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Saturday 15 January 2011

The Eyes of Paris

So here is your first art-story from Barcelona. On my final day I made a slightly exhausted trip to MACBA (The Museum of Contemporary Art) and stumbled upon some photographs by Brassai from his Graffiti Series.

Technically stunning, light partially illuminates the rocks and throws shadows in to crevices to create photographs of subtle perfection. Taken over a period of thirty years the images are of Parisian Graffiti that Brassai stumbled upon during his wanderings of the city.


They capture something primitive, they are like newly discovered cave-paintings; the naive cave-paintings of the contemporary. Incidental mark-making which is unaware of its potential to outlive its authors and speak in the future. They become, focussed by Brassai's lens, monumental statements of archetypal stories.


Presenting to us the innocent stories of children's book, faces like masks and dream-creatures, I wish I had stumbled upon graffiti this good. But I am satisfied, at least, to have stumbled upon Brassai's photographs.


3 comments:

  1. What a great thing to stumble upon by accident. I wouldn't be able to tear myself away from Brassai I'm afraid. I didn't know that he even did a series on graffiti so Jude-like I learn something new today. You were missed by the way, and Happy New Year to you Frangipan.

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  2. Thanks for the comment, and thanks for stopping by. Came over to check out your blog. =) Neat post. I've always had an appreciation for artistic graffiti.

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