by janspivey Walter Benjamin would have liked the walk through the walled gardens named after him in Barcelona. The gardens are located on the approach to Colom, near the roundabout feeding traffic from the busy Ronda Literal, with great views of the mountains and the sea. The garden’s walls have been painted with graffiti for as long as anyone can remember.
Benjamin’s influential and unfinished Arcades Project (written between 1927 and 1940) edited and published posthumously, is a large collection of writings concerned with city life in Paris and the way in which the structural arcades, “fostered the city's emerging and distinctive street life and provided a backdrop for the practice of flânerie.”
Any contemporary Flâneur, indeed tourist, in Barcelona would quickly recognise graffiti as an integral part of Barcelona’s contemporary culture and distinctive street life. Barcelona’s political graffiti, frequently the work of local artists, has been a feature of Barcelona’s urban landscape since before the Spanish Civil War.
In the last week of May, the local council painted the walls of The Walter Benjamin Gardens battleship grey erasing the expressive street art. This action provoked demonstrations by Barcelona’s community of young artists, the first generation of artists who have reconnected with the Catalan language and culture since the death of General Franco in 1975. For many of them, a public place is an appropriate context for art, politics and self-expression and they fiercely want to protect the Democratic Freedoms that Catalans historically fought to defend and tragically lost during the repressive Franco years.
Benjamin, a German Jew, clearly knew something of the persecution, repression and the discrimination of those sad, dark, grey days in Spain:
“Attempting to elude the Gestapo, Benjamin failed to reach Portugal (officially a neutral country) through Spain, on his way to the United States. Apparently, he took his own life on September 27, 1940 at Portbou, a border town in the Pyrenees, Catalonia, swallowing an overdose of morphine compound, after the group of Jewish refugees he joined was intercepted by the Spanish Police.”
According to Amnesty International’s 2008 Report: “State of the World’s Human Rights”, Spain continues to have a problem with Law Enforcement Officers. The summary of its report on Spain begins: “Reports of human rights violations by law enforcement officers and subsequent impunity continued to be widespread.”
In recent years, young Catalan street artists, have found themselves in increasing contact with the police as a part of a country-wide “zero-tolerance” strategy.
By way of a complete contrast, much to the great delight of the art world and the general public in London, the ever-popular and Britain’s Most Wanted street artist, Banksy, opened his latest show, under the railway arches of Waterloo Station. A few weeks later, on 23 May 2008, Tate Modern celebrated the opening of its first ever Street Art exhibition: for which six international artists were commissioned to paint the iconic façade of its landmark building on London’s River Thames. Alongside the work of the collectives from the USA (Faile) and France (JR), Blu (Italy) Os Gemeos, (the identical twins) and Nunca from Brasil stands Mutant Mother with Child in Arms painted by Sixeart from Barcelona.
Sixeart’s 17m high, universal symbol of mother and child, engages young and old alike as her third eye gazes across the Millennium Bridge, and St Paul’s Cathedral smiles back. The two dimensional animal representations, playful colours, arresting hieroglyphics and distinctive electrical circuitry are all characteristic of Sixeart’s Street Art and Fine Arts practice, which tenderly reconnect us with humanity.
For nearly two decades Sixeart’s Street Art has been a part of Barcelona’s urban vista. But as the risk of fines, arrests and beatings have risen, like many others in Barcelona, he paints on the streets less and less these days and then usually in his own neighbourhood, where the locals appreciate his work.
Today, its dangerous to paint in Barcelona.
The facile mix of consumer advertising and grey walls, the construction cranes dominating the urban skyline, the cctv’s that dominate life in public and increasing social restrictions are having an enormous cultural as well as environmental impact.
And then, in a chance encounter with street art in Barcelona, we hear the voice that reaffirms our social humanity.
In Barcelona, graffiti is political, comic, satirical, poetic, technically accomplished, physically demanding, frequently large-scale and always colourful. It has become a part of the external dialogue with the public in public places. Like all graffiti, it speaks in the universal language of Resistance: in Barcelona it also speaks of a rich artistic legacy and cultural renaissance.
The current Barcelona Council is not listening to the dialogue. It is unable to recognise any artistic value or cultural importance in the works being erased. It is clearly working to a mandate, but whose? It is a Council is willing to spend public funds on graffiti removal, it generates revenue from issuing permissions to advertisers who are wrapping the Barcelona skyline with giant billboards with the message to consume, it is busy neutralising and contaminating the urban environment, erasing traces of Barcelona’s cultural identity from the urban vista.
It was different in 1985, Contemporary Art was considered an important part of the Catalan cultural identity. Then Minister for Culture in the Generalitat, Joan Rigol, initiated an arts accord between the Council and the Generalitat and a plan for MACBA (Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art) was conceived.
MACBA opened to the public on November 28th, 1995, surviving several changes in administration and location. A tracing of a work by the American graffiti artist Keith Haring, originally made and deteriorating in the Raval, was mounted on MACBA’s boundary wall and accompanied the inaugural exhibition.
In recent times, the tracing has disappeared, lost under layers of grey-beige paint, meanwhile the MACBA logo has appeared, embossed into the stone of the building’s façade: part of the new, evolving Council sponsored Barcelona brand.
And while London is celebrating the first ever legal display and exhibition of Street Art, with Sixeart ‘mother lovin’ irradiating from the façade of the Tate Modern; in Barcelona the cultural and artistic abandonment of Street Art is well-underway, and the cleansing continues.
Walter Benjamin would have enjoyed a walk under the railway arches of London’s Leake Street and a stroll along the Southbank to the Tate Modern today, away from the grey, bleak walls of his gardens in Drassanes. He would be sad to know of the increasing restrictions on personal and artistic freedoms, the persecution and the exile forced on Spanish artists, the changes to the authentic city life of Barcelona and the ever present fear of confrontations with the Spanish Police.
In London, Sixeart’s wise mutant mother is standing tall and confident, cradling her beloved offspring, guiding us safely across the river. She delivers her message, calmly and gently to all the publics: to the Police, to the Council and the Generalitat in Barcelona, to Madrid, to all Spain: Spanish Democracy is the high price of poor legislation, questionable law enforcement practice, reductions in personal freedom and increases in social restrictions and censorship. The roots of Contemporary Street Art and Graffiti are deep in Barcelona.
¡VIVA Graffiti VIVA Democracy!
Jan Spivey Photographer
BA Hons Fine Art
Curator for BCNKUA*
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