EXPLORE ART OUTSIDE OF THE MUSEUM BOX. GRAFFITI, large-scale murals, sculpture, and creative, multimedia integration is what our generation calls art, and the world is bursting with visual stimulation. Hit New York for a face full of graffiti and Tokyo for head-to-toe tat culture. From the traditional museums of Paris to the makeshift studios of gritty Berlin, the street art culture of New York City to Gaudí’s twisted Sagrada Família, the multitude of ways people express themselves around the world will stir you with inspiration, adding depth to your definition of art.
A “CREATIVE COLLECTIVE” from Australia, The Glue Society has been sticking it to The Man with the most amazing sculptures, ads, films, and art exhibitions Down Under, over, and everywhere in between. Pop off the cap and take a big whiff of what these sneaky Aussies are cooking.
In 1998, Jonathon Kneebone and Gary Freedman set out to start an advertising business in Sydney that aimed to transform traditional takes on advertising. With no regard to strategy or media planning, Knee-bone and Freedman began creating advertising content that was 100 percent creative—making ads that were way cooler than the shit they were advertising. As the years rolled on and the clients rolled in, this dynamic duo grew into an awesome-gon of eight amazing artists, writers, directors, and designers. Now based out of both Sydney and New York, and mastering every medium from film to mega-sculpture, this collective is proving that just a dribble of glue is strong enough to hold the entire world’s attention.
Whether it’s a tiny bum taking a shit on top of a giant pigeon’s head (“I Heard They’re Dirty”), or a massive house raining on the inside (“I Wish You Hadn’t Asked”), behind every Society piece lies an idea that is as well thought out as it is executed. “Hot with a Chance of Late Storm” is visual commentary on global warming though a sculpture of a melting ice cream truck in Sydney, and “God’s Eye View” uses Jesus and satellite imagery to convey thoughts about naïveté in Miami.
When Kneebone and Freedman formed their creative alliance, they set out with a simple mission: “to make a living doing what [they] love doing.” Not only are the members of the Glue Society still in love with what they’re doing, but so is everyone else. Aside from making kickass art, these guys are really good at winning awards, like the prestigious Titanium Lion Award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and an award at Denmark’s Sculpture by the Sea festival. In a society where you can buy everything from a husband to a hammock online, the Glue Society aims to use technology to highlight what we all need most— simple, human connections.
No longer a secret, this society is taking the art world by storm. If we had to create an ad for these guys, it would simply read, “The Glue Society—Australian for cool-as-fuck.”
CATALAN TRADITIONALISTS love their fine art museums, and the street kids deck out the cityscape with incredible murals. Local artists are constantly at work, creating mind-bending pieces that build on their artistic history and move it forward. But while many styles and expressions exist in this undoubtedly artsy city, nothing sets Barcelona visually apart from the world more than the architectural contributions of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona’s deranged master of plaster. His drippy, twisted buildings puncture the otherwise classic Spanish city blocks and turn them into stare-worthy attractions.
All of that quirk definitely came from somewhere. Antoni Gaudí was born in 1852 in Reus and was a sickly kid with rheumatism (creaky joints), which forced him to sit around and look at shit by himself instead of interacting with other kids. Since walking was difficult, Tony rode a donkey and spent his early days observing animals and nature. A vegetarian for most of his life, his respect for nature shone through everything he did. Not surprisingly, he was never much of a people-person and is rumored to have died a seventy-three-year-old virgin.
Gaudí first came to Barcelona in 1868 to study architecture and, even though he was a pretty shitty student, managed to graduate and leave a lasting impression. As is often the case with weirdos, Gaudí’s professors thought he was either a complete moron or a total genius. The city of Barcelona took a chance on Gaudí and commissioned him to design lampposts for the Plaça Reial. Although you could blink and miss them, the art nouveau lamps are still lighting the way today. We’re betting on genius.
A Catholic bordering on fanatic, Gaudí dedicated most of his adult life to designing a church that would scare the bejesus out of Jesus. Gaudí began working on La Família Sagrada—the most famous site in Barcelona—in 1882, and it’s still not finished. The dripping, curling towers hit you in the face as you walk out of the train station, and your eyes take a few minutes to adjust to its insanely unique design. Part Gothic, part Naturalistic, and all Gaudí, La Família Sagrada is so intricate and complex that dozens of architects and builders are still working to realize Gaudí’s vision, over 130 years after construction began.
