Graffiti and Street Art

In my very first post in this blog I wrote about the extent of the graffiti in Nuoro and how the council here, as opposed to the council in my native city of Bristol, appear to have no interest in cleaning it up. In fact, there seems to be a rather cavalier attitude here towards dog fouling and litter as well as graffiti, which is a shame because, potentially, Nuoro is a town which has a lot going for it and I feel much safer walking the streets here than I do in many English towns. As I've written before, Nuoro has a rich cultural and artistic heritage, as well as being located in a very beautiful part of Sardinia, and I am sure it would attract more visitors if a greater effort was made to clean up the town.

Anyway, a few days ago, while walking through the town centre, it was interesting for me to stumble across the more acceptable face of street art and the very crudest and mindless example of graffiti within a stone's throw of each other. Firstly, the ugly scrawl on an old disused church, which still has a certain amount of architectural charm, in Via delle Grazie. (See below)

I had hardly walked for another half a minute when I saw a far more skillful example of street art on the wall of a shop, Street & Fashion, showing a picture of a deejay working at his decks. While lacking the wit of a work by Banksy, I couldn't help but feel that at least it displayed a certain amount of artistic skill and it's highly likely that the work was legitimate.

Perhaps the council in Nuoro would do well to provide more legitimate spaces for those with genuine talent to be able to practise their art, as has happened in Bristol. (Maria Rita is pictured below in January 2009 in a part of the Bristol Harbourside where street art is allowed to be practised freely and some very interesting work is on display).