Sao Paulo Street Art - from Batman Alley to New York City

Batman Alley in Sao Paulo; Batman Hugging Pele

There is spray paint on many of the buildings in São Paulo. Some of it looks like the hurried marks of a gang member seeking to mark his territory like a dog peeing on a tree. Such marks were put there by “tagging” and are particularly concentrated on abandoned buildings.

Quick Impromptu Sketch, because Why Not?

Tagging is illegal, but the likelihood of getting caught is less for taggers who do their deeds in quiet places where it’s unlikely that anyone will see them. Sometimes tags are on daring locations, like the sides of buildings that lack balconies. The words are often angry ones. There is little esthetic. Spray the stuff and move on to the next one. The result is defaced buildings.

Other spray painters get fancier. They spend more time, making fat bubble letters to write their names or someone or something they want to honor. They bring along more than a can of black paint; spicing things up with color and shading. The result is called a “bomb”.

Mural, Tags and Bombs: The Whole Package

Tags on the Left; Bomb on the Right

And then there are the graffiti artists. They are painters in the oil-on-canvas sense. Their works are large, often covering the side of a building, sometimes multi-story ones at that. Their works are head-turners. Batman Alley, a street in the trendy Madalena Vilage neighborhood, seems like a gallery that showcases one painting next to another. It is now a tourist attraction, a closed-off street where people come to photograph the murals.

Tourist Squatting to Get Just the Right Angle on Batman Alley

Posing

Cartoon characters, geometric, abstracts and even a botanical trompe l’oeil that seems to melt into the tree branches hanging over the wall it is painted on.

Some graffiti artists, Kobra and Osgemeos (which means the twins, which the duo artist team actually is), take advantage of outside recognition of their work. They accept paid commissions. Kobra’s international visibility of his kaleidoscope-themed work led to commissions in U.S. cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Kobra Mural in Rio de Janeiro, Commissioned for the Olympics; 5 Faces of Indigenous People from Every Continent

Kobra now relies on mechanical pumps and on helpers to get the work done (mostly for big, big walls). Some graffiti artists cry foul, saying that Kobra has strayed from pure graffiti. Some call him a muralist. Okay then, that doesn’t sound to me like such a terrible insult, but if being a muralist means getting kicked out of the graffiti camp because your productions are too big and too professional, and you get paid for doing them, that’s not such a bad thing, right?

...and a postscript...

I showed a draft of this blog post to a Sao Paulo local, a guide named Leo Pimentel, who made the following comments.

"Recently, a graffiti artist, friend of mine, gave me a wide definition for works with a spray can, no matter if it is tagging or graffiti. He called it a 'manifest of demarcation, complaint and protest'.  For me this phrase fits perfectly the tagging scene but I would not use it for graffiti, mainly those that have an artistic appeal or artists that are commissioned.

Words written by taggers are, most of the times, strong ones like 'chaos', 'freedom', 'repression', 'against the system', 'rage', 'revenge'. But they also seek for recognition. So, sometimes they tag their own nicknames or code-names. Finally, words can be of someone/something they want to honor: an unknown person/friend/lover, a band, a celebrity they admire, etc." 

Thank you Leo.
I admire the art.