Underground Art

by Maria Itziar

In the early 20th century, the managing director of London Underground decided to start hiring talented artists such as Harry Beck in an attempt to create new poster campaigns.

A century later, Beck’s designs of the map and logo as we know them have inspired Transport for London which now has its own team of curators.

The word art has been used on a bigger scale, with not only posters and designs but subsequent exhibitions, poetry and music inside London’s underground stations.

TFL states that: “We work with artists that reflect the diversity and international importance of London, from those emerging at the start of promising careers to established and internationally significant artists with a reputation for producing ground-breaking and influential works of art.”

Local art

That being said, in order to reflect the true diversity of London, each station’s art is aimed at the local clientele, whereas in Southwark station, due to the numerous galleries based around the area you may find images that promote artwork related to the creative sector.

However, Oval station’s green walls with people playing cricket is a perfect example of how art can be combined with sport in order to showcase the very famous cricket ground located nearby.

One of the most significant art displays on TFL can be found on the tube map cover, which is changed every year, having Richard Long’s representation of Earth with the different colours of the tube lines symbolising an 'I Ching' hexagram.

Tamsin Dillon, Head of Art on the Underground said: “I am very impressed by Richard Long's approach to this Tube map cover commission, his combination of the Tube line colours with the I Ching will be compelling food for thought for our customers.”

Poetry

Another type of showcase in the underground is poetry.

The project was launched in 1986 with help from a writer called Judith Chernaik whose goal was to bring poetry to the wide underground audience.

In 2000 for example, more than 3.5 million journeys were made each day so it was no surprise that when a book titled Poems on the Underground came out in 1999, more than a quarter million copies were sold.

The use of poetry has attracted major sponsors such as London Underground and The British Council among others, which allows for the poesy to be changed three times in each calendar year.

Music on the underground or busking, as it is also known was established in 2003, seeing as previously it was considered an illegal practice.

The London transport decided to find talented performers where the price for the opportunity to play is a mere application for a licence.

Some of the ‘buskers’ have gained critical acclaim after having performed in front of the Queen of England and other European royalty.

Also, some of the musicians from the underground have collaborated with famous artists such as Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, gaining fame in the process.

Their success has been so widely followed that Busk8, a concert that took place at the same time as Live8, was greatly successful in raising awareness and donations for the Make Poverty History campaign.

It took place on the 1st of July 2005, at Canary Wharf station.

Busking has become so popular that over the course of the last few years, famous artists, such as Moby have disguised themselves as ‘buskers for a day’, playing their own original songs as a means of self-promotion.

It is obvious Art in the Underground can consider itself a huge success as it has been running for so long and has never faded out.

The primal use of the tube stations is evidently for travel however, TFL through their Art in the Underground campaign have managed to find multiple uses for each individual station giving the traveller bite-size snippets of culture for every stop of their journey.