Street Art (Graffiti) in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nara...

[urbanhearts]

I am a french photographer specialised in street art (Graffiti)and will travel next July and August to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara...and am looking or precise locations where I could find the best fresques, murals etc...
You can browse my website to see what I mean : urbanhearts.com
Also, on July 30, I will make a public presentation of street art photos at the Pecha Kucha Night (see pecha-kucha.org)in Tokyo.
Thank you for your help
Eric

[Derfel]

street art

You mean vandalism perhaps?

[urbanhearts]

The word graffiti is often associated with vandalism and degradation of walls in our cities. My objective in taking pictures and showing them in exhibitions, magazines or books is to demonstrate that everywhere in the world those walls offer a space of creativity, originality of great artistic quality comparable of what can be found in museums.

If the objective of art is to express and provoke feelings and emotions, so street art provides an extraordinary support to reach this goal : accessible and free to everyone, this art is not reserved for an elite going to museums. But, contrary to the art enclosed in museums, street art is not only unknown but rarely protected. It is subject to destruction by weather conditions, erasing by authorities or vandalism.

Have a look at my site and you will never associate street art and vandalism anymore.

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

Yokohama Sakuragicho street art
It is generally known.
place:Sakuragicho, Nakaku, Yokohama-shi
Neighborhood of Sakuragicho station (JR/ Tokyu Toyoko Line / subway) of Yokohama

http://homepage3.nifty.com/yudai/art3/IMG_5279.jpg
http://images.google.co.jp/imgres?imgurl=http://homepage3.nifty.com/yudai/art3/IMG_5279.jpg&imgrefurl=http://homepage3.nifty.com/yudai/art3/index.htm&h=360&w=480&sz=93&hl=ja&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EiQH8rH6zQFoLM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%25E6%25A1%259C%25E6%259C%25A8%25E7%2 594%25BA%25E3%2582%25B9%25E3%2583%2588%25E3%2583%2 5AA%25E3%2583%25BC%25E3%2583%2588%25E3%2582%25A2%2 5E3%2583%25BC%25E3%2583%2588%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dja%26 rlz%3D1T4GGIH_jaJP212JP212%26sa%3DN

[nice gaijin]

yes, the Sakuragicho wall is the only one I could think of; it's truly stunning, and it has a wide variety of styles, as each section was done by different people. (leaving the Sakuragicho station, if you can see the ferris wheel, you're on the wrong side.

I'm afraid I never came across anything quite like it in Tokyo or elsewhere. I saw tagging here and there, but real street art was hard to come by.

[Derfel]

Have a look at my site and you will never associate street art and vandalism anymore.

Its not the style that I find annoying, but the placement. I don't care as long as they paint on unused buildings, trains or whatever. But no matter how gorgeous it may look, its still vandalism if its painted on others property. I personally wouldn't want graffiti on my house, how about you?

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

Other street art.
Ebisu Station,Shinjuku 3chome,Hongo 3chome,Nogizaka......
http://www.enjoytokyo.jp/OD010BlogTagSearch.html?page=4&request=pageselect&ODEKAKE_SELECT=0&AREA_L1_SELECT=0&EMOTION_SELECT=0&KEYWORD_SEARCH=%95%C7%89%E6&USER_ID_SEARCH=&sort=0&view=0

[urbanhearts]

thank you Hiroyuki...very interesting pictures. It's just too bad it's all in japanese.
Are the locations of the murals indicated?

[nice gaijin]

the line above "GOOD:0 コメント:0" indicates the location, but they aren't very specific. I recommend getting a Japanese person to help you with the locations once you arrive, but you'll still have to do some exploring.

I just remembered one amazing mural that covered the entire side of a building (but I think it was somewhere in Osaka. I'll have to dig up the photo).

[urbanhearts]

For Derfel : "Its not the style that I find annoying, but the placement"...well, maybe you should think a bit "out of the box" and accept that art should not be confined to museums.
Also, walls have always been used as a media for artists since caverns "graffitis" have been disovered.
Artists are essential to mankind : they bring poetry, imagination, dreams, they also allow political expression. Some of the most striking walls I have seen are in Mexico, huge fresques against the US war in Irak.
And yes, I would love to have some of those artists embelish the walls of my own property.
As a matter of fact, there are cities around the world (Sao Paulo, San Francisco, Berlin just to name a few, who have entire blocks of buildings and houses repainted by artists from bottom to top. The result is amazing and make those cities more "human".

[nice gaijin]

To be fair, the term "graffiti" encompasses a wide spectrum, from true street art: beautiful murals and social commentary (a la Banksy) to painfully ugly vandalism such as tagging (http://www.gangwatchers.org/gang-graffiti.html) to mark gang territory. There is some overlap therein, but I approve of gang-related graffiti no more than any other gang activity.

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

thank you Hiroyuki...very interesting pictures. It's just too bad it's all in japanese.
Are the locations of the murals indicated?

I do not know a correct place.
In this site, a station near a place is mentioned.
JR RYOUGOKU Station,
JR Takadanobaba station,
http://www.enjoytokyo.jp/OD010BlogTagSearch.html?page=7&request=pageselect&ODEKAKE_SELECT=0&AREA_L1_SELECT=0&EMOTION_SELECT=0&KEYWORD_SEARCH=%95%C7%89%E6&USER_ID_SEARCH=&sort=0&view=0

Shutter art is used to delete a graffiti of a shopping district.
http://images.google.co.jp/images?q=%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%BF%E3%8 3%BC+%E3%82%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88&ndsp=20&um=1&hl=ja&rlz=1T4GGIH_jaJP212JP212&start=0&sa=N
You must get up early to watch these shutters.
Before a shop does OPEN,
You must go to a shopping district early in the morning.

