Art in the Streets

Dissertation, 2010

"In 2008, Cedar Lewisohn curated the first large-scale exhibition of street art at a major museum or gallery. 'Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution' (23 May - 25 Aug 2008) involved the exhibition of works by six international street artists on the exterior facade of the Tate Modern in London. In the exhibition's accompanying publication Lewisohn stated, "Street art and graffiti both have the peculiar ability to exist in the mainstream of culture and at the same time on its periphery." This dissertation attempts to excavate this claim in the context of developments in New York City. It explores, primarily, the inter-relationship between graffiti and street art from their rapid period of evolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and from the mid-1990s onwards. The initial definitions applied to distinguish graffiti and street art have highlighted key differences in methodology and the underlying aims of the artists involved in each practice. The first section examines the practices of early graffiti writer Dondi White alongside his contemporaries John Fekner and Jenny Holzer, contemporary artists who were working in the streets of New York during the early 1980s in addition to producing studio-based work. An analysis of the street-based practices of 'street art pioneers' Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring also considers the crossover of street practice to gallery career, a transiton established in graffiti writing during the early 1980s in which graffiti moved from a peripheral presence to a major subcultural development and gallery fixture. The third and final section comprises a discussion around the current day development of street art and its transition into the mainstream through the practices of Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Swoon. This development has been facilitated by gallery exhibition and increased representation for street artists, the dissemination of ideas through the internet, and the increased media attention given to street artists. In a similar manner to graffiti writers, street artists have ignited controversial debates through their transition from relatively unknown urban artists to overnight gallery sensations, a transition that has been both lamented and applauded. For the purposes of this discussion, it also serves to highlight the ambivalent and dichotomous position that continues to surround the existence of graffiti and street art aesthetics in both a peripheral and mainstream context. For the full text, please email me. I am happy to provide references and the dissertation to interested students and researchers."

City, 2010

While graffiti is revered as an art form to some, it is often seen as an unwanted nuisance by others. While vibrantly rich in history, graffiti has a controversial past, present, and future that will likely continue to be the subject of debate, especially with the insurgence of street art, an art form that often overlaps graffiti art in subject matter, media, aesthetic appearance, and placement as a public form of art. Distinguishing between street art and graffiti art proves quite challenging to the undiscerning eye, yet through a series of interviews and thorough investigation, I questioned the contexts of street art and graffiti art. By introducing non-traditional forms of art that are engaging to adolescent students, street art and graffiti art can expand the secondary art curriculum by helping students become more cognizant of current social, visual and cultural aesthetics in their own visual world.

The Social Science Journal, 2017

Much has changed since the 1960s when the first scholarship on contemporary graffiti appeared. The current paper is an attempt to outline and contextualize a number of recurrent challenges facing researchers of graffiti and street art, as well as developments that have taken place in this scholarly field. The aim of creating this outline is to assist in increasing the amount, and improving the quality, of future scholarship on graffiti and street art. We recognize, however, that although many of the challenges have at one time seemed insurmountable, over time they have lessened as graffiti and street art have grown as art movements, and because a small cadre of tenacious scholars focusing on graffiti and street art has published and taught in this area. An increasing, though limited, number of academic venues focused on graffiti and street art scholarship has slowly emerged. We also recognize that with increased scholarship that has laid the foundation, new avenues to explore graffiti and street art have become apparent.

2015

The Masters Research Project examines how local street art and graffiti might be integrated in a curricular design. The research takes place in Bogota, Colombia. This city has become renowned for its street art and graffiti scene that has even been compared to other street art meccas such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York. The primary goal aimed to create an effective way to include this non-conventional art style into the Visual Art curriculum of a Fifth Grade class at the Colegio Anglo Colombiano. The research searched to develop street art and graffiti techniques such as stencil making, free-hand graffiti or painting, and tagging. The main themes covered are place, street art and graffiti, and curricular design. This Project led students to create a street art technique of their own creation inspired through the study of renowned local street artists CRISP, DAST, and other artists that are evidenced on The Bogota Graffiti Tour. The research takes you on a voyage through B...

Contemporary street art is often discussed in media as a phenomenon undistinguished from graffiti. This oversimplification is rather misleading. Already in the 1980s, in connection to the mainstream success of the graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, concerns were raised about the need for a new category: post-graffiti. Typically, for the terms with such a prefix, there is a consensus that post-graffiti in principle differs from graffiti, but there is no consensus concerning the definition of the new category itself. In following discussion, I propose the concept of social banditry to describe contemporary street art (aka post-graffiti).

2018

What is the role of art in the reinforcement or rejection of current models of public space management in our cities? To answer this question, we must attend to the ties of all artwork with public institutions, and whether or not it questions the dominant order. In this article, I will focus on the works of the Ana Botella Crew, a group of artists from Madrid, as an example of "artivism" that challenges the City Council's management of public spaces in Madrid. My aim is to explore how useful internet tools can be to articulate artistic interventions that challenge the hegemonic uses of public space, in what Sassen has called the global city.

International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, 2020

Street artists seek to communicate with the general public so that their visual images are understood. It is unlike most graffiti art, which is encoded and understood by a select community of other graffiti artists. Street art seeks to make a statement about some issue, e.g., globalization, war, global warming, oppression, etc. Street art begs to be decoded so that a particular visual representation conveys meaning related to society. It is often produced by those educated in art schools and has a theoretical base in art. Long before street art emerged, graffiti art dominated the public sphere. Grafitti artists in New York City were active in putting their pop art images on subway trains. 2 This spread to other spaces like public walls and other street locales. It continues to this day. The street art tradition gained popularity with the work of Keith Haring 3 and Bansky. Their work was stylized with a visual language that was easily recognizable and decipherable.

GSA, 2023

Why should we have a journal dedicated solely to graffiti and street art? This essay defends the rationale for establishing GSA. Since the rise to prominence of street artists such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey, there has been renewed interest in urban creativity. In many major cities around the world, city walls have been transformed into canvasses for artistic expression. However, these works do not fall into the same category. Graffiti and street art belong to a specific kind. I argue that graffiti and street art are forms of art whose primary function is to challenge the dominant order of visibility in urban spaces. They embody the art of social subversion. Often, for various reasons, works of official public art are miscategorized as street art. But rather than being subversive, official public art aims at establishing a new order of visibility. It is the art of social change. My interest in developing an account distinguishing between graffiti and street art, on the one hand, and official public art, on the other hand, is not purely theoretical.; it is also practical. I'd like to develop a distinction that can help us better appreciate different types of urban art while also securing discursive and critical spaces that are unique to each kind. Throwing everything into the same pot risks losing some of the unique characteristics of these various art forms. A more nuanced account, instead, may have a positive effect on cultural and urban policies regulating creative expression in the city.