Street Art Overview
- The definition of "Street Art" is an umbrella term that includes the following subcategories:
- "original" Graffiti art
- Stencil Graffiti
- Sticker Art
- Wheatpasting
- Street Poster Art
- Video Projection
- Art Intervention
- Guerilla Art
- Flash Mobbing
- Street Installations
- The term "graffiti" derives from the Italian word graffito, which translates to "scratch". The history of graffiti stems back to the prehistoric era when humans would communicate with others by scratching images onto cave walls. Graffiti didn't become an art form until WWII, when Nazi and Anti-Nazi supporters would use graffiti as political propaganda. Soon after, many were using graffiti as a way of tagging or vandalizing a public area. Gangs thrived at tagging to get out their names. Eventually, graffiti became more a part of popular culture rather than gang culture. Street artists were using the new art form to express themselves in a new and extremely unique way. The reason they had so much freedom was because it had no rules, except for the fact that it is considered as vandalism by law enforcement. As street art progressed, specific street artists began making a name for themselves in media. Since street became a part of popular culture, the majority of the public disapproved of the actions being made by the street artists. However, in present day, the public has warmed up to the different forms of street art.
Above is an example of street art from a group of Lisbon Street Artists.
Above is an example of "tagging" an area by a Crip Gang Member.
My Look on Street Art
Like I said, the public has been leaning towards accepting the works completed by street artists. Personally, after being exposed to a multitude of examples of street art, I accept street art in a different way. I believe if the "art's" main focus is to be violent, or display hate/threat speech, then it should be considered vandalism. An example that comes to mind is the picture above, where a Crip Gang Member "tagged" an area to show dominance and bring fear to the public. An obvious form of vandalism is if street art is completed on private owned areas without authorization of the building's owner(s). After much research, I came to the belief that it should be perfectly legal if street art is completed on public areas. I mean most work I see is absolutely marvelous, literally and figuratively. It's not like people like you and me are going out at night with a spray can hosing areas. The people completing such marvelous art pieces have a true talent. I strongly believe the public eye needs to study the artwork done by these street marvels. Again, most street work expresses a viewpoint, and entertain us doing so. If a public official would hire a street artist to help campaign for them, I truly believe that political official would receive more attention come election time. To me, street art is the cocky, rebellious art completed by very average, yet very genius citizens.
A great example of Street Art that expresses the artist's views on a particular subject