Banksy in Warsaw

Who is the world's most famous living artist? 

I asked ChatGPT 5.0 to tell me: "Based on global public recognition, it is Banksy. He is a superstar whose media reach is unmatched. He regularly makes global, front-page news (not just art news) for his stunts. His anonymity and political/social stunts – like shredding a painting immediately after it sold for millions of  pounds – turn every new piece into a worldwide event. His work is instantly recognisable and shared virally across social media. His art is accessible, being on public walls, not in museums. By placing his art on streets and bridges, it is seen by millions of people who will never set foot in a gallery. His style is iconic; the instantly recognisable stencils – Girl with Balloon, rats, chimps with signs. His signature stencil style is referenced in pop culture, making his visual brand ubiquitous." 

I asked Google Gemini 2.5 for a second opinion: "If I had to go for one living artist, based on general public recognition, it would be Banksy. His fame is driven by factors that go beyond the museum circuit: Anonymity – the mystery of his identity generates continuous global media coverage. Accessibility: His art appears in public spaces (streets, walls), making it accessible to millions without needing a museum ticket. Viral content: His works are inherently political, witty, and highly photographic, making them go viral on social media immediately. Stunts: Events like the self-shredding of a painting at auction have turned him into a global cultural phenomenon, not just an artist.

And so when an exhibition of works by the World's Most Famous Living Artist arrives in Warsaw, it is An Event. Below: the Banksy exhibition in Warsaw is certainly proving a draw. Saturday afternoon crowds. (Details at the bottom.)

So there we have it. David Hockney, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Gerhard Richter lag far behind in terms of recognition. Banksy is much closer to the cultural zeitgeist, and closer to the ordinary person on the street of our planet's towns and cities. Yet his roots lie in the morally questionable practice of defacing someone else's property with spray paint.

I have a visceral aversion to graffiti of the mindless sort; it fouls the aesthetics of the places in which we spend our lives. We have, as a population, become inured to graffiti as a sort of low-level pollution, along with litter and smoke, though we can pick up the former, and wind clears the air. I believe that corporal punishment (a pair of black eyes delivered to the miscreant under medical supervision), or being drafted into a military clear-up brigade, or simply being forced to pay for the removal of the offending tags, is needed. Zero tolerance, especially for defacing historic stone or brick.

There is a world of difference between a Banksy and a simple tag squirted thoughtlessly on private (or indeed public) property. Some street art is to be admired or is there to make passers-by reflect. But real street art accounts for 0.01% of what is sprayed every day onto surfaces of our urban environments.

From out of that depressing, oftentimes threatening, visual sludge, formed by hundreds of millions of protozoan taggers, has evolved one apex artist called Banksy. Clearly this is art work. Immense amount of thought, planning and passion stand behind it. Banksy supports Causes – anti-war, anti-capitalism, animal welfare, urban blight, climate change, Ukraine, Palestine, the National Health Service. Banksy's aim is to shake up people's indifference to the suffering of others. 

Each new Banksy work becomes an event. Below: the mural Royal Courts of Justice was created exactly two months ago (8 September 2025) and removed from said building the following day. An act of criminal damage (defacing a listed building) or a well-timed political statement? A London art-gallery owner said the piece could have been carefully taken down (presumably along with the fabric of the wall it was on) and sold at auction for £5 million, making its washing away also an act of criminal damage. Banksy tends to give the millions made at auction for his works to charity in any case.

Below: exit through the gift shop. Get your Banksy merch. T-shirts, mugs, prints etc. "Copyright is theft, man!"

The Mystery of Banksy – A Genius Mind is on from 10 October 2025 to 11 January 2026 at the Soho Art Center, ul. Minska 63. Nearly 150 exhibits including those from the Walled-Off Hotel installation in Palestine, the Dismal Land 'fun fair' in Weston-Super-Mare, and the six murals Banksy produced in Ukraine in November 2022. All the works are instantly recognisable; the exhibition confirmed in my own mind Banksy's status as the world's most famous living artist. 

Though in 500 years will his works rank alongside those of Michelangelo, Vermeer, Monet and Van Gogh?

This time ten years ago:
Remembrance Sunday, Northolt

This time 15 years ago:
Death on the tracks

"Bloody reductionist-materialist vandals!"

Exiting Ratusz-Arsenał Metro station by Aleja Solidarności yesterday, I came across this thought-provoking piece of street art featuring Prof Stephen Hawking (below), which has prompted me to write a blog post about it.

