Only a decade or so old, but WordPress kept dropping hints that my blog format was outdated and becoming obsolete. The time was approaching that it would no longer function on the platform.
So here it is: the first post with a new look in a format I am trying to master. I promise not to include any of the curse words that my slip out of my mouth as I try to make heads and tails of it.
It happens to be that time of the year, halfway through, for that exciting list of what posts you have clicked on most during the past 12 months. My book has not dropped off the list yet, and I am grateful for that and that you continue to let the blog play boulevardier even though the writer actually is in a state of corona-hibernation.
Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – it’s wet.
Banksy
Sharing a final set of snapshots of art sighted on walls around Malaga.
Rats: They exist without permission. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved, then rats are the ultimate role model. They have no respect for society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
Banksy
The mysterious hooded lord of all street art. The man billed as bucking against anyone charging a buck, well in this case a euro, to view his art.
We saw an exhibition in Bologna a few years ago with Banksy in its title that had very little to do with the artist – a 13-Euro price tag.
But this “unauthorized” exhibition at La Termica in Malaga – “Banksy: The Art of Protest” – seemed so much less commercial. A pure tribute.
Showing Banksy is somewhat risky. In Brussels in 2018, an entire exhibition was seized by the court. Pressed for comment, Banksy released a statement about the exhibition that Urenna Ukiwe quoted in an article in The Guardian:
Hmm. Not sure I’m the best person to complain about people putting up pictures without getting permission.
And the repurposed setting has such an un-aristocratic history. Before its recasting as a contemporary art center, La Termica’s institutional rooms functioned as an orphanage and then a sanitorium.
“Welcome to Hell” from an unauthorized exhibit of Banksy’s protest art in Malaga, Spain
In 2015, Banksy launched a month-long pop-up on the Bristol seaside entitled “Dismaland,” “a family theme park unsuitable for small children.” It might be gone, but don’t dismay.
The flaw in this late-delivered “postcard” is that the Malaga exhibit closed this week. The good news is a cd coincidentally was released at the same time in Austin, Texas.
Postcards from Barton Springs 