Berlin Street Art: Familiar Faces

I know I've been talking about street art a lot, and this is probably one of the last cities where it's popular enough that I'll write much about it. Since everything has been a bit piecemeal so far, I'm going to try to do a group of posts that give a more thorough look at street art in general, but using what I see in Berlin as the main driver. I might reference some other art I've seen along the way as well.

One of the things I like about the street art scene is slowly getting to recognize different artists, and then finding their work in different cities. Berlin is a great example of this, and even though I've only really talked about a couple of artists, people who have actually bothered reading my street art posts would be able to recognize quite a bit of what's in Berlin.

Clet Abraham's art is pretty unique, so it stands out a lot. Since I first saw his stuff in his home of Florence I've come across his signs in 4 different cities. Now I wonder if he simply didn't have any in cities like Paris or London, or if I just never thought to look closely at signs before.

Alice Pasquini of Rome also does a lot of travelling, and I've come across her stencils in quite a few places, but London, Rome and Berlin have had the most. With the notable exception of her mural wall in Rome she tends to favour discrete, out of the way niches for her stencils, which makes them a bit more challenging to find. As you can see in these pictures the graffiti is starting to swallow them up a bit, so they were done awhile ago.

I've seen a few paintings that have Knarf's style in the city, but none of them are signed. This one, at least, I'm pretty confident in, since it has his style of art along with one of his signature hearts.

Belgian artist Roa always stands out. Not only does he always paint (often dead) native animals in black and white, but he tends to paint them big. I was really excited when I saw this mural, as it's the largest and most animal-diverse piece I've seen of his.

I think those are most of the artists I've spoken much about that I've seen in the city. There are Shepard Fairey stencils and stickers around, as always, but I don't know if he does them himself or others do on his behalf because they are so iconic. Over the next few days I'm going to do posts on most of the major types of street art (painting, paste-ups, stencils, sculptures, stickers and murals) and explain a bit more about what they are, give some local examples, and hopefully communicate a bit of why I'm so interested in it all.

Day 128: Another Slow Day

I spent the entire morning finally getting laundry done. The first time I tried a couple days ago the machine was broken, and then yesterday it was constantly in use when I was around. Even when I finally got started it took forever because the machines are so slow. The dryer might be due to Germany's environmental attitude, but I suspect it's just a bad dryer that isn't working properly. In the end I had to settle for damp instead of dry, so my clothes are hanging on the bunk to dry the rest of the way.

The afternoon was overcast and raining off and on, but never very hard. I spent most of the day in the Mitte area, which is where the most action is normally going on and where I've spent quite a bit of time. Today I mostly just checked out some shops, snacked and hung around. One of the buskers (I'm not sure what other word to use) was this girl making soap bubbles and getting kids to join in. I thought this was a neat picture to begin with, and I love the little kid's face in the corner with the expression of sheer joy.

Here's a few more random pictures from the day.

That last one is from a Volkswagen showcase that I came across. I don't know very much about cars, but I'm told this one (Bugatti Veyron) is pretty good.

Spotlight: El Bocho

El Bocho is probably the most visible arist I've seen in Berlin, and his art covers so many styles and mediums that I'm sure there's even more done by him than I realize. Luckily he does leave his name with most of his paste-up work, which is what first caught my eye, so I'll focus on those.

Even just with paste ups he has a few different styles and themes. Some are very simple, like these CCTV cameras he has put up everywhere.

More interesting to me are the two major groups of other paste ups he does. The first group is of usually brightly coloured girls - often with something to say although my German isn't strong enough to translate.

The second group is probably El Bocho's most famous work. They are based around a sweet-looking cartoon girl known as Little Lucy who has a rather strong dislike of cats. (Warning: May be disturbing to some cat lovers!)

If the meaning of those last two pictures isn't clear enough on its own, "doner" is what Canadians call schawarma, or Americans call gyros. Tasty.

Days 126-127: Indirect Route

I've done a lot of walking in the last two days, and don't really have much to talk about for all that. I've just been picking different areas of the city and exploring them, usually with some buildings or monuments or rumors of street art as the reason I go, but certainly not limiting myself to those once I get there.

Yesterday I tried to go to a sticker museum. That probably seems like a strange museum to visit of all the ones in Berlin, but it's supposedly one of a kind and focuses on the urban sticker culture which I've become increasingly interested in along with other street art. It was unfortunately closed on Sunday (plus I couldn't find the place with my rough directions), so I'll try again in a few days. There was a lot of other art in the area, and I'm going to have to start doing some street art posts through the week or else I'll just have too much to go through at the end!