The quote, attributed to him, reads: Fundamentalna zasada rządząca wszechświatem: przyczyny występują przed skutkami, nigdy odwrotnie. ("The fundamental principle ruling the Universe: causes appear before the effects, not vice versa.")

Having done a bit of Googling, I can see this is a popular quote in Polish, though it's not one that appears in Hawking's own language, English. Googling further, the source of this quote is an article Hawking allegedly wrote for the Daily Mail, which was translated into Polish and appeared in the weekly Forum* in May 2010. Except - fishing out all the pieces by Hawking that appeared in the Daily Mail between 2009 and 2011, there's nothing remotely like this quote in any of them. I've scrolled through reams of Hawking quotes from various sources; again, this doesn't figure.

I suspect some creative journalist or 'translator' just made it up, using Hawking's name to lend respectability to the idea. In any case, Hawking's mind was way too sharp to line up cause and effect in such a simplistic manner. Time's arrow does indeed appear to use to fly in the direction of increasing entropy, but in a block universe, cause and effect could be simultaneous. String theory, 30 years old and neither proved nor disproved, suggests something similar. Some metaphysicists like Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake even posit that the mind can 'pull' effect out of a future, thus predating its cause.

The notion that causes appear before the effects and not vice versa is pure Newton; the classical physics of billiard balls and planets orbiting stars; "every action has an equal and opposite reaction". The discovery of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle - and gaping holes in our understanding of what led up to the Big Bang, or the nature of dark matter and dark energy, suggest that our understanding of the Universe isn't up to the task of linking cause and effect in such a simplistic way. 

A brief acquaintance with retrocausality would disabuse the interested reader of the notion that cause must always precede effect, especially at the subatomic level. Feynman diagrams can run both ways, from left to right as well as right to left - implying a future that can take place before the past.

Even so, Hawking was definitely not a metaphysicist; for him, "heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark". (And yes, this is a pukka Hawking quote.) Yet today, an ever-growing body of scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is not merely an emergent phenomenon that evolved as neuronal activity in animals reached a critical mass, but a property fundamental to the Universe, manifesting itself to us in our minds, which are located for the duration of our biological lives in our brains. After which, the Return to Forever.

If you have ten minutes to spare, do watch this short interview with Prof Bernard Carr, mathematician and astronomer (who studied under Hawking at Cambridge, where he did his doctorate).

The notion that consciousness pervades the Universe, that there is something far deeper at work which our perceptions, wedded to realism on the human scale, have yet to fully fathom.

Reductionist-materialists often take pops at those whose worldview has room for the metaphysical and the supernatural with the same dogmatic zeal as the religious fundamentalists who state that the written word of God is All. The truth surely lies somewhere in between.

I am grateful, however, for 3fala.art for this mini-mural which at least raises some interesting questions.

* Forum appears every two weeks since 2013.

This time last year:
Viaduct at Węzeł Zamienie opens

This time two years ago:
Future, past

This time three years ago:
Birds return to the frozen ponds

This time five years ago:
Bending the forces of physics with your will

This time seven years ago:
Giving it up for Lent

This time nine years ago:
North-east of Warsaw West revisited

This time ten years ago:
Looking for answers

This time 11 years ago:
Fresh powder in Warsaw's parks

This time 13 years ago:
Another Lent starts

This time 15 years ago:
Okęcie dusk

He was only five foot three, girls could not resist his stare...*

Wednesday morning, eight am. I arrive in Piotrków Trybunalski, on my way to speak at conference about exporting. I get ofp the train and head towards the venue. On my way, I encounter four pieces of street art that make me suddenly take notice.

Here they are: from top left to bottom right (in the order I saw them:) Pablo Picasso, James Brown, Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali.The slogan - Art makes differences.

An interesting slogan. For the native speaker of English would phrase it - Art makes a difference.

But no - Art makes differences. No indefinite article. Differences - plural.

Let's put this into context - what does Piotrków Trybunalski look like? It's a not a thrilling town, nor a dump neither. Just that regular town, the sort that dots Poland from north to south, from east to west. (I'd put in several photographs to prove the point but they'd dilute my message, which revolves around the four images above).

However, here is a town in which lives someone who wants to make a point - art makes differences. What differences? What's Einstein doing there? Making differences. In a town like Piotrków Tryb. making differences is very important.

* Can you be googled?

