Archive for the 'On the Street' Category



18
Jun

Dante Hits the Streets

Sten, Lex, & Lucamaleonte do Dante

Tourists and Romans alike often complain about the amount of graffiti on the city’s walls and they’re right to be outraged by the innumerable and artless tags that mar most buildings in the Eterna.

But Rome’s street art scene is much more than a bunch of high school kids with markers. There are some fine artists out there whose work grapples with current issues as well as with the city’s majestic (but weighty) past.

Here at the eCool Compound, we pay special attention to any street art that strives to re-present history and culture and faithful readers will recall the many posts we’ve dedicated to art works with mythological and historical subjects, from the She-Wolf to the 7 Kings and from Bernini’s Blessed Ludovica Albertoni to the Colosseum.

Sten, Lex, & Lucamaleonte do Dante

Thus, we were quite dismayed when we recently realized that we’d missed a stellar exhibit at the Dorothy Circus Gallery in which street stars Sten, Lex, and Lucamaleonte took on Dante.

From the stenciled cutout of Virgil and Dante on the outside of the building (see top photo) to the artful images sprayed on the gallery walls (see above and below) we’re totally taken.

The exhibit, City Slang – The Street Comes to the Gallery By DCG and Micol Di Veroli was on display from January 22th - February 22th, 2008 and featured works by Sten, Lex, Lucamaleonte, TV Boy, Koralie, SuperKitch, and GarCrew. You can see representative works by clicking here.

Sten, Lex & Lucamaleone do Dante

Interested in Dante? Then you’ll be happy to know that the city of Florence has just issued a pardon to Dante, forgiving him for political crimes committed 700 years ago. They’ve also awarded him the city’s highest honor, the Fiorino d’Oro or the Golden Florin. For the whole story, we recommend Peter Popham’s article in The Independent.

13
Jun

Photo Friday: Something Old, Something New

Bride at the Fountain.  A Photo of Rome by Susan Sanders.

It’s June and brides are everywhere in the city of Eternal Love!

In fact, in recent days, the international press has been exclaiming over photos of Tom Hanks helping a bride get to her wedding. It seems that her path was blocked by the crew filming Angels & Demons here in Rome, so Tom stepped in to escort the bride through the mayhem. Click here if you must. We can’t be bothered.

We’re more interested in those Roman brides who have already made it to the church on time and are now on to bigger and better things—namely the taking of wedding photographs. On a warm summer day in the Eterna, it’s common to see wedding parties posing in front of ancient monuments, a ritual suggesting that the “for better or worse” deal isn’t valid unless Roma herself is a witness.

Last week, Susan Sanders caught just such a wedding party taking a break on the slopes of the Capitoline. The bride bends to sip from a fountain spouting water brought to Rome by the ancient Aqua Marcia, while her eternal love chivalrously holds her bouquet.

For more photos of Rome by Susan, visit her photo blog: Rome With A View.

12
Jun

U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice

War Criminals in Rome

Yesterday, U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Rome for a three-day stay. The security and complications surrounding his visit will effectively shut down parts of the Eterna and will leave Romans sitting in huge traffic jams or trekking long distances through the city on foot.

As demonstrated by the photo above, the President’s arrival was greeted with the usual good will and fanfare. U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice, an organization with a noble mission, joined with Italian activists and international friends, to denounce the countless crimes of the Bush regime, from the destruction of the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, to torture and illegal detention, to intelligence fixing and threats of attacks against Iran.

They made a symbolic citizen’s arrest of Bush, Cheney and Rice (see above), leading them from Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza Barberini in chains.

Visit the U.S. Citizens for Peace and Justice website to find out more about the organization or to join its efforts.

08
Jun

Stuck On You

Tape Sculpture in Rome's Pigneto District

Residents of Rome’s Pigneto district (which the daily newspaper La Repubblica calls a “cultural Capitoline”) are currently enjoying an influx of new inhabitants. A number of colorless figures in Degas-esque dancer poses have appeared on light poles, in trees, and on billboards and bridges.

Attributed to an artist named Tommaso, the figures are made of adhesive tape and are molded on real live humans (those of you dying to try this at home should click over to tapesculpture.org for instructions regarding the creation of such figures and/or sign up for a tape casting workshop–details on the tapesculpture.org site).

Tape Sculpture in Rome's Pigneto District

What inspired Tommaso to decorate Pigneto with these translucent figures? It seems to be an outgrowth of Mark Jenkins’ Storker Project in which tape babies were placed in cities across the world.

Jenkins, an American artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using packing tape, described the Storker Project in this way:

The Storker Project is a species propagation movement by STORKER seeking to incite select individuals from the public at large, perhaps you. If while passing by one you feel strange sensations in your nipples or fingertips, adopt the infant, breast feed, and give it plenty of TLC. It will gradually mature to a full size Tape Man or Woman to co-habitate with you and eventually take you to the Glazed Paradise (or possibly oust you from your home).

Looks like some of those tape babies have grown up and moved to Rome!

Tape Sculptures in Rome's Pigneto District

06
Jun

Every Breath You Take

Environmental Protest in Rome

Around 150 statues across Rome were wearing anti-pollution masks over their mouths on Thursday morning following a covert night-time operation by environmental activists.

Early-morning joggers and dog walkers alerted the police to the masks after finding them on statues of Roman emperors lining Via dei Fori Imperiali near the Colosseum,
famous magistrates around Rome’s Palace of Justice, and Garibaldi’s mustachioed generals on the Janiculum Hill.  Statues in Piazza del Popolo and along two bridges across the River Tiber were also dressed in the protective gear.

