encountering art—in subways and on the street

Even though I prefer it to going to a museum for aesthetic enjoying, finding art on the streets of Seoul can be difficult. Most places I go, such as Gangnam or Jamsil, are pretty clean and have no graffiti whatsoever. However, I've been able to find a few places that do have a lot of graffiti. They are the areas called Hongdae and Itaewon. I've also found a little bit of graffiti in Incheon, too.

I sometimes find stuff in the subway, too.

This is inside Jamsil Station and I suppose it's actually regular "art." However, it resembles a useful bench so well that they felt compelled to put a permanent black and yellow sign on it that says, "Do not sit here! This is a work of art." I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity. Perhaps the artist should've made their work less functional...

And now for some graffiti.

I forgot what subway station this was in. It's on the side of a vending machine. This sort of thing is pretty uncommon, a lot less common than I'd expect it to be in a city with the population of Seoul.

This is in Itaewon, AKA "the foreigner-packed district." Most of the graffiti in Itaewon is pretty rudimentary, thin-lined signatures without much variation, as pictured on the left. But this Communist-inspired poster was pretty witty.

This is in Hongdae, which is an area with a well-known art college. While it's somewhat similar to Itaewon in that it's "fashionable" and "kind of seedy," there are less American/European/Middle Eastern people and more Japanese people here (and art students). The shops are pretty tasteful and inexpensive, too. There's also lots of graffiti to choose from.

Hongdae, also.

In Hongdae I also saw this little cat, whose name I assume is LFW, in many different places. One thing neat about Hongdae is that some walls aren't technically covered in graffiti. They're canvases on houses that the artists change regularly. It helps blur the line between graffiti and sanctioned, legal art, which I think is the impetus behind Hongdae's graffiti culture.

I hope you've enjoyed some of the things I enjoyed!

(All these pictures were taken with my phone~, so excuse the quality. Larger sizes on Flickr►http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaiiuueeoo/sets/72157627130551233/).