This time three years ago:
Quality engineering from half a century ago

This time four years ago:
Fans fly in to Warsaw for Euro 2012

This time five years ago:
Cara al Sol - part II

This time six years ago:
Still struggling with the floodwaters

This time seven years ago:
European elections - and I buy used D40

The time eight years ago:
To the Vistula, by bike

This time nine years ago:
Poppy profusion

Warsaw's heroes on the walls

For my father, Bohdan, and for my daughter, Monika.

Left: an end wall of a kamienica (tenement) by Wilanowska Metro/bus station, commemorating Stanisław Grzesiuk, a noted Warsaw street musician. The street art depicts him as Syn Ulicy ('Son of the Street') with the sub-title Szemrane Piosenki ('murmured songs' or 'shady/dodgy songs'). Today's young artists have a fascination with the people who made Warsaw what it is; the characters, the lore, the slang, the unbreakable spirit. Grzesiuk, playing the banjo in the courtyards (podwórka) of Warsaw kamienice, embodied a tradition to be encountered today in the performances of Orkiestra z Chmielnej, who still play the old songs. Catch them by Metro Centrum after 11:00 most weekday mornings.

Below: an end wall of a kamienica between ul. Okrzei and Kłopotowskiego depicting four Home Army (AK) soldiers and the Polska Walczącza logo against a map of Our City and the Vistula running red, an allusion to Red Runs the Vistula, the book written by Ron Jeffery, an English PoW who escaped from the Germans and fought alongside the AK. I see in these faces of the young men the face of my father as a young man, who participated in the Warsaw Uprising from the beginning through to the bitter end. The hair styles, the faces, the clothing; each one looks familiar and brings to mind portraits of my father as a young man.

A propos of which - is it Warsaw Uprising - or Warsaw Rising? If you've not done this yet, do have a look at Google's fascinating NGram viewer. With this tool, you can track how words or phrases gain and lose popularity over the years. So I enter 'Warsaw Uprising' and 'Warsaw Rising'. And here's the result (click to enlarge):

This suggests that immediately after the event, the preferred English term for Powstanie was 'Rising', but by 1960, the term 'Uprising' had overtaken it. Why? And why the sudden spike in popularity for 'Rising' after 2000, but before Norman Davies' book Rising '44 The Battle for Warsaw was published in 2003? So - for the past half a century, Uprising has the edge on Rising in terms of the canon of published work in the English language.

This time last year:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time two years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time three years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time four years ago:
Another point of view

Not beyond repair

A thank-you to Kolin for the tip-off on this story - the attempted destruction by a drunken vandal of the floral rainbow that has stood on Pl. Zbawiciela since before the Euro 2012 football championships.

The 29 year-old opponent of peace, love and understanding was caught red-handed by the police, and was found to be seven times over the drink-drive limit. He set fire to one end of the rainbow, and was apprehended while trying to do likewise to the other side. What his motivation was may become clear during his court appearance. (Drunken prank? Dare? Performance art? Political statement? We'll see.)

Four days after the incident, I popped by to see it for myself. Above: the southern end of the rainbow was seriously damaged. Still, the exposed steel lattice-work structure looks starkly impressive against the background of the church of the Holiest Redeemer.

About half of the 16,000 artificial flowers have burnt away. The artist, Julita Wójcik, has pledged that the rainbow will be rebuilt. Below: the southern end was not so badly affected. Still, I guess that when it comes to replacing the flowers, the existing ones will go, as their colour will not match new ones on account of fading in the sunlight.

It's worth recalling that when I polled readers as to whether the the rainbow should stay as a permanent feature of the Warsaw cityscape, only one-third voted yes. That was back in late June, just three weeks after its unveiling. Time makes us more accepting of the ways things are. Joanna Rajkowska's artificial palm tree on Rondo De Gaulle'a (below) has been there for ten years, and I think Warsaw has taken it to heart.

Big public art has a place in any city. It civilises, it enhances citizens' sense of pride in their home town. It is a sign of a city's imagination and innovative thought.