I was checking out some of the city parks when I got caught in a horrible downpour. The only shelter nearby was a huge sculpture/monument that included a big bowl, and under the bowl were some niches that were large enough for me to shelter under. Normally I don't mind getting a bit wet, but the temperature had dropped a lot and it was raining very hard, and I didn't look forward to spending the entire afternoon cold and wet. I was probably hiding out here for almost 2 hours, but having some time to do nothing but think is a nice break at times.

In the evening I went out for dinner with a couple guys from Buffalo. It was the first day of the first trip they've ever had outside of North America. One of them, who had taken a couple years of German in school asked if I'd need help ordering. I guess I prefer that to the blind expectation that everybody will speak English, but I've been travelling for over 4 months now, and have never had trouble getting food - especially in a major city at a restaurant that gives us English menus. It was a fun time wandering around with them though, mostly looking for a convenience store open late on a Sunday night to buy beer. When I went to bed I was pleased to find I had the room to myself for the night, which meant I could open the windows and let the cold air in and actually be comfortable for once. In travelling I've found that I seem to prefer temperatures a lot cooler than almost everybody else when I sleep, and with all the heat recently I've had a lot of trouble sleeping some places.

Today was much the same. I was mostly exploring the east side of the city some more since it's an area I've really enjoyed. It's full of street art, but also just has a nice atmosphere of small independent restaurants and shops, away from all the franchises and tourist shops.

The most notable event of my day was probably that I had my first attempted mugging. As muggings go it was very amateurish, which was lucky since I've been spending a lot of time in less reputable parts of the city where things might have been much worse. As it was, the guy approached me on a side street about 15m from a major square at like 2pm. As soon as I realized he might be trouble I started walking towards the square as I talked to him, and by the time he started making demands and threats we were out in the open with people all around. He didn't have any sort of weapon, and at this point I felt there really wasn't much he could do. He threatened "to box" (his English was very poor) me, and then threatened to call his friends, but ultimately there was nothing he could do and I just walked away - although it did keep me looking over my shoulder a bit for the next couple hours.

Anyway, I'm too tired to break things down picture by picture, but here's some sights from Berlin!

That last one is an especially cool space. It's this area of warehouses and industrial buildings that has been convered into an urban hangout of bars, restaurants and

Day 125: Art and Culture

My basic goal for the day was to visit a couple of the museums on Berlin's aptly named Museum Island. When I went to buy the ticket it turned out that the cost of the region ticket for all 5 museums on the island cost the same as it would for just the 2, so I spent the next 7 hours exploring all the museums. There was a strong antiquities presence in most of them, which suited me just fine, and while I liked some more than others I'd say they were all worthwhile.

For the most part I'm not going to break down each individual museum, but the Pergamon Museum (one of the two I'd initially planned on) deserves special mention. Like the British, Germany has a bit of a notorious reputation for going into less organized and developed countries in the past, excavating sites, and taking what they find home with them. It was interesting to see some of the things taken from places like Troy and Pergamon where I had seen the sites in Turkey, but not what was found in them.

Also in the museum was the famous Ishtar gate of Babylon.

Test rest of the museums had a mix of ancient sculpture and art, Egyptian hieroglyphics, early Christian art, and more recent sculptures and paintings.

In the middle of the museums I had a quick lunch of currywurst, which is basically what it sounds like (sausage with curry powder on it). It is pretty much everywhere in Berlin, and easily the most common street food.

It rained off and on through the day, and by the time I'd finished the museums the temperature had cooled off quite a bit, so I decided to walk around some more. I started off just following one the elevated public transit train tracks because it had some interesting street art around it, but my walk ended up getting pretty elaborate. It included the East Side Gallery, which is a stretch of the Berlin Wall that has murals painted on it. To be honest, I wasn't very impressed with it. It seems to be all commissioned pieces that I didn't find very skillful or interesting - but there was a lot of other interesting art in the area. I'm going to save that for future posts, as I'm trying to figure out how to document probably the coolest street art city in the world without being too overwhelming to those who don't care.

The real treat of the evening though was exploring some of the little sub/counter culture spots in some of Berlin's grittier areas. My travels included visiting an anarchist shanty community, a bar/club in the basement of a derelict apartment complex, a beach club that had basketball courts and a skateboard park, and a lot of people just chilling out, and an overgrown lot full of people who live in tents on the lot having a drum circle. These are not the types of bars you find back home.

I want to get some laundry done tomorrow morning, but haven't thought much past that. Still have lots of things I want to see in the city, so I imagine tomorrow will be another day with a lot of walking.

Here's a final few night pictures, before I go to bed.