The Straat Museum
I was so pleased that I took the initiative and walked all the way to Centraal Station with a small break for breakfast---at a Dutch pancake house. I caught the free ferry to Nord (NDMS) side and stayed all day. My aim was to go to the Straat Museum of modern art, which in this case means—street art.
At the Straat, I learned about the history of graffiti, the different types, and some (in)famous names associated with the “art”. According to the Straat, graffiti began in the 1960’s, in Philadelphia, by a tagger named “Cornbread”. As a side note in my opinion, graffiti began way before then, by the boys who would carve their name into trees with a heart and write their aimed-loves initials. The tools may have been different, but the idea is the same.
Graffiti soon was used as a visual demonstration for the Vietnam war in the later 1960s. Soon after, taggers used their initials, crew names, and icons to identify themselves and their territory (hence the ugly vandalism we see all over). The graffiti wars begin with laws enacted for carrying aerosol cans of paint. The procession of graffiti starting with ‘tags’, developed into ‘sticker art’, which continues today. (I was lucky enough to get a picture of the ‘sticker’ artist in action. He told me his art was a collage images. He even gave me one of his stickers to keep). From stickers and stencils (Banksy and the like) came mural art.
Keith Haring, probably the most well-known of the street muralist, got his painting start in Berlin—on the Berlin wall in the 1980s. Graffiti as an art form spawn many forms of commercially accepted art. Keith Haring’s art went on to be a symbol of gay liberation, Shepard Fairey’s art becomes a clothing line, “Obey”, books are published, graffiti art becomes political art for election campaigns (Barack Obama’s campaign uses, “Hope” poster created by fairey), and art galleries open (2008) to showcase muralists and stencilists from around the world. Even an art illusion was installed at the Louvre in 2019.
Did you know that in the early 1990s, I co-founded an art gallery with another photographer called “Forbidden Images Gallery” that was housed at the Billy DeFrank Gay and Lesbian Center in San Jose? One of our shows featured graffiti art. I am now thinking we were ahead of our time in bringing ‘graffiti’ into the world of ‘art’.
The Straat museum commissions muralists from around the world to ‘paint’ their murals in real time. One such muralist was there on the day of my visit. Samshia Hussani, came from Afghanistan during the tumultuous war times. While in Afghanistan, she began to express herself and her message on bullet-ridden walls to create beauty where there was only destruction. It was a dangerous undertaking for a young woman to show talent or express her views in such a way. She was able to escape Afghanistan to arrive in the LA area, where she continues her ‘art’, even though with a baby and a husband it becomes more difficult. But here she is---with her family in the Netherlands for one week---to create something special. As a side note, I ask for photos, and the usual reply is, “As long as you don’t show my face”. (I thought it odd that it was okay to use her name but not her likeness!).
I also encountered around the Straat other ‘unauthorized’ but ‘tolerated’ street muralists that allowed me to take pictures with, of course, the same caveat as Hussani’s.
I will leave you with an explanation of one of the super cool interactive art pieces that I saw. It is a huge mural of a girl in red and blue with way oversized 3-D glasses placed in front of the mural. If you step up to the ‘red’ side and look through the window, you will see the girl. If you step up to the blue side, you will see the wolf. There were other cool light installations, as well. I don’t know if I can post videos on the blog but maybe I can do something about it later when I get home.
(Sorry, unable to upload pictures for some reason---I will try a different way later).
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