This time last year:
Why no one is Occupying Warsaw

This two years ago:
Of sausages and drains

This time three years ago:
In search of the Sublime Aesthetic at 36,000 ft

This time five years ago:
London from the air

Back to Łódź, city of culture

Back to Łódź to drop Moni off at her new flat ahead of the new academic year that starts on Monday. She will be living on ul. Piotrkowska, Łódź's main street, a vastly elongated version of Warsaw's Nowy Świat, a street of shops, bars, clubs and restaurants; crumbling stucco and social housing

Łódź is striving to become noticed as a city of creativity. Above: a mural (one of several in the city) decorates a blank wall overlooking a car park on Piotrkowska. Note the boat - the symbol of Łódź (which literally means 'boat' in Polish, ironic since the city's neither on a river nor by the sea). It's worth clicking on the above image to look at the mural in detail - it really is quite something. Can you see the figure in the blue hoodie squatting at the foot of the statue, gazing into his electronic apparatus?

One of many restored palaces on Piotrkowska (no. 143). Can you see the figure in the blue hoodie, sitting in the foreground, gazing into his electronic apparatus? The architecture is noteworthy. Eddie was impressed by several of the larger buildings in Łódź's city centre.

This could be a much nicer city were it not for the large number of scruffy alcoholics that live (rent free) in social housing provided by the city council right in the centre of Łódź. The city has of a quarter of a billion zlotys in unpaid rent; it cannot re-house these people because it doesn't have the money to provide them with alternative accommodation on the outskirts of town. Were the rent collected, the money could be used to renovate the city centre more thoroughly...

A new phenomenon in Łódź is the rising quality of football graffiti. Rather than merely bandy about aggressive and obscene epithets about supporters of the city's two rival clubs, ŁKS and RTS Widzew, a cleverer sort of name-calling has emerged; "ŁKS supporters drive [Daewoo] Ticos" or "RTS supporters didn't cry when the Pope died" are two we saw today.

Above: inside Łódź Film School, where Moni will start her second year on Monday. The  building in the foreground is an old mercury factory. Post-industrial, moderne and 19th Century palatial architecture constitute the campus.

This time last year:
Nine days before the parliamentary elections: PiS had a chance

This time two years ago:
Melancholy mood in Łazienki park, early autumn

This time five years ago:
Flamenco sketches

Raise a glass to Powiśle?

Here, on the race-track wall at Służewiec, we have the very finest in contemporary Polish street art. Contemporary political satire, witty and intelligent, post-modern in tone, referencing Soviet propaganda, and referring of course to Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz's current crack-down on late-night boozing in Powiśle's hipster hang-outs such as PKP Powiśle, Na Lato and Syreni Śpiew. The caption: "Maybe one for Powiśle?"

The debate referred to is between the well-heeled who live in the exclusive apartment blocks like Holland Park and Patria (who don't like their sleep disturbed by the apparent rowdiness) and the young trendies who claim to have turned Powiśle into one of Warsaw's coolest districts, thereby raising property prices through gentrification - or rather trendification-by-proxy.

Who's right here? Hipsters are Powiśle's answer to the aircraft that fly over Jeziorki: noisy interlopers that keep the neighbourhood from turning to dull mainstream. Mrs G-W: let the klubokawiarnie thrive; they are the life-blood of Powiśle. Anyway, summer's ending, university term-time will soon begin, and those all-nighters will fade into memory until next summer.

And here (right) is the 1954 original (by V. Govorkov). "No (to alcohol)!" The only thing that's missing from the 2012 street art piece is the plate of food. Is this a message to Mrs G-W, or artistic licence?

In Soviet times as indeed today, over-indulgence was a problem. But who should determine the character of a district - the city authorities, or the market? Then there is the issue of the smell of fresh urine and vomit over the pavements...

This time two years ago:
Mud, rain and local elections (Mrs G-W gets a thumbs down)

This time four years ago:
There must be a better way (commuting woes, again)

A Zone of My Own II: Mysiadło

It's been a while (five years) since I last wandered into the site of the former state farm PGR Mysiadło. After a failed privatisation ending in the bankruptcy of the new owners, Eco Mysiadło, in 2000, the site, straddling ul. Puławska just south of Warsaw's border, has gone to seed. This used to be a large tomato-growing business, with many greenhouses, with boilers heating the crops via large underground pipes.

Some time since my last visit, in 2007, most of the buildings on the site were demolished. Today started rainy and grey, a worthy klimat in which to pay homage to Tarkovsky's Stalker and enter a little zona of my own.

Above: the main internal road running through the east site of the PGR. This was a temporary thoroughfare while Puławska was being widened back in 2007; traffic for Józefosław and Auchan was diverted this way.

