More Lisbon street art/Mais arte de rua de Lisboa

The blog is not dead! Long live the blog! Here's a another batch of street art from Lisboa. This group is all from the same location, an abondoned, crumbling building located near the Castelo, down an old, well-hidden street. The walls of this building have become a type of canvas for street artisans, and you will see from these photos a pretty wide variety of styles on display here. I think this set is a good demonstration of why I am fond of street art - the impermanence of the art, as the walls crumble or get ripped down and others paint over what is old; the variety of creativity; and the connection of the art to a specific place - both the specific physical location of the art, as well as the urban context it is placed in.

First, here is the building I am referring to.

Note that it is surrounded by very nice buildings, yet is allowed to sit here and decompose. I think that aspect of the site is partly why I found it so compelling. It's not like this site is undesirable. Here's the view looking out from what would be the front of the building.

Build it up a few stories, and the view wouldn't even be obstructed by those roofs. Yet somehow, there this eroding skeleton of a building sits, finally serving a purpose as a surface for artists.

Here's some of art on display:

Here's a few more I really liked. First, two portraits. Are they self-portraits? Based on real people? Or just from the artist's imagination? I don't know, and because this isn't a formal gallery, we can only speculate. Viewing such works this way, in which the interpretation is truly the viewer's own, is marvelous.

I love the way the artist used the fading colors of the background wall to add a splotchy, subtly colorful complexion to the following face.

Finally, here's a painting which could easily be a study sketch from an art student's sketchbook, if it weren't as big as a person and spray-painted onto a wall. It's quite obviously based on this world-famous photograph from the Great Depression:

Here's the Lisboeta version:

Derivative? Maybe, but I like to think it revives the relevancy of the image during a time when Portugal is suffering through its own economic crisis. It also shows that street artists are not all feckless youths with a desire to degrade, but that some (even the unpaid, unfamous ones) do actually care about "art", in the sense of its history and applications and cultural relevance.