For my artifact, I chose a piece of street art I saw when I was in Salzburg Austria. The street art depicts an artistic image of the musical composer Mozart. Salzburg was the birth place of Mozart so the art depicting the classical composer fits the setting of the city where the art resides. This graffiti art is special to me because of the memories it represents. Salzburg was one of my favorite cities I visited when traveling around Europe and looking at this photo of street art takes me back to the good times I had in that city.
When looking up the context of this art, I wasn’t able to find much. I really wasn’t able to find any information on the art in regards to who created it and when. Other people have posted pictures of the art online but not much is said about its origin. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise as the art resides on a city walkway and I’m sure the artist would prefer to remain anonymous. Where this mural is displayed is in an underground walkway that leads pedestrians to the part of the city known as “old town” or “old Salzburg.” The city of Salzburg is divided by the Salzach River and separates the old part of town from the new part of town. Once you cross the river from the new part of town, there is a busy street you must cross to get to the old part of town. Instead of waiting for the light at the crosswalk, you can take an underground walkway under the busy street to get to old town. After you walk down the steps and turn into the walkway is where you see this mural. The mural takes up a large section of the wall which (I would guess) is probably around 8 to 9 feet tall. While it doesn’t take up the entire side of the wall throughout the walk walkway, it’s certainly large enough for everyone to notice each time they walk past. With Salzburg being the birthplace of Mozart, the location of the mural is very fitting. It appears that the artist specifically chose this place to paint the mural as the house where Mozart grew up in is located only a block or two away from the painting. This makes it seem like the audience for the mural is for tourists visiting the city and also for local residence who embrace their cities rich history. There is a definite feeling of pride from the citizens of Salzburg for its cities history which makes the mural of Mozart have a strong cultural aspect associated with the art. The abstract design style of the lettering around the portrait of Mozart also fits the typical “graffiti style” that you see with most kinds of street art like this which could be viewed as “visual grammar”. I can’t quite make out if the lettering and design behind the portrait is supposed to symbolize anything and if it is, because this is in Austria, I’m not sure if I would be able to understand what it represents. This does, however, remind me of the Julia Turner article “The Big Red Word, the Little Green Man” where even though there is a language barrier within this city where many tourists travel to from all over the world, this image of Mozart is universally recognized no matter what language you speak.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
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