lights and shadows of the universe of the present...
Interviewed this talented duo from New York city. They played as a part of the New Forms Festival. Video up in the future on spinearth.tv
More Photos from Urban Art Forms 2013 under branz.tv/urbanartf
Foto: Ferdinand Franz
All rights reserved
I believe these are Styphelia triflora. I love these plants and was especially delighted to see so many of them flowering as we made our way through the reserve. Some, like these, were already forming fruits as well. [Central Tablelands, NSW]
Variedade com brácteas levemente róseas, flores levemente cerúleas. Porto Alegre ,Rio Grande do SUl, Brasil
Smile for tomorrow is a group formed by the students of Imperial College Kandy to rebuild and refurnish Matale Ratwatte Vidyalaya, Ukuwela. And "Colours Carnival 2017" will be the main fundraiser for the above objective.
Colours and the Sports Carnival will include Tag Rugby 7's tournmant, 6'a side Cricket Tournemant and game stalls followed by a Holi Eve. And also food, drinks and beverage stalls including a top DJs music throughout the whole day.
Author : @Kiri Karma
museumPASSmusees 2021 - BAM - Fernando Botero - Au dela des formes
BAM (Beaux-Arts Mons)
Pour la premiere fois en Belgique, dans le cadre de la Biennale d'Art et de Culture de la Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles a Mons, le BAM consacre au peintre et sculpteur colombien Fernando Botero une vaste retrospective du 9 octobre 2021 au 30 janvier 2022.
Depuis ses recherches de jeunesse, peu connues du grand public, jusqu'aux oeuvres iconiques de la maturite, dont des toiles recentes presentees pour la premiere fois, cette exposition d'envergure brassera l'ensemble de la carriere de l'artiste.
Reputee pour ses personnages aux formes rondes et voluptueuses, l'oeuvre de Botero est le resultat d'une recherche exigeante et determinee, dans lequel l'artiste s'est engage il y a plus de 70 ans.
A l'heure ou, plus que jamais, le sens commun est en peril, l'exposition interroge la maniere dont une oeuvre, bien que personnelle et situee, parvient a developper un langage universel et accessible. Le parcours emportera les visiteurs dans l'univers foisonnant de Botero, inspire tant par l'art precolombien et l'iconographie populaire que par les muralistes mexicains ou l'art de la Renaissance italienne.
L'exposition Fernando Botero. Au-dela des formes rassemblera des oeuvres importantes empruntees a de prestigieux musees, comme le Gunggenheim de New-York, dont des peintures historiques rarement montrees au public europeen. Des toiles, dessins et sculptures appartenant a des collections privees internationales, notamment de Colombie, seront egalement presents.
Au centre du parcours d'exposition, une quinzaine d'oeuvres issues des collections meconnues du BAM illustreront les inspirations majeures de l'artiste colombien autour de differentes thematiques : natures mortes, nus, scenes de genre...
( 200 musees
Des maintenant, vous pouvez visiter tous les musees participants pendant un an. Pas une fois, mais aussi souvent que vous le souhaitez !
297 expositions
Vous pouvez egalement visiter les expositions temporaires des musees participants gratuitement ou a un tarif fortement reduit.
1 pass musees
Tout ceci avec seulement 1 pass.