Rome's Statues Participate in Environmental Protest

The activists from environmental group Terra! had also hung no-entry road signs around the necks of the statues bearing the chemical symbol for carbon dioxide.
”It’s incredible that they could have done this without anyone realising,” said a dog walker who notified police to masks and signs placed over the white marble angels on the bridge leading to Castel Sant’Angelo.  ”These angels are at least four meters high: even if it was during the night, you’d still need a ladder to reach their heads”.

Terra! said the masked statues were ”protesting together with activists” about carbon dioxide emissions from cars and appealed to the European Commission to issue new
regulations for the reduction of the greenhouse gas.  Restoration experts have long been concerned about the effects of air-borne pollutants on the city’s statues and monuments.
Nitrates, heavy metals and sulphur dioxide - and not CO2 - are the main culprits for eroding and discolouring the marble and bronze masterpieces.

Via ANSA

Rome's Statues Particpate in an Environmental Protest

31
May

Keep On Truckin’?

Lago Truck

Pretty fabulous truck trailer created for Lago, an Italian furniture company! We saw it first on Notcot.org but you can read more about it on the Lago website as well.

21
May

Where-Wolf?

She-Wolf Graffiti in Rome

Wanna know where to find this wolf?  Don’t go looking in a cave on the Palatine or even in the Capitoline Museums.  This is a She-Wolf that’s hit the streets. You’ll find her painted on temporary walls in the pedestrian gallery on Via Tritone, where the Rinascente department store is currently staging a small street art exhibition meant to tempt us all to visit the larger Scala Mercalli exhibit that opened in the parking garage of Rome’s Auditorium yesterday evening.

We, of course, are partial to use of classical themes in graffiti, so we were especially pleased to see La Lupa sprayed on the wall.  But she’s not the only ancient Roman to be featured, as the 7 Kings make a rare 21st century appearance in the Via Tritone exhibit as well.  Click here to pay homage to their royal highnesses.

And for a spray-painted version of Rome’s ancient cityscape, click here.

20
May

7 x Kings : SPQR

7 Kings Graffiti

The department store conglomerate known as Rinascente is leaving aside its stodgy image to sponsor the making of street art in Rome!

Last week, with the support of Rinascente, street artists set up temporary walls in the pedestrian gallery on Via Tritone and staged a street art exhibition called Scala Mercalli: The Creative Earthquake of Italian Street Art (it sounds better in Italian).

Artists like TV Boy, Ivan, Ozmo, Kayone, Zen Two, JB Rock, and Thero put on a public painting display and in doing so produced a large number of artworks still visible in the passageway.  Naturally, we took a spin and shot some photos and we’re here to share them with you now.

Probably none of our readers will be surprised to discover that we’re entirely enamored of the 7 Kings graphic shown above, for it seems to make reference to the earliest history of Rome.

But, as seen below, there’s some other hot stuff on display as well.  Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

Street Art in Rome

06
May

DJ Leisure

DJ Graffiti on Via Ostiense

We recently spotted this graffiti on the old Mercato Generale on Via Ostiense. We’re calling it DJ Leisure - and we know there are readers out there who will understand the importance of that name.

03
May

Photo Saturday: The Party’s Over

Election Posters in Rome

On the 13-14th of April, Italy held an early parliamentary election following the collapse of Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s center-left coalition government, which lost a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate last January 24th.

The elections greatly enlivened Rome’s streetscape - a myriad of political candidates and their associated parties wallpapered the Eternal City with posters applied to building walls and to metal billboards. Whether they intended to do so or not, Romans (and those of us here at the eCool Compound) spent months studying the smiling faces, clever logos, and optimistic campaign promises of an endless series of candidates, for it was impossible to venture out of one’s home without being visually bombarded by the paper propaganda.

Election Posters in Rome

Then, election day came - it was time for it all to be over. We’d tired of the grinning mugs of the politicians and were ready to return to streets lined with circus posters and notices about concerts, art exhibits, and other cultural offerings.

That, of course, was not to be the case. Those April 13-14th elections were more than just parliamentary in Rome, for the city’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, had stepped down from office in order to face off with Silvio Berlusconi for the office of Prime Minister. That meant that Romans were faced with choosing a new mayor in the mid-April elections. Their votes, however, were inconclusive. The two candidates, Gianni Alemanno and Francesco Rutelli, were evenly divided and therefore a runoff was required.

Election Posters in Rome

So, as the posters pertaining to the national election were stripped away, a whole new array of political advertisements appeared. Almost daily, the walls and placards were caked with new posters, creating a Rutelli-Alemanno, Rutelli-Alemanno, Rutelli-Alemanno stratigraphy that left the head spinning and the eye rolling.

Two long weeks later, the runoff election was held. Alemanno was found to have defeated his rival Rutelli by some 7 percentage points. And so what do the streets of Rome look like in the aftermath of Alemanno’s victory? The now-obsolete posters are starting to peel from the walls leaving a streetscape that’s more visually interesting than anything provided by the political candidates.

Today, on Photo Friday, Susan Sanders gives us a view into the perforated and peeling layers that line Rome’s streets. In some cases, overlapping layers have been ripped away to frame the face of someone’s preferred candidate (see top photo), while in other cases the degradation appears to be fueled by weak glue, wind, and rain. In every case, it’s interesting to watch the promising faces of Italy’s political vanguard peel away as the new governments - both local and national - take office and settle into what is likely to be the same old routine.

Election Posters in Rome

On 15 March 2008, Susan Sanders gave us a look at the political debris engendered when torrential rains sweep these posters off their walls and billboards and onto the streets. Click here. And click here for the clever poster created by a Roman artist whose studies of political propaganda posted in the Eternal City was called Lasagna Elettorale.

For more of Susan’s photos, visit her blog: Rome With A View.

Election Posters in Rome