Berlin as a Canvas Part 2

By Katie Hammel

El Bocho is one of the most well-known street artists currently working in Berlin. Originally from Frankfurt, he has several highly recognisable motifs around the city. One is Little Lucy, a cat-hating little girl inspired by a 1970s television series of the same name. Little Lucy can be seen all over Berlin, devising ever more inventive ways to kill her cat, including ripping him in two, carving him like a kebab and serving him in a sandwich, drowning him, boiling him in a pot and hanging him with a rope.

Here, Little Lucy has wrapped her cat up in a box, perhaps to give him away.

Little Lucy. (Katie Hammel)

Most of the Little Lucy art is done by paste-up, meaning the artist creates the piece on paper and then affixes it to a wall with paste. Some artists prefer to work this way as it allows them to create intricate works in a safe place and then quickly put it on the streets. The less time an artist has to spend putting his art in the public space, the less chance he’ll be caught by police. Additionally, paste-ups carry a lesser charge than other street art; it is considered littering and is punishable by a lesser fine than graffiti, which can range from 100 euros to two years of jail time.

The work of London-based, Australian-born artist James Cochran, also known as Jimmy C, looks almost impressionistic. His paintings, on canvas and on the street, are made of thousands of tiny dripping dots that – when viewed from farther away – create beautiful human portraits. His work can be seen around the city, but one of the most intriguing is his self-portrait, the Artist’s Tears (pictured). Originally painted on canvas in 2002, it was recreated as street art on Revaler Strasse in 2012 in the Friedrichshain neighbourhood.

The Artist’s Tears. (Katie Hammel)

Revaler Strasse is a popular place for street art. The street and surrounding area make up a former industrial site that built in 1867 as home to the Royal Prussian Railway Workshop (the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, where German railway carriages went for repair). The neighbourhood was later used by the German Democratic Republic until 1989 as a site for industrial factories. When it was officially decommissioned in 1994, artists moved in and began using the empty buildings and crumbling blank walls as their canvas. The area is now home to the Skalitzers Contemporary Art gallery, which focuses its exhibitions on street art.  

Down the street from Skalitzers on Revaler Strasse, Spanish artist Rallito-X has left his mark with a mural of a grotesque multi-eyed monster with several legs (and a few other extra appendages), painted in 2012 (pictured). The message above the monster, “Greetings from Spain”, reveals the monster to possibly represent the EU financial crisis that began in 2009 when several European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece, hit hard by the global financial slump turned to the EU for bailouts.  

Greetings from Spain. (Katie Hammel)

Mein Lieber Prost’s work (pictured) is more enigmatic. It hides in doorways or high on walls; the faces and characters quietly point and laugh, possibly mocking the passerby who might not even notice. No one knows the Berlin-based artist’s identity, but his simple work, which began popping up as early as 2009, is now so ubiquitous and instantly recognisable that he often doesn’t even sign his name.  

Ubiquitous Prost. (Katie Hammel)

The work of another anonymous artist, Alias, is more complex, both in style and in meaning. Done with stencils, most of his pieces depict solo figures in black, white and grey, with deep reds and blues occasionally used for emphasis. A faceless teenager in a hooded sweatshirt sits cross-legged, another boy rests on a skateboard with his back turned to the viewer. In one of Alias’ recurring images, a small boy sits, looking dejected, on a bomb with a lit fuse. While Alias, who started in 2004, works mostly on the street, he also creates images on found objects like metal scraps and cardboard, some of which are sold at the Open Walls Gallery, a site that commands as much as 600 euros for a piece of graffiti.

Alias' boy. (Katie Hammel)

Over the last 30 years, street art has become a core part of Berlin, as synonymous with the city as the wall that once divided it. The images that decorate the city tell its stories – sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, sometimes controversial and, sometimes, beautiful.  

 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the location of Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood. This has been fixed.