Left: not a place to wander through after dark; all the manhole covers have been stolen (presumably sold for scrap) and so, without lighting, the chances of falling into one of the heating conduits, strategically positioned in the centre of the paths, are high. There are thousands of empty vodka and beer bottles strewn all over the place, suggesting this is a popular hang-out for the local alcoholic community.

While both sites are fenced off, there are plenty of routes in, some must be big enough to drive cars through. Large amounts of household waste and building rubble attest to the fact that many locals routinely use the site as a refuse dump. Right: this child's chair looks like it came from a local primary school.

Only a few structures remain of what was once an intensive complex of greenhouses and ancillary buildings. One, at the eastern edge of the site, seems to have been a pumping station (below).

Below: still securely padlocked and grilled, what looks like the old electricity substation.

Below: pipes coming out of the boiler house and disappearing into a clump of young trees. In the distance, houses along ul. Geodetów.

Two golden rules of photography - number one: get close to the subject, number two: get closer still. With the 10-24mm Nikkor, you can indeed get very close and still get everything in frame. Below: the whole building, with decorated with colourful street art. The sides of the building are clad in asbestos - don't breathe in too deeply around here!

Below: close-up of the another piece, at the other end of the building. Nicely done - I wonder if the artist works commercially in graphics.

I take a wander round; a plane is on final approach to Okęcie airport overhead, the sky is brightening. It's still three-layer weather.

Below: crossing now to the other side of ul. Puławska, I walk down ul. Katarynki, cross a field and climb through a tumbledown fence, and enter the west site of PGR Mysiadło.

Here, all the buildings have been flattened. It was once quite an interesting place (see the lower photo on this post from five years ago), now, there's literally nothing. Empty scrub land, evidence of recent flooding, and, fleeing in the distance, a hare.

Below: near the western edge of the west site. Nothing's going on; no sign of any future development. There was talk of a large Orthodox church being built in the corner of this field by ul. Puławska, but that all seems to have gone quiet. The PGR Mysiadło site is likely to remain undeveloped for the immediate future; not a bad thing.


This time last year:
What's the Polish for puncture?

This time three years ago:
Welcome the Ice Saints
[and on cue, temperature falls from 30C yesterday to 12C today at noon]

This time four years ago:
Like a Kodachrome

This time five years ago:
The future of cities

Rail travel chaos hits Warsaw

We had been warned. Yesterday, the suburban line between W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Wschodnia was shut while the new station at W-wa Stadion is completed. The line should re-open on 24 July. Until then - what? I have just acquired a new corporate client for English on ul. Kijowska, corner of ul. Targowa. Three times a week. The ideal way to get there is by train from Powiśle to Wschodnia. OK - no train. Alternatives? Tram? Sorry - the whole of Targowa is being dug up, no trams right now. Bus? 138 from the office... runs infrequently, will now be overcrowded. Bicycle seems to be the only way. But what a way - a round trip of 50km looks likely.

With the suburban line cut, one rail commuting option is to get to W-wa Centralna and take the double-decker Radom train. I tried this one last night. Centralna is changing quickly - in mid-remont - and still many inconveniences for travellers. I'm trying to get to Platform 4. I'm informed by the new, blue indicators that my train will depart at 19:07. But the main staircase is shut off. So I make my way along the re-opened passage along the northern side of the station to the stairs at the end of the platform. Below: the re-opened transversal passage at the east end of the station. The staircase is open, though the escalators are not working - and there's no signage.

No working signage at the platform either. Will the train (which the online timetable claims will depart at 19:00) arrive according to the displayed time, or the internet time? It leaves at 19:07. But then it waits at signals, makes a long stop at W-wa Al. Jerozolimskie, and finally arrives at W-wa Jeziorki 15 minutes later than the advertised time. Essentially - if you're going to be travelling from Centralna, give yourself plenty of time to get to the platform and take the online timetable with a pinch of salt.

What else is new at W-wa Centralna? Officially sanctioned graffiti. I mentioned what was going on earlier this week at W-wa Powiśle, the day before the station closed for eight weeks. Here at Centralna, a similar story. To spruce up the drab walls, selected graffiti artists have been given free rein on the basis that if not them, less-gifted individuals will cover the surface with something, well, less arty.

So then - what have we got here? "Przestrzeń jest tym co powstrzymuje wszystko od bycia w tym samym miejscu." "Space is that which stops everything being in the same place?" Good God Almighty! The spirit of the Master of Paddington is alive and well! He who painted "Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere", that enduring slogan painted on a wall outside Paddington station, beloved of the Daily Telegraph's Way of the World column.

