Hannging on walls in Seville. by Adolfo Arenas Alonso. Scenes in run down rooms with peeling wallpaper. Once grand but now not so much. Religious icons and figures in paintings and sculptures look down on the human characters. Characters that either impossibly skinny or overweight. Crosses on the walls. Indolent. Slovenly. A macabre sense of place and time verging on the profane.
below: The Matador and the Insolents
below: Ars Amandi, The Dreamers (Ars Amandi is Latin, ‘The art of loving’)
below: Volaveront (Latin, translates to “They will fly). The Hall
below: Verba Volant (The words fly) and Le Grand Stiletto
below: Hippity hipster rabbit with sunglasses and tatts.
below: Sargent Pepper theme, character in green with drums – Ringo Starr from the Beatles.
below: A second Sargent Pepper character but this time it’s George Harrison in yellow. I didn’t see the other Beatles but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are in the city somewhere.
below: A child rides on the back of a white goose as it flies in front of a boat. The boy, in the red hat, is Nils and he has been bewitched by an elf so that he is only a few inches tall. The goose is his transportation and together they have adventures. Nils saves the goose and some ducks from a hungry fox; he also rescues a baby squirrel from a hunter. The Nils books were written in the early 1900s by Selma Lagerlof (Swedish), the first woman to win a Nobel prize in literature.
below: Beavis and Butthead from the 1990s animated TV series.
below: Green Frankenstein.
below: Blue woman with a feather
below: His arms are covered with tattoos but the face has been defaced (or was very strange to begin with?) so I am having trouble figuring out who the character is.
below: Angry bird on the right, standing beside another hipster rabbit. The words stencilled on the box, “Nidermarrja e Dekorit Bashkia Tirane”, roughly translates to Decoration Enterprise, Tirana Municipality. There is a Dekori – Bashkia Tirane instagram page that features some of the artists whose works are found Tirane.
below: Chuck Norris
below: Quentin Tarantino.
below: A tiger growls at the passing traffic
below: An older man with many birds in his beard, inspired by a poem by Edward Lear: ” There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, “It is just as I feared!— Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard.”
below: A rooster on a cat on a dog on a donkey in the night. This time it is a story that is referenced here, “The Town Musicians of Bremen”. Although the story dates from the 12th century it was first published in 1819 by the Brothers Grimm. It is the tale of 4 older animals no longer useful on their farms who meet up and decide to go to the city of Bremen to be musicians. They never get there but they have other adventures instead (you’ll have to read the story to get the details!)
below: Another story – here it is Peter Pan and the Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, flying off to Never Never Land.
As you walk around the city of Montreal, you can probably spot quite a few paper paste-ups featuring collage images of people that were created by an artist that signs her pieces as Madame Gilles.
below: Similar image as above but this time on a door with another, including “One Day You Will Come” by @_doverin
below: A little less abstract and a lot less colour
The next two pictures show the same doorway. First the top section where once again the same image appears.
Because COVID is still slowing everyone down, I continue to search through old travel pictures because I know that there are still lots of photos of street art that I haven’t shared. Today I found four murals by mr.besk that I saw the last time that I was in Instanbul. They feature yellow outlines and little Basquiat-type three pointed crowns.
Traditional clothing and a pearl necklace with a very untraditional maskAlbert Einsten making faces on Turkgucu
The other day I blogged about street art on a set of stairs in Amman. Today I have a few photos that I took on a different set of stairs. They too were popular with locals and tourists, with small shops and a restaurant. The difference is that this one had umbrellas.
below: Standing near the top of the stairs, high above Prince Mohammad Street. Open umbrellas in shades of blue and purple are strung overhead to provide some shade and some colour. On the right is a tall metal structure – that is an elevator for those who don’t feel like taking the stairs.
below: There were a lot of little flower pots attached to the walls. Some were painted in bright colours and some were terra cotta brown.
below: A line of flower pots on a white wall where people have written numbers, dates, names, and messages, especially proclamations of love with little hearts.
below: Listen to the sound of your heart. It seems like Dalal loves Eyad.
below: A row of “books” under the window – they don’t seem to have titles.
I have recently uploaded a video to youtube that I made with all the pictures that I took of street art in Casablanca. You can find the link to the street art here.
A low wall in the older part of the city… if I remember correctly it might be on one side of a taxi parking lot? As I was taking pictures, an older man stopped to talk to me about the paintings on the wall. I think that he said that a group of students painted it.
The mural is full of Casablanca scenes such as this image of the Hussan 2 mosque.
below: Typical Moroccan tile work.
below: Curly metal railings and grilles like this can be seen all over Morocco.
below: The Moroccan flag is a green star on a red background.
Eyes on the Streets 