Ben Eine –Analysis
Ben Flynn Born 1970. London, England,
a.k.a. EINE, shot to international fame when David Cameron presented one of his
works to President Obama as a gift on his first official state visit, but is
arguably more famous for ‘Alphabet Street’ – the shutters and murals he painted
in his trademark colours and typography in Middlesex Street, London– described
by The Times as “a street now internationally recognized as a living piece of
art with direct links to The White House.”
Ben Eine is one of London’s most prolific
and original street artists who specialises in the central element of all
graffiti – the form of letters.
I chose this image from the range of work
that he produces as it stood out, even though all the work that he creates is
powerful this stood out as with this particular piece it isn’t one single
letter or a single word. The way he has created a sentence but has put the words
into a particular combination so they carry on over onto the next line, at
first I did not spot this I thought it was a jumble of letters with words
intertwined but I spotted the sentence that is ‘fair spontaneous passionate
change the world and celebrate’ this is a strong quote with a powerful meaning
behind it. To me this doesn’t make much sense but there are some powerful words
within and must be a meaning that he is putting across to change the views of
people. I have looked into depth at the image and the reason why it was
created; ‘the owner in charge of ‘Wibbly Wobbly Wine’ in South Africa. Bernard asked if I’d be interested in
visiting South Africa and painting his wine towers. South Africa being somewhere that I hadn’t
visited before I said ‘Yah’ (insert your own poor example of a South African
accent).’ So he was adding an example of a piece of slang from Africa to
represent the people and culture.
This is work is on a large scale, it is
created on 5 wine towers and is done free hand by spray paint the way he has
collaborated the words across the 5 towers is clever and has used consistency
on each tower with two letters on each tower, this gives balance across the
piece and creates a simple structure which is easy on the eye but is still
strong and powerful as he has created bold writing. The writing he has applied
into this piece is thick and dark, the white outline gives the appeal of a
shadow behind the lettering making the text stand out further. The bright
colours on the background give a contrast from the black and white which makes
them shoot out at you. The array of bright colours doesn’t just add contrast to
the piece but it gives it more of an appeal as they stand out, if it was just
one colour for example it wouldn’t be as explosive. He has used the colours
cleverly to muddle you up as the colours go down on the towers the shades
change and become darker this takes you in a direction up and down the towers
but really you should be reading across to see the message.
When comparing to the first artist I looked
at Barbara Kruger there is a big difference but they both create work on a
large scale with powerful lettering and words. Barbara only uses black red and
white whereas ben eine using a lot of colour in his work but they both use contrast
to make the lettering stand out. I will experiment using more colours in my
work and different materials to explore different ways of portraying the words.
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