With the lampposts, Gaudí gained some serious street cred and was commissioned to build a house for a rich family that owned a ceramic tile factory. From 1883 to 1888, Gaudí worked on Casa Vicens, drawing from his fascination with Oriental details and Moorish architecture to create the ridiculous McMansion. As a tribute to the man who paid him, Gaudí detailed the casa with the owner’s multicolor tiles, which made the whole thing look like a shimmering fish at sunrise. His next projects continued to decorate the city with architectural weirdness. Casa Milà, which he completed in 1910, looks like stone waves and was almost too damn weird for the government’s approval. Inspired by nature, Gaudí’s geometrically defying designs can be seen in many other buildings around town, like the Casa Calvet and Casa Batlló. Park Güell is an entire park of surrealist sculptures and structures, perching high above the city like a tripped-out thought bubble.
JUST NORTH OF BARCELONA lies Dalí’s surrealistic tribute to himself. This theater-turned-museum was curated by the talented media hooker himself and contains important pieces from every stage of Dalí’s twisted artistic life. Here, you will find the long-legged elephants, dripping doodles, and funky jewelry that best characterize his style. The Mae West Room, in which art and interior design meld together like the colors in a lava lamp, will bend your mind into submission. Born in Figueres, Dalí made damn sure this museum gave his hometown something to be proud of. The city itself is tiny and has a half-block stretch that resembles. La Rambla for ants. Great for day-trip tripping, give Sal a holla when you roll through; his crypt has been chillin’ in the center of the museum since 1989.
An artist through and through, old man Gaudí was one of those famous guys who dressed like a bum to prove a point. Gaudí was struck by a tram in Barcelona in 1926 and, since he looked less than decent, was given the kind of medical attention homeless people get (i.e., sideways looks and a Band-Aid). When it was discovered that he wasn’t a mere (human!) hobo, Gaudí was asked if he wished to be transferred to a better facility, which he declined. After several days in a crappy hospital, Gaudí succumbed to his injuries and died. Point proven. Lesson learned? Listen to your mom and always wear clean underwear because you never know when you’ll get hit by a trolley and be mistaken for a homeless person.
BREAKING FREE FROM ITS
Wall-divided days, Berlin is united through its artistic expression. Like the city itself, art in Berlin is innovative, unconventional, and constantly changing with the creative, free spirits of its people who fight control by coloring the machine’s monotony. One part raw, one part unrefined, and all parts real, Berlin’s explosive art scene will inspire you to get your hands dirty.
After a lengthy period of historic oppression, the progressively liberal trend that plows forward today is voiced and displayed through the creative artists who live, breathe, and decorate Berlin. Their art tells the tale of a city transcending its past and flourishing in its freedom. As such, themes can cover everything from societal chaos to peace, prosperity, and community. This means that you’re as likely to find a portrayal of a decapitated cat’s head cooking in an oven as you are a building-size depiction of East and West Berliners uniting. Most will be raunchy; all will be nice.
The beauty of Berlin is that it’s still coming up. A new player in a long-established game, Berlin isn’t yet influenced by the poshness and snobbery sometimes associated with art. Exhibits and venues are as down-to-earth as the artists. You’ll find dozens of dilapidated buildings inhabited by starving artists showcasing their work all throughout the city, especially in the district of Mitte.
Walk right in and look around; each room has a different flavor, and most of the works are for sale. In Sox, you’ll find an all-outdoors gallery on Oranien street in Kreuzberg. Window shopping at its finest, the tiny window space (only a few yards wide) switches up its showcase every few weeks.
Berlin is hailed as the mecca of urban art. First thrown up in the ’60s in response to the creation of the Berlin Wall, street art has shifted from cries for equality to mind-fucking murals that turn the city’s streets into colorful canvases portraying the political progression. The biggest in the international game—Banksy, Invader, and Blu, to name just a few—have sprayed their marks on Berlin, alongside the works of local guys like El Bocho, Alias, and XOOOOX. Lucky for you, finding street art in Berlin is easy as finding a decent-looking hooker in one of its Red Light districts. For a sure thing, walk along the East Side Gallery, the largest (just under a mile long), still-standing, segment of the Wall painted by dozens of artists as a freedom memorial.
Currently controlled, inhabited, and decorated by the people, it’s no wonder that financial Berlin is dick-deep in debt while artistic Berlin kicks more ass than an underpaid, actually angry dominatrix.