Above: New platform, new carriages, old engine. The Radom-bound train enters Centralna's refurbished Platform 4. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, the jury is still out regarding the graffiti. 'It's a scandal!' the headline cries.

This time last year:
Hurting and healing

This time three years ago:
The land where I was born

This time four years ago:
Night moves

A new lick of paint for W-wa Powiśle

The nearest railway station to my office, W-wa Powiśle, is a pearl of post-socialist-realist socialist architecture. Very moderne, very stylish. And its one of my favourite Polish railway stations - architecturally at least (I'll pass on a complete lack of signage, timetables at the entrance on ul. Kruczkowskiego and a working clock). But its all-white plaster finish had left it painfully vulnerable to anyone with a spray can and a vandalistic streak. Today I was delighted to see a new coat of paint being applied at the Kruczkowskiego end of the station (below) - and what an interesting scheme it is too!

The new paint extends up to platform level - I hope they manage to do the sides as well. It makes such a difference, especially in the bright sunlight of late-May. (Read about W-wa Powiśle architecture in this post about Warsaw railway architecture by Owen Hatherley)

Sadly, the vandalistic end of graffiti world, suffering from spray-can incontinence, will no doubt waste no time in daubing their tired, boring tags on top of the bright new street art, much as they did at W-wa Żwirki i Wigury and W-wa Rakowiec after artists set about improving the stations (for some reason the flamingo and stork cartoons at W-wa Al. Jerozolimskie were left largely untouched).

This time last year:
The ingredients of success

What happened at the Graffiti Wall

Returning home on Thursday evening, I saw the entire length of the Graffiti Wall along ul. Puławska by the Służewiec racetrack had been cordonned off with crowd control barriers. Security personnel stood at either end and along the whole kilometer length of the wall. "Funny," I thought... "I can't recall any rock act of global renown playing at Wyścigi..."

Mentioning this to Moni, who's au fait with what's occurring, I learned that sportswear firm Adidas had paid the racetrack's owner, the state totalisator, to paint over the entire wall, covering graffiti and street art alike with one huge advert.

What happened next is an case study in how to get vast amounts of bad PR - and an object lesson in how to mitigate the disasterous effects of getting it so badly wrong. As soon as word got out what Adidas was intending to do, a Facebook page was set up, on which thousands of practitioners and fans of street art mounted a massive protest. By Saturday, Adidas had thrown in the towel. The damage to the company's reputation among its target group (young, urban, trendy) had been done. About half the wall's length had been painted over in black, ready for advertising that never came. Instead came the recriminations.

Above: Could the ad agency not have predicted this reaction (replete with spelling mistake and mispunctuation)? Further on down the wall, anarchists used the event to critique capitalism. Now, even if Adidas had gone ahead with the huge ad, it would have been defaced to the point of illegibility within one night. Entirely counterproductive, a complete lack of understanding of the street art subculture.

Above: Do you remember how? I trust the previous murals had all been photographed by their creators and are in some digital archive somewhere, accessible at a mouse's click... The upside of the Adidas fiasco is that at a stroke, it created half a kilometer of fresh surface to be covered. And immediately, some striking new images arise, such as the one below.

Below: Meanwhile far away in another part of town, some football hooligans' graffiti - well, no, street art. Graffiti would be a foul oath followed by the name of some football club that it's unfashionable to follow in some small village.

This time last year:

First long bike ride of the season

This time two years ago:

Life returns to Jeziorki

This time three years ago:

Swans fly in

Dismal grafitti yields to decent street art

Two new stations were built along our railway line into town, W-wa Aleje Jerozolimskie and W-wa Żwirki i Wigury were opened in September 2008. At the same time, W-wa Rakowiec was refurbished to the same standard. Within minutes of the stations being opened, the dumb-ass element of graffiti vandals set to work on the virgin bare concrete bays which housed the platform seating. Aggressive obscenity relating to football teams quickly filled up the empty spaces that the architects failed to see as a natural whiteboard for graffiti. And so it went for nearly two years - until last month, when the street artists pounced.

The filth and the fury was painted over and in its place something visually interesting. Each station has a theme - W-wa Aleje Jerozolimskie storks and flamingos in comic-book convention, W-wa Rakowiec has railway-related art; but my favourites are from W-wa Żwirki i Wigury. Here the art harks back to 1940s and 1950s America, as regular readers will know, my Favourite Period of All Time Ever.

