Sunday, January 10, 2021

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.

16 comments:

DVArtist said...

Wow this is stunning mural.

My name is Erika. said...

That is interesting about the wall being cleaned. I wonder if they are letting more street art go up or not.

kwarkito said...

C'est très beau. Et merci beaucoup pour toutes ces explications très érudites.

Angie's Recipes said...

The dragon looks really cool!

Aimz said...

That's a very impressive dragon mural, someone was very artistic.

Tandy | Lavender and Lime (http://tandysinclair.com) said...

That is stunning, no matter which term you use to describe it.

Linda said...

Interesting post! I love murals. Have a good week.

Iris Flavia said...

Beautifully done. Reminds me of "The Never Ending Story" - sorry, if I gave you an earworm ;-)
Sad it was removed.

Anne in the kitchen said...

Interesting post! One of my friend's son is a graffiti artist whose speciality is train box car graffiti. There is a large group who post pictures of their art on a website which is shared among the group. Later people post pictures of the same boxcar with the artwork listing the date, time and place they saw it. It is like a moveable museum.

Greg said...

Huh this is interesting. I love that mural!

Sami said...

Very impressive and gigantic mural Mae.
Thanks for participating in Monday Murals.

Bertiebo said...

Interesting

Bertiebo said...

Interesting

Bleubeard and Elizabeth said...

That's a unique mural, Mae. I like the dragon and the writing, which of course, I don't understand.

Ju-Lyn said...

This is such a stunning mural!
It is interesting that there are "groups" painting these in the city.

Divers and Sundry said...

I had no idea! So cool!