REMEMBER HOW COOL IT was in fifth grade to sniff glue and watch your lava lamp morph into different shapes of glowing red blobs? ’Roid that up to mural size, add more colors and structure, synchronize it to electronic music, project it onto street performers, and you have a production made possible by the masterminds at República Portátil (RP). Back in 2002, university students from Concepción, Chile, made live shows incorporating elements of the musical arts, visuals, dramatic architecture, and design. A year later, the group took to the streets, projecting symbolic constructions in vacant lots. Public space became their canvas—fluid projections that, unlike graffiti, leave no trace and are completely mobile. Using transmediality, what RP creates is not an art form in itself but rather a medium for creating art with the latest in audiovisual technology, design, architecture, and whatever else their clever hearts desire.
A República Portátil original, this abstract art is projected on outside building walls, backdrops, and scaffolding. The massive projections are actually initially composed of tiny drops of dyes, oils, and alcohols, all mixed in translucent slide compartments and recorded on a micro scale. The contrasting drops transition the slide from one abstract art piece to another. The trippy projections are then displayed at a strategically chosen time and on a building or city square to capture an intended audience. The wrong setting would be like Nickelback performing for a college-educated crowd. The projections are complemented by electronic music and can be cast on street performers—making them an integral part of the show, not just a backdrop. RP is constantly evolving with applications in live music and film.
ONCE THE “JEWEL OF THE Pacific,” Valparaíso used to be the port town for ships rounding the Americas. After the Panama Canal opened, the city traded its bling for a hemp necklace and a paintbrush. These days, Valpo is the unplanned love child of an improvised port town and a Bohemian art city that’s home to the Museo a Cielo Abierto (the Open Sky Museum), twenty grand outdoor murals that dot the cobblestone streets in Cerro Bellavista. The project was started in the great year of 1969, when local art students painted the empty walls until Chile had its obligatory South American military coup in 1973. When the coup ended in 1990, the murals were revamped with help of big-shot Chilean artists. The original intent of the Open Sky Museum was to give drunks something to look at as they stumblefuck from one bar to another. It is your duty to help the founders realize their dream.
WAYANG KULIT, OR SHADOW puppet theater, is a UNESCO recognized Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity—which is a fancy way of saying that, in Indonesia, playing with puppets is cool as fuck.
The word wayang, translated from Javanese, means “shadow,” but it generally serves as a blanket term for “theater.” Paired with the word kulit (which means “skin”), the two together refer to the shadow puppet theater that is a central part of Indonesian culture and heritage. Wayang Kulit is most popular in Java and Bali, although other countries like Sumatra and Lombok like to play with their puppets, too. Since there is no record of Wayang Kulit before Hinduism and the two main performed story lines revolve around the famous Indian epics The Mahabharata and The Ramayana, it’s likely that Wayang Kulit was a gift from Indian traders somewhere around the first century.
With few exceptions, all Wayang Kulit performances tell the story of either The Mahabharata or The Ramayana. Both are epically long (sometimes lasting nine hours) tales of love, evil, good, good prevailing over evil, and how to live life without being a scumbag. The dalang, or puppeteer, must know both these stories as well as his own meat puppet, because he is responsible for voicing every character in the all-night performance. In addition to the traditional plotline, current events, songs, and jokes are thrown in to keep the audience interested (and awake).
Wayang Kulit performances are generally commissioned for special events like religious holidays, weddings, cremations, and rite-of-passage ceremonies. Since it’s an all-night affair with food and festivities, Wayang Kulit is something to get excited about—like how you’d get excited about a Guns N’ Roses concert.
Although they are in shadows during the performance, the construction and detail of each Wayang Kulit puppet is a work of art unto itself. Putting a puppet together takes a team of artists a few weeks to finish. Like a runway model, a top-notch puppet begins with good skin (from a buffalo), which is then smoothed, primed, intricately chiseled, and painted before it’s ready to make a stage debut.
Like in The Wizard of Oz, you’ll want to pay close attention to the man behind the curtain. Part puppeteer extraordinaire, part conductor via foot-tapping, social commentator, artist, and all-around funny guy, the dalang is to Wayang Kulit what a president is to a democratic nation (minus the lies). The dalang is considered a sacred artist in Indonesia and is highly revered. Aside from controlling a whole cast of puppets and bringing each of them to life vocally, the dalang is also responsible for incorporating local flava into his story line. Using two clown-like characters (panakawan) in the cast, the dalang will speak for the people and address the issues that are most important to them. Under traditional law, the dalang is not considered responsible for anything he says during a performance—giving him artistic license to talk shit freely.
