Cans Festival - Banksy and friends turn Graffiti into Art

Check out this brilliant collection of the Cans Festival and other street art on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cans+festival

http://www.flickr.com/photos/romanywg/sets/72157604852764513/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/romanywg/

Could anyone call this vandalism?

Street artists such as Banksy - and as street artist Vhils says ‘It’s not all about Banksy’ - have been moving graffiti into an art form of its own over the past couple of decades. 

Ever wondered what Pure Evil looks like? …Well, kind of mild-mannered and genteel as it turns out. Here’s Pure Evil talking to the Guardian:

(Short video clip)  http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/video/2008/may/02/cansfestival

The Cans Festival took place in a tunnel in Leake Street, underneath Waterloo Station, London.  The tunnel is officially a public road but owned by Eurostar who gave permission for the site to be used as a gallery for the festival.  The location was kept secret until the last minute.  According to the Cans Website, 28, 544 people visited, with 623 of them adding their own piece of art to the walls, including Peter Chappell whom Banksy cites as a hero. 

One of the most innovative parts of this exhibition is that a wall was designated as an open wall for any visitor to add their piece.  The organisers kept to strict rules to keep the offerings up to standard, it all had to be stencil art and participants must register to be alloted a place to paint, and no painting over someone else’s work.  The results look fantastic.  Every art exhibition should offer a similar wall, talk about audience participation!

The invited artists moved stencil art on to another level.  Don’t think Changing Rooms with Carol Smiley….

 Think chipping your stencil out on a wall, like Vhils does:

 

I’m not pretending that these artisits have produced something equal in artistic ability to Matisse or Picasso or (insert your hero here) but there certainly is something Dali-esque about the style.

Dali at his Anthromorphic Desk, 1936

 

The real genius in the street art of the calibre you find at the Cans Festival, the bit that elevates it above others, is location  - can you imagine the sterility of any of these pieces were they hung reverently in the National Gallery? 

Banksy painting on the wall separating Israel from Palestine…

…and on a wall in Bethnal Green, London,

Banksy painting!

Could this be the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel Banksy?  A spokesman for Banksy confirmed the artwork is genuine but refused to admit that the man captured by a passer-by on a mobile camera phone is the artist.  

Street Festivals like the Cans Festival, and temporary installations in general, are not just something fun for the participants and spectators, but they are the future of art - immediately accessible, thought provoking, and perhaps prompting people to examine their own connection with art, be it visiting a gallery or doodling on the pad beside the phone. 

As the public support for some of Banksy’s work attests, it is also the most democratic form of public art.  Councillors commission works of art all the time, and pay high prices using tax-payers money, sometimes these pieces become beloved by the locals, sometimes they irritate, and predictable choruses of ’should have spent the money on something useful like hospitals..’ ring out.  But here you are given, for free, a piece of art, to be removed, left to fade, or maintained, as is public will.

Appreciate the gift.

 

 

A quick caveat for the infantile street taggers, though: give it up, mate, you’ve been out-classed.

Congratulations Cliff Richard - You was robbed!

Controversy!

1968 - Eurovision

Which song should have won?

 

I can’t choose between the two songs, both are kind of catchy although, admittedly, Cliff has put a little extra work into the chorus lyrics.  How did the panels choose that year?

 

MADRID (Reuters) - Cliff Richard was robbed of victory in the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest after Spanish dictator Francisco Franco fixed the vote, according to a documentary.

Richard was the bookmakers’ favourite to win with his song “Congratulations” however Spanish contestant Massiel pipped him to the title by just one point with “La La La” — Spain’s first of two victories in the competition’s 52-year history. 

“It was a fix,” the documentary’s producer Montse Fernandez Vila quoted Spanish television presenter Jose Maria Inigo as saying. “Massiel won Eurovision with bought votes.”

Spanish TV executives travelled Europe promising to buy second-rate programmes and concerts billing strange acts in return for Eurovision votes, Inigo told the documentary.

Victory was seen as vital to General Franco’s fascist regime in boosting Spain’s image abroad, Fernandez Vila said.

Bjorn Erichsen, the director of Eurovision television, the international broadcasting body responsible for the contest, said:

“Franco was really so keen for Spain to win it? We’re not talking about NATO here or the EU, or political influence, we’re talking about a pop song contest,”  Erichsen said laughing, before adding: “I can’t exclude the possibility it might be true”.

 

Did Franco do it?

 

 Yep, it was me, I did it, ha ha.

Wild as it sounds, it could be true, because not only was Franco quite capable of anything, but there’s another player in the story of Franco and the Eurovision:

….Spain only drafted Massiel in at the last moment after Joan Manuel Serrat, who was meant to sing at the London event, refused to perform “La La La” in Spanish rather than his native Catalan — a regional language repressed during the dictatorship.

Please enjoy the groovy women fighting over Joan Manuel Serrat - 1968

Joan Manuel Serrat  - Rebel? Freedom Fighter? Well, yes, as it turns out, but ultimately he’s a singer/songwriter.  While on tour in Mexico in the 70’s he spoke out against executions by rifle squad that were happening under Franco’s orders.  He was promptly exiled and remained in Mexico until Franco’s death. His defence of the Catalan language (and his music, of course) propelled him to glory in the eyes of many.  In his native city, Barcelona, the language issue is still close to people’s hearts and many signs are written in several languages.  Museums can’t fit all the languages in, and no English appears, but when they provided Catalan, my school-french came in handy…

Looks to me as if there were many winners in the 1968 Eurovision. 

Congratulations was a massive hit and in a long list of hits for Cliff Richard is one of his best known; Massiel went on to become a superstar in Spain; the world and his wife went on holiday to the Costa del Sol;

and Serrat retained his dignity and principles, promoted the use of native language on the world stage, and went on to win global acclaim for his songwriting skills in that way that is kind of underground and cool, something Cliff and Massiel’s bank balances might not envy, but most musicians would.

Asked if Eurovision would investigate, Erichsen was emphatic: “No! Just to make Cliff Richard a little happier and the Spanish winner a bit more unhappy? I don’t think you should dig up old bodies to prove he was or wasn’t the father. It’s history.”  

I’m pretty sure Cliff Richard doesn’t care.  Afterall, Franco, Massiel and Serrat can’t say this:

“I’m affectionately known by Elton John as either Sylvia Disc or the Bionic Christian.”

 

Cliff can.