crédit illustration : Banksy
Banksy is a British streetartist who likes to send messages through his art and he wants to keep his identity secret.
Streetart can be sculptures, paintings, stickers, posters, graffiti, mosaics and stencils ; Banksy usually uses stencils.
One of his most famous paintings is “Girl with balloon” where we can see a little girl with a red heart shaped balloon. It might represent the girl’s heart that is going away or her childhood flying away. Or she could be sending or receiving a hope. Banksy decided to destroy this painting during an auction in 2018, so when the auctioneer pounded his gavel the painting was sliding down out of the frame and it got shredded.
Banksy made a lot of other paintings which are very famous such as “Mobile Lovers”. This painting represents a couple hugging while looking at their phones. It probably denounces addiction to social media and fake love.
crédit illustration : Banksy
Brandan B Mike is from New Orleans in Louisiana and he is a visual artist. He uses spray paint and he decided to make students represent their identity. Brandan B Mike thinks that art is power and communication.
crédit illustration : Brandan B Mike
Harlem is located in the north of Manhattan in New York City and north of Central Park. But Harlem was Dutch at first and then it welcomed especially Jewish and Italian immigrants during the twentieth century. This city fought for The Civil Rights Movement but there was a lot of racial discrimination, poverty and criminals. However, Harlem is known for its good food, good music and its beautiful architecture.
People like eating soul food like chicken waffles and mac and cheese. The most famous restaurants are Sylvia’s, Red Rooster and the Harlem Shake.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet player from South Carolina and he was playing jazz music. His nickname was “Swollen Cheeks” because of his way of playing the trumpet. Count Basie was also a jazz music player in the thirties. He was born in 1904 in New Jersey and he died in 1984 in Florida. He began playing the piano with his mother when he was young and he decided to leave to Harlem in the nineteen twenties.
Finally Harlem has many churches with wonderful architecture like the riverside church. But there are also many monuments such as General Grant’s memorial, the Apollo Theatre or the Cotton Club which was a nightclub for black American musicians between 1923 and 1936.