[caster51]

I think it is also a kind of street art.:relief:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=4YyhH6mM-Rc&feature=related

[Dogen Z]

The graffiti I see around Tokyo can hardly be called art. It's more like crude expressions of a sick adolescent mind drying out for some form of recognition. The buggers that are doing it probably can't get a date so they skulk around very late at night and scribble marks taht only they and a few others of their ilk can understand. It's kind of nuerotic and way ugly. If I catch someone doing it, that person is going to come to some harm--probably spend a while in jail, a hegty fine, and if he's a foreigner, deportation. Since I've mentioned it, why are alomost all graffiti scribbled in English alphabets and concentrated in areass with a high density of young foreign residents. Coincidence? I think not :okashii:

[Derfel]

Urbanhearts, you say I should think out of the box... but thats no solution to my problem. If I plain hate to have my house messed up, I hate it, and will not accept it.
I mean come on, my house is built in mediterranean style, graffiti would look completely out of place, yet you want to tell me that I should like and praise it anyways. No thanks, im not that dumb. Everything has its place, art has been around for hundreds of years, and different styles must be distinguished. Come on, come on, imagine Michaelangelo painting something like himself cutting open dead chaps on Pope Leo X's personal chambers.
Lets say that graffiti is art, and people doing it are artists... for now.
My personal experience is that, that they're nowhere near poets, writers, folklorists, and other artists. Francois Villon might have lived his life in sin, but he was an intellectual individual, on the other hand, among the people I know, those who indulge in graffiti are the least intellectual. Not that I would say they're all dumb, but look at it, most of them are "teh ghetto kidz" "ganxsta'z" and whatnot, and "Teh poliz are teh evul, cuz they suck." and stuff.
Yeah, those people are certainly artists.
Just try deviantart for example. Those people are artists.

Ocean Dude, I kinda understand that. Its the same here, or in the capital, wait, no, its the same everywhere I have visited.
My reaction would be the same if I saw someone raping my property.
I might be a snob, but I do want a clean town.

[urbanhearts]

"art lives from the imagination of people looking at it"
Keith Harring

By the way, Keith Harring, like a few others like Jean-Michel Basquiat, started as grafer in the streets of NYC and now any of their art piece is worth millions !
I will not argue about wether street art is poetry or not with someone who believes that "Everything has its place" and that walls of our cities are unfit for art, but certainly fit for advertising billboards.
If your only knowledge of street artists is limited to "gangsta" individuals, I am afraid you don't know much about them. I have met artists in Sao Paulo, San Francisco, Paris, Johannesburg, Berlin, Barcelona and Belfast, and none where any close to this caricature.
All had in common, besides great talent, a generosity, a tolerance and a vision which is the essence of great artists.

[Derfel]

Tolerance, generosity and great artistic vision? Cool. Now please count, for every such person how many gangsta type cretins exist?
Don't get me wrong, I don't approve of advertising either. I find everything filth that disturbs the historical style of cities, be they modern buildings, modern roads and streets, advertisements of graffiti. I hate them all, and I hate them passionately. Besides, If someone allows an other individual to put an ad on his wall, thats by his own volition, and probably he gets payed well for it.
Now tell me, how many of your so-called "graffiti artists" actually pay for the walls they paint on? Probably less than 1%...
Bloody hell, some paint only for the thrill of it, because its illegal.

http://www.dougweb.com/faq.html#values

This site has everything I wanted to know about graffiti.

[urbanhearts]

It seems there is great confusion between street art and tags which indeed deface cities around the world. The problem is precisely this confusion : there is little argument there, ie clearly tags have nothing to do with art.
So, why such a confusion? because the media is the same, ie walls? that confusion to me is just like if one said "all writers are idiots" because some books have zero qualities !
So is it the term "graffiti" which is misused?
Re the billboards, if I understand you, if the owner of the wall gets paid for having a billboard on his wall, that's fine? does it matter that the ad is then imposed to everyone? this is legal "vandalism" in a way, don't you think?
Back to street art : not only the artists I know do not pay for their work on walls, but they sometimes get paid for it.
I have taken over 22,000 pictures of street art over 20 countries and I can tell you that most of the work I have seen is legal. It takes days to do a single work on a wall and without permission, it would not be possible.
The purpose of showing my work is precisely to fight the prejudice ideas related to this form of contemporary art. Too many people have never seen the qualities, diversity and creativity of those artists. The sample shown above, Sakuragicho speaks for itself (would you rate this as "vandalism"?).
And every time I have shown my pictures in exhibitions or projections, the result has been the same : surprise and enthousiasm. After seeing those pictures, people say unanimously "I will never see my city's walls the same way"...
Last word : cities who have a repressive attitude vs street art are just encouraging tagging...what I strongly advocate is not only a recognition of street art as a major part of contemporary art, but also that some space is given to artists in every city so that artists can express their talents for the benefit of everyone.
Interesting enough, Brasil, who has a very open minded attitude on street art, has lots of talentuous artists, some of which are internationally famous. Brasil has even declared one day in March as the National Day of Graffiti.
Another example is Philadelphia who is using street art as a way to reduce violence in "difficult areas".
Another example of changing mentalities : an exhibition of street art with live performance is being set up this month of March at the Smithionian Institute in Washington DC...and auction houses in Paris have just made their first auctions on street art !
So at last, mentalities evolve, and street art is becoming more and more valued for its striking qualities. And I will try to help as much as I can this evolution of mentalities.

[psykederic]

i can maybe help you so contact me if you want . see u bye