How do you get to know a city? Get to know its art.
Picture this: it’s your first day wandering a new city--in a new country, no less--no data plan yet for your phone, just you, your wits, and a friend to keep you company. You’ve just had lunch and are free to explore, so off you go--straight down the alley of art. The alley, which is not actually an alley but a street when you take the time to realize its width, is framed on both sides by brick. Not a single inch is left unpainted save for the sign naming the street. You and your friend follow the murals down the road: a monstrous, scantily clad lady wielding a gun, a jack-o-lantern with cartoon cats peeking out from the carved mouth and eyes. A zombie-esque pelican in shades of green and cyan marking its neck, its spine, its wings, is outlined in a dull marigold and bright neon pink. There are more portraits, and large lettering all against a black and purple background. The street curves, so you turn with it, and see at the other end, three men. They’re dressed all in black, despite it being the middle of the day, but it’s cold, so their long pants and sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up, are not out of place. They carry large backpacks and a couple of handle bags. A step-stool. Two of them are already packed, bags slung across their shoulders, but the third steps back from the wall, sticks something in the bag at his feet. With it stowed, he lifts the bag, and the three men casually walk away. The angle is wrong and you’re a bit too far to see exactly what they were painting. When you get to the end of the street where they were, you’re not entirely sure what they added--where the old art isn’t and the new art is. (You don’t try to figure it out. The only way to do that would be to touch the wall, to come away with fingers wet with fresh paint. Doing so would ruin it, ruin the art). You keep walking. Around corners you follow more art in all different styles and forms: A portrait of Thumper the rabbit in a red and blue 3D glitch pattern, a boarded-up window with a rearing white horse, its saddle and bridle detailed, intricate, and colorful. Next to it, a cartoon in black and white of a severed finger, a bit of bone popping out of the end. Someone had added their own touch, later, with white spray paint, turning the finger partially into a subtly phallic image. Squeezed between these larger works are a handful of other smaller papers plastered to the wall. They are old, peeling at every corner, torn down the middle or marked by holes. A few entirely faded. Others have thin jagged edges from where they have been forcibly ripped from the wall, the vandal having failed and left half of the drawing up. A couple are still legible despite the weathering, reading in all bold, capital letters, “LOVE HAS WON”, and the one below it in a less artistic scrawl, “Eat More Pies”. It has been a while since you worked your way down the various streets and it is time to head back, to meet up with your other friends. There is one problem--you are lost. Neither you nor your friend have data, and your wit, well, it isn’t great with directions. You’ve been turned around, having gone into the market to look around, rest, find a toilet. And when you exit the building the streets all look the same, unfamiliar, as it is your first time out. Nobody thought to remember what street you came from. It is a guessing game then. Your friend is pretty sure about which street to go back down, so you follow, and keep walking, and then you remember all of the art. You follow the art, like bread crumbs in a fairytale, back to where you came from. The two of you, retrace your steps along the murals, the posters, the weird nonsense stickers stuck on street signs and in doorways. Around one corner, the next, all the way up the street, and finally around that curve. That curve of brick wall where every square inch was black and purple and big green letters and absurd portraits, save for the sign naming the street. And you are back. A little blue creature with stripes and two different sized black eyes, two stubby legs and two spindly arms, pointed ears, its head adorned with a three-point crown, greets you at the head of the street where you started. Its arms are to the sides, as if it is going to hug you. To tell you, look, you both made it, welcome back. ❦ ❦ ❦ The stenciled graffiti on the white wall of the tunnel catches your eye. In London, that could mean one very famous, very anonymous artist: Banksy. The sensational man known for his satirical or political or philosophical pieces. He’s tagged streets internationally, but he made a name for himself in London originally, and here, he is beloved. But upon closer inspection, in the bottom right is the (also stenciled) artist signature. It does not read “Banksy” but “bambi”. She is the “female Banksy” of the art world, much of her art highlighting political and social injustice as well as female identity in a patriarchal society. Bambi has created an image of Princess Diana as Mary Poppins floating away on her iconic umbrella as Prince George and Princess Charlotte watch. Bold red text next to the black and white art reads “You can be as naughty as you want just don’t get caught”. Sound advice, you thought. Another day, you and two friends are walking through the park, once again trying to meet up with your housemates who have gotten so far ahead. Your trio isn’t quite lost, but you certainly could be more positive about the direction you are heading, or needed to head. And as you walk through the never-ending park, over the iron bridge, boats tied to the walls below, the trees lining the banks, barren, limbs dark and stretching over the still water reflecting the bright blue sky and cotton ball clouds, past small brick buildings and walls, you see it. There, on the side of one of the brick walls of the house is a large white square, black stencil art layered on top. It is a strange place for art, seeming to pop up out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere. It is a haunting image, in a way. Titled underneath as “Art Lovers” the image has a painting of