Street Art or the joy beyond graffiti

Remember when graffiti was all about a spray can or even a felt tip pen used by a lone individual, clandestinely and fast, to put up a single word or a brief message, or at most a rough illustration?

Sometimes the results were highly enjoyable. I like the perhaps slightly pompous but nonetheless uplifting “where justice becomes injustice, resistance becomes a duty”, or the rather more amusing “Heisenberg probably rules, OK” and then again “Bill Stickers is innocent”. But a lot was just a name or a rather clichéd declaration of undying love, if not merely lust.

Frankly, much of it was fairly naff.

Today it has become an artform. Banksy may be its greatest exponent, at least in England, but there are many others. Some of them, I have to say, pretty impressive.

Enthusiastic and likeable guide to an artform
Three artists: two in colour with different styles,
framing one pursuing realism in black and white

A forty-minute bus ride out of our new home in Valencia is the market town of Cheste. The council there has decided that graffiti, or more properly street art, far from being a form of vandalism, brightens up the town. So instead of trying to prevent graffiti, it supports it, to the extent of funding the yearly Graffitea festival.

As the guide who took us around the 2019 edition explained, it can take a dull or dirty stretch of wall and turn it into a splash of light and colour, replacing lifelessness by joy. And he was right.

Municipally sanctioned street art
in a poorly proofread poster: Sunday 5 April is next year

We were there on Sunday 7 April. The official poster proudly declared that the tour would be held on Sunday 5 April, but Sunday doesn’t fall on the fifth until 2020, and we suspected that the 2019 festival was planned to happen this year. You know how it is: proofreading, even for posters, isn’t it always quite what it ought to be.

There was a good crowd and the guide was fun and full of passion, which made it a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.

A good one for Trump:
an immigrant (see his boat?) ready to jump down from his wall

Another collaborative piece: dream states, signed by two artists

More collaboration and a great way to decorate the wall outside the market

As well as some excellent finished art, we saw attractive pieces that were still works in progress. There was scaffolding to help the artists, and ladders, but the work was still backbreaking. We watched one artist spending minutes mixing paints to get precisely the tone of grey he wanted, before applying it far up the wall with a brush on the end of a long pole.

Street art requires dedication these days

As when any amateur activity turns into an artform, street art has become far harder, far more time-consuming, far more a matter of perspiration alongside inspiration. It also pays a little, these days: our guide pointed out that some of the artists whose work we saw live by it. But that does mean commitment and more resources than the run-of-the mill graffiti artist commands.

Pausing from the portrait of his grandmother
to wave to us all

Why, one of the artists even had a crane to work from, as he painted a colossal mural of his grandmother, working from a photo he was clutching in one hand while he applied the paint with the other. He turned to wave at us, which gave us an uplifting sense of being involved in an act of creativity. 

Altogether, a stunning experience.

Still, it’s a long way from the lone individual working against the clock and against the law with a spray can, isn’t it? Gone is the spontaneity. Gone is the bravado. Gone is the recklessness.

But, dare I say, gone too is the naffness.