Street Art Walk: Artisan dinner

There is a section of Nimes, France that has many street art murals. It is just above the old town section where we are staying. They title it “Expo de Ouf, Carte des Fresques. I translated it to Crazy Exhibition, Map of the Frescoes. Murals, as those of you have read some of these blogs are aware, are a big interest of mine. After our 4+ months in Mexico I am inclined to make comparisons. Overall quality favors Mexico. There were a lot of murals in Nimes that lacked focused precision. The mystic symbolism that is present in so much Mexican art lacks here.  There are a lot of portraits and comic like murals here.

The biggest and most disappointing difference, to me, is a lack of respect for mural art in Nimes. In Mexico there is a lot of graffiti, I would say more than we have seen here. Yet, there is a tremendous respect for another person’s mural that manifests as only rare defacement of a street mural. In Nimes there were a lot of murals that I declined to picture simply due to ugly graffiti. It is part of my personality to be, perhaps, overly critical at times, but lack of respect for another person’s creative endeavors is a pet peeve of mine. Today’s walk brought that to the surface. Still, I loved exploring the neighborhood and its art.

A particularly dense area of murals is a curved alley, Rue de la Poudiere. It is pictured in the featured image, and also below.

My favorite of the murals is the wall pictured below. I love the way it folds and fades into the building and the lush effect created.

I mentioned above that there are a lot of portrait murals.

Finally, here is a random assortment of other murals we saw today, some of which are quite astonishing.

Below is today’s artisanal dinner created from bits and pieces of food we bought from nearby shops.