Once the sun goes down and the white, cloth screen goes up, the dalang assembles his cast “backstage.” The good-guy characters are arranged on the right-hand side of the stage and the bad-guys on the left—with the center area used as the stage. The orchestra (gamelan) sits at their respective instruments and waits for the head homeboy, the dalang, to signal the start with a tap of his foot. Once the oil lamp is lit and the shadows are cast, the dalang lubes up his fingers and voice, and then begins the show!
TASTES LIKE COFFEE
Finding a supplier to meet your caffeine demand shouldn’t be hard in a region sited as the fourth-largest producer of coffee in the world. Dutch colonists first introduced coffee to Jakarta in 1696, and thanks to a perfect climate, the plant grew into a major cash crop by 1725. Although Indonesians drink less than half of the almost 500,000 metric tons of coffee produced in their region, they still manage to suck down a good portion of the brown stuff.
TASTES LIKE CANCER
Move over Red Bullshit—Extra Joss and Kuku Bima have you beat on any Indonesian street. Just add a packet of either of these powdered mysteries to a glass of water and watch your energy grow! Active ingredients in both include royal jelly, ginseng, taurine, caffeine, and B-vitamins. If you’re planning to watch a man play with a puppet for nine hours, these crackity mixes are excellent discreet pick-you-ups.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, THE street art in New York City still decorates all of its extremities—from roofs to bodegas to subway tunnels— creeping into tourist photos, and dazzling up advertisements and bar bathrooms. Lace your kicks, look out for the cops, and shake up your paint can—we’re throwing up our tag on the NYC graffiti game.
The NYC street art craze began in the late 1960s when a teenage foot-messenger known best as Taki 183 started to spray his name all across northern Manhattan. Although it’s said that another graffiti writer, Julio 204, brought tagging to Manhattan, Taki 183’s fame—including a 1971 New York Times cover story—is credited for inspiring others to test their hand at painting up the city’s streets.
While some were “getting up” slowly, others “bombed” ’hoods to get their names out there quickly, outfitting Lower East Side tenement buildings in top-to-bottom tags. Bombing hit its heyday in the early ’70s and remains popular today.
Moving art installations were created when artists took their talents to the subways. With competition for recognition rising, artists worked at night alongside rats while tagging subway cars to move their names throughout the boroughs. Subway cars were wrapped in murals, a large-scale design pioneered by the artist known as Super Kool 223 and mastered by the infamous graffiti quintet, The Fabulous Five.
Just as shit got really interesting, the Clean Train Movement of 1989 decommissioned any train with graffiti on it— leading to poor enough service that the graffiti masters eventually stopped. The MTA is only now realizing how much it pissed off its art-appreciating riders and recently launched various public art promotions—or PG attempts at “cleaning up” graffiti by replacing it with city-approved art. Luckily, regardless of its legality, underground street artists continue to thrive above-ground. Street art in New York continues to grow, spanning vertical space from high up on rooftops, to the ground level and down into mole-people territory.
Known for either pioneering a certain style, collaborating on murals, or just covering a lot of city space, in NYC, these artists are essential to the scene:
TRACY 168
Known for creating Wildstyle graffiti by fusing block, bubble, and curling lettering styles.
FAB 5 FREDDY
Notorious for merging the hip-hop nation with the graffiti underworld of New York. Although it has long been said that graffiti is simply a visual representation of hip-hop, according to Freddy, both are separate artistic forms of counterculture.
DR. REVOLT
Another old-school artist, the “doctor” painted up subways cars with the best of them. His mainstream claim to fame was designing the logo for Yo! MTV Raps. Word to your mother.
Best recognized for his Metallicaesque skulls and sharp, angular lettering, Cortes continues to impress spectators at 5 Pointz with new pieces and a recent collaboration with Meres, another popular NYC graffiti artist.
TATS CRU
(AKA THE MURAL KINGS)
Tats Cru are muralists (the original three were from the Bronx) who have been painting up large NYC walls and subways for twenty-five years. Artists continue to join the crew every year, painting larger and more elaborate murals, competing in graffiti battles, and even taking part in a documentary to promote their craft. A famous member of the “Cru” was Fat Joe, whose tag name was “Crack.”
