Learning About Street Art in China

Is there a clear distinction between graffiti and "real" art? A photo essay titled "Great walls of China: Beijing's burgeoning graffiti scene," published in the Guardian a few days ago, definitely made me think about this question. The graffiti images in the article are amazingly beautiful and expressive, not at all like the defacing tags that I usually think of when I think of graffiti. The Chinese artists were influenced by the development of graffiti art in the West, which had appeared in Hong Kong by the 1990s. The Hong Kong artists introduced the practice to other Chinese cities, I learned from the Guardian article. 

Cultural exchange programs brought artists from Hong Kong, the UK, France, and elsewhere to Beijing, so some of the murals depicted in the Guardian are by Westerners or are international collaborative efforts. Graffiti artists' work seems to be tolerated more in China than in many cities in the west, though the artists avoid politically unacceptable topics and they do not paint on historically important buildings. They often paint murals on buildings that will soon be demolished.

Many of the depicted murals were on the Jingmi Lu wall: "a stretch of wall greater than 1km that runs alongside the main road from central Beijing to the capital’s airport in the northeast of the city. The first pieces appeared around 2010 and it became a ‘tolerated’ graffiti zone. Many of the early pieces went untouched until last year when the entire wall was cleaned."

This work is by Kwanyin Crew, painted in 2007. There are four main crews painting murals in Beijing, using traditional imagery: "China has an extensive art history reaching back thousands of years, and many of its particular characteristics have appeared in local graffiti."

The Guardian article includes a series of around 20 photos of these intriguing murals, with brief descriptions of the work, the artists, and their influences. The photos in the article were from a recent book, Beijing Graffiti,  by Liu Yuan Sheng (the photographer) and Tom Dartnell (a graffiti artist), published last month by Schiffer Publishing. 

Here is the book description  of Beijing Graffiti at amazon.com:

"A complex and contradictory graffiti culture has been brewing over the last few decades in one of the least expected settings—China’s capital. Through an unparalleled collection of one local photographer’s images, as well as interviews with 25 prolific artists, see how Beijing has developed its graffiti movement against the backdrop of the once-secluded nation’s rise to global economic might. While Beijing graffiti artists take their cue from the subculture’s Western origins, the local scene has also been highly influenced by both foreign visitors and traditional Chinese art and culture. Profiles of significant artists explore the dynamics of creative self-expression in such a perceivedly authoritarian setting, including the surprising amount of freedom they have to make their art undisturbed compared to Western counterparts. A must for graffiti enthusiasts, Sinophiles, and anyone interested in how this colorful subculture is still growing half a century after it emerged."

I'm sharing this with Sami's Mural Monday blog event (which starts on Sunday morning in my time zone). I hope the many mural enthusiasts who link up their photos at Sami's will enjoy this very interesting exploration of street art in a far-away place.

Blog post  published 2021 by mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.