Norman Rockwell-inspired template (szablon) art on the platforms at W-wa Żwirki i Wigury

So much better than what was here before. Artist - I applaud your works. And PLK (Poland's rail infrastructure manager) for backing this initiative.

Four chaingang convicts. Opening scene of O Brother Where Art Thou? Po' Lazarus indeed.

An' then the high sheriff (CRASH)

He told his deputy

Want you go out an' bring me Laz'rus (CRASH)

Bring him dead or 'live

Lord, Lord, bring him dead or 'live (CRASH)

UPDATE: September 2010. Most of the murals at W-wa Żwirki i Wigury (above) have been sprayed over by dumb-ass vandals. Tragic.

Good graffiti, bad graffiti

A stone's throw from my office is the Trasa Łazienkowska viaduct leading to the Łazienkowski bridge. Until last month, the pillars holding up the viaduct were a typical inner-city landscape of brutalist concrete spattered with primitive tags and statements about the parentage of Legia football club's chairman, directors and owners. In other words, not a place one would like to be.

Last week, a group of street artists has reclaimed this area and has painted dozens of excellent pieces of art on what were until now filthy, malodorous, urine- and obscenity-stained surfaces.

Above: Not sure whether this is meant to be the late Michael Jackson in his prime, but it is certainly a whole lot better than how this particular wall looked before. The mix of techniques suggests the amount of care and time taken to do this work. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "what is painted without effort is looked at without pleasure".

Left: Stalin's gift to the people of Warsaw, immortalised. With a raccoon peering around it (rather than King Kong on the Empire State Building) and a rather fat cosmonaut in orbit overhead. Humour and localisation. Pure Warsaw. I like it. It's great having a free contemporary art gallery so close to my place of work.


I like this pop-art style (right); the artist known as Simpson has a fine line in 1930s and '40s Americana; this Disneyesque laughing horse, roller brush in hand. The technique used (Ben-Day dots) harks back to the comic books of the day and to artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Below: Street art takes on a political dimension - Lukashenka, Europe's last dictator and hilarious mustachio'd comb-over merchant, is sent into orbit by the people of Belarus.


A peacock (left), symbolic of the nearby Park Łazienkowski. Behind, on another pillar, more street art. This is such an improvement over what was here before - guys, keep it up!

Prior to this sudden outburst of quality street art under Trasa Łazienkowska, Warsaw's main claim to fame in this area is the eastern wall of the horse-racing track at Służewiec, running alongside ul. Puławska. I'm surprised I've not blogged this one before.

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, this has become legendary as Europe's longest unbroken stretch of street art.

It's been here for as long as I recall - I first remember seeing this back in 1995, and by then it was already established as a local landmark. However, 70% of the content is boring big tags - a few distorted letters, a bit of shading - nothing new or original, but colourful and infinitely preferable to grey concrete. The city gets its public art for free.

Above: This wall goes on for one non-stop kilometre. Here and there, you will find interesting pieces. But they are rare, and typically, works don't stay on for long, they get painted over (so the wall is fresh and lives a dynamic existence). Although the elderly fabric is crumbling.

Right: my current favourite on the Słuzewiec graffiti wall. A reference to American WW2 feminist icon Rosie the Riveter? Work signed Simpson.

As a society, we need to distinguish between primitive graffiti and decent street art. A mindless tag on someone's property, the visual equivalent of a dog peeing up against a wall, deserves punishment: 100 lashes, or being made to inhale the content of your spray can, or being chained to the nearest railing for 48 hours with a sign around your neck saying 'VANDAL'. Yet street art, which elevates passers-by, causing them to pause and reflect, and which brightens otherwise brutalistic grey expanses of concrete, is a social GOOD.

My tips to those wishing to go out and do some:

* Know what you want to do before you start
* Seek to enliven drab expanses of grey concrete but-
* Don't paint on brick or stone
* Don't paint on private property
* Leave public transport - trains and stations - be
* Graffiti in pedestrian underpasses frightens people
* I really don't care who your favourite football team is
* If you can't do anything more advanced than a tag, don't bother.

The street art pictured below fails to make the grade. It's in the wrong place - the beautiful Most Poniatowski bridge, vandalised by graffiti; it's derivative – a second-rate Banksy rip-off, and it's in poor taste.