COPE2
From the South Bronx, Fernando Carlo has been at it since the late ’70s, and you can find his bubbled-out name just about anywhere from SoHo billboards to video games to chucks. From time to time, Banksy pops into the city to stencil up building sides or sneak his dark humor into museum installations.
OTP TIP: For great videos documenting tons of NYC graffiti in progress (with a bit of Kim Kardashian’s booty), check out Mrdutch730.
From personal to political, various meaningful pieces cover the city from sewers to delis to bridges to your hostel to our house and back. You’re bound to find at least simple tags on any given street block or subway station, and with graffiti becoming more mainstream, advertisers are commissioning artists to create intricate murals for their campaigns. Should you feel like getting in the thick of it, check out:
5 POINTZ
On the ground level, when it comes to sheer abundance, Queens is the king of New York graffiti. The 5 Pointz studio in Long Island City is a living graffiti collage, where international artists produce attention-grabbing pieces on and in this abandoned warehouse.
THE GRAFFITI HALL OF FAME
Wrapping an old playground on 106th and Park in East Harlem, this wall has been in a state of artistic evolution for three decades. Home to live graffiti battles, the biggest names in New York street art venture to this famed concrete slab to throw up their pieces.
THE LOWER EAST SIDE
Housing a large concentration of skinny, starving artists, this part of the city contains the legendary graffiti wall near the intersection of Houston and Bowery that has displayed the stylings of various artists for over thirty years. While it’s now a fully legal spot to spray, the art that graces its facade changes frequently and is still pretty impressive. Also, you’ll be glad to know that the historical tenement buildings are still tagged to shit.
THE BEST GRAFFITI WINDOW-WATCHING CAN BE DONE FROM the G train as it emerges above-ground over 5 Pointz from Brooklyn to Queens (stops: between 21 St.-Jackson Avenue and Court Square).
NEXT TO BEING A DRUNK, pikey football fan, graffiti is up high there on the list of ways to piss off a bobby in London. Government officials there have launched a massive crackdown to ensure the streets and tube trains are visually clean, but street artists are still slathering the town with colorful images and antiestablishment messages. Take a trip down tagging lane with our rough sketch of the street artists lurking in London.
BANKSY
A household name that even your mom might recognize, Banksy pushed stenciling to the forefront of street art. Using an escapist technique, in which a stencil is made beforehand and then used to spray quickly on-site, Banksy has received a lot of praise (and shit) for his sarcastic displays of discontent with society. While his work is all over the world (in some of the most controversial places), he pops up every now and again in his homeland. His satirical style and semi-secret identity keep him in the street-art spotlight.
KING ROBBO
The feud between King Robbo and Banksy runs deep, and neither seems willing to acquiesce. In 1985, Robbo painted a huge, full-color piece called “Robbo Incorporated” next to Regent’s Canal in Camden. The area was only accessible by water, but people managed to cover it with graffiti anyway. In 2009, some suspiciously Banksy-esque stencil art turned up, covering most of Robbo’s work with the images of a workman pasting wallpaper. That same year, on Christmas (the nerve!), Robbo made it look like the workman was painting “King Robbo” in silver letters. Like a bad tennis match, a few days later, the letters “Fuc” turned up before “King.” The two continued to hassle one another, instigating a rather notable graffiti war. It wasn’t until 2011, when Robbo suffered a life-threatening head injury, that Banksy let it go . . . sort of. In an homage effort, Banksy created a piece that supported Robbo’s style, but also included his own commentary with a candle lit to resemble a “no fire” emblem. A street-art white flag? We’ll see.
Ozmo is an Italian tagger who put his mark on London’s facade with his “Big Fish Eat Small Fish” slogan down near Shoreditch High Street. Ozmo took the idea from an old Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting and mixed it with an Ingres’s painting, The Turkish Bath. Inspired by all he finds seedy with London, Ozmo’s art focuses on the idea that people only care about money, business, and fame.
MILO TCHAIS
Brazilian street artist Tchais moved to London in 2001 to get his piece of the graffiti pie. His works emphasize shapes, color contrasts, and textures, all through an abstract eye. Like a Picasso/Van Gogh merger, Tchais loves relating his tagging to nature, bringing a softer, more fine-arts approach to street doodles.
EVOL
Berlin-based EVOL moved into Smithfield Market, in central London, to create a miniature city. Using paste-ups and stencils, EVOL turns urban items like concrete blocks, tree planters, and telephone booths into mini-towers. Together, the clusters look like tiny city streets and are a total mind-fuck to look at as London bustles about.