a man and a woman embracing in a passionate kiss in the background. Two people on either end of an art gallery bench sit in the foreground. The only color in the image is the light blue of the surgical masks that are covering their mouth and nose. The stenciled signature reads “bambi”. It is rather beautiful. Shortly after this discovery, your group is able to find a map (an art form itself), and make it back to where everyone else is waiting. ❦ ❦ ❦ You will have to walk across the Millennium Bridge at some point or another while in London, it’s not a matter of if, but when. It’s a pretty spot to stop and look over the Thames, to see the Tower of London at a distance, or the much nearer Globe Theatre. And looking out across the city is nice, but you will be missing much smaller things right at your feet. Cross the Millennium Bridge, but walk slowly. Look down. There, smushed between the metal grating is filthy, gray and black wads of gum. But upon a second glance, these are not all dark blobs, in fact, a vast majority of them are colorful. Small splotches of bright green and blue and yellow, some purple and red and orange, all are there. Together they form worms of color, nonsense shapes and patterns or little people, blocks of primary and secondary colors with tiny black lettering. This, your friend--whom you have your elbow hooked with as they guide you around people to let you stare at the ground, at the art--says, “Oh some random guy I was talking with at the market told me about this! It’s gum art by the artist Ben Wilson. He does this all over London”. You want to inspect each little piece, to see what Ben had done, but there are so many people on the bridge, many of whom don’t seem to notice the art at their feet. The most you can catch are the colors, but it is enough for the time being. You will have to cross the bridge to get back anyway. And you could come again when it was less crowded. As you exit the bridge you wonder if you have ever passed by Ben’s art on any of your other walks through the streets of the city. ❦ ❦ ❦ The Tube ride is long and you are tired and no one is with you to talk with, so you pop in headphones and wait for your stop. At some point you zone-out out the window, vaguely coming back into awareness with each stop of the train as it enters the stations, but not really. You space and don’t hear the announcement of the next station, you haven’t been counting either, your thoughts half on the music and half in a different world. But you’re facing the window that looks out to the platform. The train is still moving too fast for you to see the name on the wall, but you don’t need to. Colorful red and green and yellow mosaic tiles decorate the walls of the platform and you know as they blur by that this is it. You don’t need to read the “Tottenham Court Road” sign or listen to the announcement of the station (actually, you turn the volume of your music a little louder). You stand from your seat and elbow your way through the crowded aisle and out onto the platform. This isn’t the first time the walls told you where you are. Charing Cross has doodles of people in thick black lines. Embankment has colorful, abstract lines; Holborn has mummies. Leicester Square looks like a film strip with rows of black and white tiles at the top and bottom of the wall; Covent Garden has tiles in shades of green and decorative “way out” signs. Bank and Monument both have tiled griffins, so I have to actually pay attention at those stations. But the mosaics patterned with flowers and birds and other things, that is my stop. That is home. ❦ ❦ ❦ You’re done with class, or find you have the day off, and are standing in the middle of The National Gallery. The room you’re in is a dark sage green and hanging on the walls of the gallery are numerous paintings in a number of sizes by many different artists. But that is not what you looked at. Instead, you watch the people at the benches in the middle of the gallery, as they sit in front of easels, large sheets of drawing paper placed on tjeir ledges. A table stands in the very center between all of the benches, a box of pencils (both graphite and colored) and more paper are next to a sign that says “Get Creative”. It encourages visitors to sit and try to create from the paintings they see in front of them--to recreate them or modify them or ignore them completely and sketch whatever they want. And they do. You watch as an old man sketches a landscape as he sits in front of a wall of portraits. Two children, young still, no older than 7, maybe 8, recreate the portrait of Lady MacBeth before them. You sit in front of an unoccupied easel, some drawings already on the paper. A decent portrait of a lady holding fruit, the sketch labeled with an apology note as the visitor-artist drew an orange, but the original has a pomegranate. You don’t pick up a pencil here. You just sit for a while and watch and smile. You leave. ❦ ❦ ❦ There is a white board that leans against the wall above the TV in the common room of 35 Gower Street. There are exactly two dry erase markers, one black, one red, with which to write. You’ve drawn on the board on many occasions, as have your fellow housemates: portraits of your professor, several renditions of a cat done by several different hands, cartoons, bouquets of roses, a cow (later, the same cow but sliced in half). Frogs in tea cups. Frogs in tea cups but with crowns. Lists and battle plans and tallies have been written and eventually erased. The board has been drawn on, flipped, and drawn on some more, the art on the back forgotten until it’s discovered again. Erased again. And in this common room there lies a hidden gallery, if you look for it. It is not hard to find. The first doodle was done the same way its original inspiration was. The rest-- the second and third and so forth, are doodles inspired from that white board or from housemates' suggestions or jokes, but mostly from the white board. You have limited space in the hidden gallery, but it’s enough. There are other places to hide art once there is no more room there.
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