It is one of the oldest cultures in the world, full of history and beside it is the cradle of democracy and the mordern culture too. All of this is Greece, which at the time when it all began wasn't a state at all. The cities of antiquity were Sparta and Athens, Crete, the island, and mystical places like Delphi.
Today the country is a modern state full of problems, but also full of great works of art. Not all of them are ancient, many are more recent, even brand new, and you have to hurry to see them because they are falling out of time an were maling new every few years.
Because from Thessaloniki to Athens, Greece today is a state that overflows with contemporary art. The best thing about it: Nobody has to go to a picture gallery to experience this. You have to pay nothing. It is enough to walk through the streets with open eyes, which are painted as if they were an art exhibition themselves.
After our hike through the Enipeas Gorge (read here) and the climbing of the giants of the Olympus, now follow me on the rest of the path. We ride to the Oracle of Delphi and to Athens. This is the story about the urban art - the unknown side of greece.
Urban graffiti and street art culture can be found everywhere: tags, throw-ups, wild-style graffiti, stencils by political activists, stickers, paste-ups and murals. Many are illegally painted on the walls, others are from specially held festivals. The rather unknown side of Greece is worth discovering, although all modern art shows one thing above all else: Somehow the ancient Greeks were able to do it a little better.
But open your eyes and look! In the Athenian district of Keramikos, which owes its name to the pottery workshops of ancient Athens, the past and present are now combined to form a solid mélange. Large murals on ancient walls and small pictures in the narrow streets show how talented the Greek urban artists are.
But the modern greeks are still making art. They paint and draw, spray and glue not only here. Also next door in Gazi, that is to say because the gasworks used to stand here, not only is life raging around the Technopolis cultural center, but also young art. For example at the old tram depot, where the artist Ino painted the "Last Supper in Athens" on a large wall. Nearby is the impressive work "Freedom" and a previous collaboration between Ino and Aiva called Access Control, inspired by science fiction dystopias.
Even more interesting are the unofficial works by unknown masters, which are casually wiped out when the police spotted them. It looks similar in Thessaloniki. This city is also unbelievably young, but today it is unbelievably artsy. Spraying and gluing, from paper pictures to hand-painted tiles, are part of the lifestyle here.
In the unmistakable labyrinth of the Greek party capital, an urban space has developed in which the state has lost control of order. That makes Thessaloniki colorful and exciting and it gives the many, many dilapidated houses and deserted streets a touch of bohemian.
Street art here doesn't look like a sequence of eyesores smeared on like elsewhere, although there are exists too. Usually, however, improvised art does not push itself into the foreground, but rather enchants the dreary facades and shows the ingenuity and variety of ideas of the young artists, who also express themselves politically in public space: against animal experiments, against the EU, against the trade of weapons. Other images are manifestos for humanity and love, artistic interventions that line up to form huge outdoor galleries.
What is considered hobby painting in the commercial art world is real and honest here. Greek street art is uncompromising art that relies more on action than beauty. Brush punk, not a velvet opera, created with the threat of heavy fines if caught.
While street art is also incorporated into a tolerant society in Stavanger, Norway, every street artist in Orthodox Greece is an outsider who practices creatively with his art. The street artists create the public images that tourists take home with them - beyond the classic sculptures, the ancient buildings and the carefully cherished icon images from which the Christian country draws its self-image.
Other cities like Stavanger have long benefited from their reputation as places for young creativity, but in Greece street art remains pure rebellion. A pleasure to experience that.
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