PARIS IS REALLY JUST ONE big fucking art exhibit. From the world’s most trafficked museum to an oil stain on the sidewalk, Parisians have managed to put art everywhere and make everything art. Suffer through the long gallery lines, discover some hidden gems, and soak up the massive street art scene to get the complete art experience.
WHY OTHERS GO
A 6 at best, the “beautiful” Mona Lisa is somehow the most famous painting in the world. It has also been declared the most overrated tourist attraction in Europe. When you fight through a sea of old people to view the 30 × 21–inch painting behind a barricade and bulletproof glass, you’ll understand why.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO
Luckily, the Louvre redeems itself with 35,000 other pieces that solidify its spot as the best collection in the world. Also, there’s enough nakedness here to fill the coffee table book Le Louvre Nu (“The Nude Louvre”), which stars the museum’s most beautiful women. Mona Lisa isn’t among them.
THEN HIT THE STREETS
Paris’s Belleville neighborhood is the Louvre of street art. Works from every major French street artist is here—including Blek le Rat, JR, Fred le Chevalier, Kouka, Invader, and the 1984 crew. The street art clusterfuck down Rue Dénoyez is the climax, and like any good orgy, it rotates its contributors often.
WHY OTHERS GO
Pompidou’s National Museum of Modern Art is the second largest collection of modern and contemporary art in the world, with work from Kandinsky, Picasso, Dalí, and Andy Warhol. Its BPI public library is a favorite among local college students. Like Paris’s other art museums, the entrance lines routinely spill onto the street.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO
If you want to avoid the crowd or need to save that eight-euro entrance fee for crepes, check out the free Atelier Brancusi modern art museum on Pompidou’s plaza. Constantin Brancusi was a Romanian sculptor who spent most of his life in Paris. In his will, he left the entire contents of his small Montparnasse studio—from column sculptures to chisels—to the French state on the condition that the studio would be reconstructed exactly as it was the day he died. The museum is a glimpse into the creation of his abstract work and his obsession with the spatial relationship of his pieces.
THEN HIT THE STREETS
Even more discreet than the Atelier Brancusi, the subjects of Sandrine Boulet’s work are everyday street sites that wouldn’t normally catch your attention. Boulet photographs regular objects, then adds illustrations to transform them. An ironing board becomes a butterfly, an excavator becomes a giraffe, an oil stain becomes the hair of Amy Winehouse, and a debris chute and bush become the lower half of a well-endowed Adam and an au naturale Eve. Why Boulet messes with street scenery? Her words: “When you are a kid, you spend hours laying down in the grass seeing/visualizing amazing things in the clouds. Well, I have decided this should never stop.”
WHY OTHERS GO
In the birthplace of impressionism, Orsay bridges the art movement gap between the Louvre and Pompidou. Plenty of works by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, and Van Gogh make it worth the stop, but with three million visitors a year, the elbow room gets a little tight.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO
The setting, a majestic nineteenth-century train terminal, was almost demolished before being converted into a museum. While tourists funnel through the permanent exhibits, the ever-evolving and always impressive temporary exhibits get much less attention. Orsay also hosts lunchtime concerts, film screenings, and festivals for when you need a little more free movement.
THEN HIT THE STREETS
Princess Hijab, Paris’s most reclusive street artist, exhibits her work in train stations in much shorter-term, temporary exhibits. Late at night, Hijab paints black veils over the faces and airbrushed half-naked bodies of subway fashion advertisements. Her motives could be to draw attention to France’s Islamophobic laws against Muslim headdresses or to combat in-your-face sexuality. No one knows who she is, and it’s unclear if she really is Muslim or even a female.
FOR 2,500 YEARS, “THE Eternal City” has been pumping out masterpieces in stone and on canvas. From its distinctive ancient architecture during Rome’s golden age to the defining sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance, Rome has somehow managed to preserve its art history through centuries of war, earthquakes, and neglect. These are the still-standing highlights from Rome’s two greatest eras in this giant museum of a city with a killer food court.
In 500 B.C., Rome laid the first bricks of the Forum, which served as the headquarters for all things Roman as it spent the next millennium rising to and falling from the top of the Western world. The Coliseum is the greatest standing work of Roman architecture and engineering. Back in the day, this is where gladiators slaughtered each other to the delight of the Roman public. The Pantheon is the best-preserved ancient Roman building and was used continuously throughout history as a gathering place for the army, then Catholics, then dead people, and now tourists.
