Street Art has always interested me. I have this love hate relationship with it. On one hand, it is vibrant, clever, it shows talent, it brightens up boring day to day life and it gives character to dull streets. For me, one of the reason why I love Madrid, is for the little treasures (as I like to think of them) that you find when you are walking around Madrid. If you look really hard you can find really small ones and it makes you feel like you are part of a private joke.
A lot of the time they are also a very clever way to bring peoples attention to current world affairs and they challenge the decisions that our leaders make for us. A great example of this is Banksy. If you are not familiar with him or his work please google the name and check it out. I think you will either love or hate him. I love it, I am a huge fan.
Shop owners also allow people to spray their shop shutters so that they don’t just get people coming along and spraying horrible, talentless things onto them. I think it makes them look good too. This nicely brings me on to the other side of this argument and why I sometimes hate it. The people that do just come along and spray “tags” onto shop fronts, bus stops, walls and often peoples doors! Why do people think that it is OK, just to do something like this to someone? So here is my dilemma… what is the difference between the two? What makes one right, and one wrong? And who decides that one is someone expressing themselves through art and the other is just pure vandalism. I mean, its not fair if someone loves to do street art and they are not very good at it.
I don’t really have a conclusion to this dilemma, only that I guess there should be designated space for people to do street art if they wish. Then this would take the spontaneity and character out of it. Who Knows! I bet I would quickly make up my mind if I had paid a lot of money for a property and someone came along and painted up the side of it regardless of whether it was a master piece or not!
Oh well, I will continue to walk around Madrid and be in owe of the talent that is around. Below are some photos of some street art that I have discovered. Some is obviously meant to be there others kindly added by talented artists!