The Renaissance, which means “rebirth,” marks the period in the fifteenth century when Rome woke up from its 1,000-year-long power nap (otherwise known as the Middle Ages) and decided to regain its awesomeness. Romans rediscovered the works of their golden age, which inspired new movements in literature, science, politics, and most importantly, art. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the masterpiece of all things Renaissance and resides with the pope, in the Vatican City.
In slight violation of the Catholic church’s poverty vow, the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica hold an art collection worth hundreds of billions of dollars. That popular chapel ceiling, Michelangelo’s most famous work, is amongst the holdings, although he only reluctantly agreed to Pope Julius II’s insistence that he create it. In the pope’s defense, there is no better way to say “I love Jesus” than intimidating an artist into spending four years painting 5,000-square-feet of ceiling teetering a deadly sixty-five feet in the air. Other infamous works here include Raphael’s The School of Athens, Michaelangelo’s Pietà, Ignazio Danti’s Gallery of Maps, and Leonardo’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness.
It would have been easy for Rome to call it quits after the Renaissance, sit back with a cannoli, and just marvel at its work, but that wouldn’t be very “eternal.” A walk around the city will lead you to plenty of more recent gems. The Spanish Steps are great for chilling or working off that gelato. If you throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, you’re guaranteed to return to Rome. Since there’s no way you’ll tackle all of Rome in one visit (it took the rest of Europe four centuries), those twenty euro cents may be a smart investment.
PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD LOVE THEM A GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED
Jesus sculpture, the taller the better. Chances are, wherever you may find yourself, Jesus is hovering somewhere nearby. This is our Jesus dream team.
1. CHRIST THE KING—Sylwester Zawadzk, from Swiebodzin Poland, was one sneaky priest. He threw a crown on top of JC-Dilla to make him (technically) the tallest Jesus statue in the world.
2. CRISTO DE CONCORDIA—This Jesus statue in Cochabamba, Bolivia, would like to remind that poser in Poland that without the crown, Concordia’s Cristo reigns supreme.
3. CHRIST BLESSING—The “first flying tallest statue in the world” has JC lookin’ like he might blow away in Manado City, Indonesia.
4. CHRIST THE REDEEMER—Built from 1922–31, this Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, may not be the biggest, or the shiniest, but he’s definitely been in more movies than all the others combined.
5. KING OF KINGS (AKA “TOUCHDOWN JESUS”)—Not even Jesus could save this sixty-two-foot sculpture of his bust in Monroe, Ohio, from being struck by lightning and destroyed by fire in 2010.
WHILE THE SPARTANS WERE busy manhandling Xerxes in 300 B.C., the Japanese were inking up. Even before ink, the indigenous Ainu of Japan were marking and scarring themselves with tribal designs to represent honor and beauty. When the Meijis outlawed tattooing in 1868, it was driven underground, and like anything illegal, the more illicit tattooing got, the cooler it became. Nowadays, tattoos are a sacred art form that still make a rebel statement, and there are more than 500 parlors across Japan.
Think that back-piece makes you hard? Traditional irezumi covers the entire body, shoulder to foot, front to back, with one un-inked strip down the middle in the front. A person apprentices for years to be a master tattooer of the traditional irezumi style, and his teacher even gives him a special name: Hori (carved) + the adopted name of the teacher. The most famous shop in Japan, Scratch Addiction in Tokyo, was the country’s first official parlor and is still a pilgrimage site for all serious irezumi enthusiasts. Unique to Japan, this style of tats is only for those serious about pain.
The country that gave the world Pokémon and Princess Mononoke has been around the artist block. Men used to hold a monopoly of using or going under the gun, but modern Japanese ladies love their ink. Several top artists in Japan are women, and lady-run Studio Muscat in Tokyo is your best bet for a black and gray. If you’re going for color, a dragon symbolizing good luck and wealth is a popular Japanese tattoo. Another good one is a half-sleeve cherry blossom, a Samurai shout-out to honor life’s pleasures. If you’re an anime nerd looking to represent, hook up with a master geek at Chopstick Tattoo in Osaka.
The Yokohama Tattoo Museum, run by Horiyoshi III (Japan’s unofficial Tattoo King), is a must for any fan of ink culture. It’s a small museum dedicated to his personal collection of weird-ass things like shrunken heads. Since a tat at the studio upstairs costs as much as a Prius, give this place a long hard look and take your needle-cravings to the many other shops in the area.
