Street art
Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.
Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graffiti into a more commercial form of art, as one of the main differences now lies with the messaging. Street art is often meant to provoke thought rather than rejection among the general audience through making its purpose more evident than that of graffiti. The issue of permission has also come at the heart of street art, as graffiti is usually done illegally, whereas street art can nowadays be the product of an agreement or even sometimes a commission. However, it remains different from traditional art exposed in public spaces by its explicit use of said space in the conception phase.
Background
Street art is a form of artwork that is displayed in public on surrounding buildings, on streets, trains and other publicly viewed surfaces. Many instances come in the form of guerrilla art, which is intended to make a personal statement about the society that the artist lives within. The work has moved from the beginnings of graffiti and vandalism to new modes where artists work to bring messages, or just beauty, to an audience.Some artists may use "smart vandalism" as a way to raise awareness of social and political issues, whereas other artists use urban space as an opportunity to display personal artwork. Artists may also appreciate the challenges and risks that are associated with installing illicit artwork in public places. A common motive is that creating art in a format that utilizes public space allows artists who may otherwise feel disenfranchised to reach a much broader audience than other styles or galleries would allow.
Whereas traditional graffiti artists have primarily used spray paint to produce their work, "street art" can encompass other media, such as LED art, mosaic tiling, stencil graffiti, sticker art, reverse graffiti, "Lock On" sculptures, wheatpasting, woodblocking, yarn bombing and rock balancing.
New media forms such as video projections onto large city buildings are an increasingly popular tool for street artists—and the availability of cheap computer hardware and software allows such artwork to become competitive with corporate advertisements. Artists are thus able to create art from their personal computers for free, which competes with companies' profits.
Origins
Slogans of protest and political or social commentary graffiti on walls are the precursor to modern graffiti and street art, and continue as one aspect of the genre. Street art in the form of text or simple iconic graphics of corporate icons can become well-known yet enigmatic symbols of an area or an era. Some credit the "Kilroy Was Here" graffiti of the World War II era as one such early example: a simple line-drawing of a long-nosed man peering from behind a ledge. Author Charles Panati indirectly touched upon the general appeal of street art in his description of the "Kilroy" graffiti as "outrageous not for what it said, but where it turned up". Much of what is now considered modern street art has well-documented origins in New York City's graffiti boom. It began in the 1960s, matured in the 1970s, and peaked in the 1980s with the spray-painted full-car subway train murals, especially in the Bronx.As the 1980s progressed, a shift occurred from text-based works of early in the decade to visually conceptual street art such as Hambleton's shadow figures. This period coincides with Keith Haring's subway advertisement subversions and Jean-Michel Basquiat's SAMO tags. What is now recognized as "street art" had yet to become a realistic career consideration, and offshoots such as stencil graffiti were in their infancy. Wheatpasted street poster art used to promote bands and the clubs where they performed evolved into actual artwork or copy-art and became a common sight during the 1980s in cities worldwide. The group working collectively as AVANT was also active in New York during this period. Punk rock music's subversive ideologies were also instrumental to street art's evolution as an art form during the 1980s. Some of the anti-museum mentality can be attributed to the ideology of Marinetti who in 1909 wrote the "Manifesto of Futurism" with a quote that reads, "we will destroy all the museums." Many street artists claim we do not live in a museum so art should be in public with no tickets.
Early iconic works
The northwest wall of the intersection at Houston Street and the Bowery in New York City has been a target of artists since the 1970s. The site, now sometimes referred to as the Bowery Mural, originated as a derelict wall that graffiti artists used freely. Keith Haring once commandeered the wall for his use in 1982. After Haring, a stream of well-known street artists followed, until the wall had gradually taken on prestigious status. By 2008, the wall became privately managed and made available to artists by commission or invitation only.A series of murals by René Moncada began appearing on the streets of SoHo in the late 1970s emblazoned with the words I AM THE BEST ARTIST. René has described the murals as a thumb in the nose to the art community he felt he had helped pioneer but by which he later felt ignored by. Recognized as an early act of "art provocation", they were a topic of conversation and debate at the time; related legal conflicts raised discussion about intellectual property, artist's rights and the First Amendment. The ubiquitous murals also became a popular backdrop to photographs taken by tourists and art students, as well as for advertising layouts and Hollywood films.
IATBA murals were often defaced, only to be repainted by René.
Franco the Great, also known as the "Picasso of Harlem" is another world famous street artist internationally known also for his New Art form. There were riots in the streets when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Harlem business owners retaliated by installing drab-looking metal gates on their store fronts. Franco decided to turn a negative into a positive by developing a new art form on the steel gates in 1978. He has painted over 200 gates from the west to the east side of 125th street on Sundays since then, when stores are closed. 125th Street in Harlem is unofficially known as "Franco's Blvd" because of his magnificent paintings on the metal business gates.
Commercial crossover
Some street artists have earned international attention for their work and have made a full transition from street art into the mainstream art world—some while continuing to produce art on the streets. Keith Haring was among the earliest wave of street artists in the 1980s to do so. Traditional graffiti and street art motifs have also increasingly been incorporated into mainstream advertising, with many instances of artists contracted to work as graphic designers for corporations. Graffiti artist Haze has provided font and graphic designs for music acts such as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. Shepard Fairey's street posters of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama were reworked by a special commission for use in the presidential campaign. A version of the artwork also appeared on the cover of Time magazine. It is also not uncommon for street artists to start their own merchandising lines.Street art has received artistic recognition with the high-profile status of Banksy and other artists. This has led street art to become one of the 'sights to see' in many European cities. Some artists now provide tours of local street art and can share their knowledge, explaining the ideas behind many works, the reasons for tagging, and the messages portrayed in a lot of graffiti work.
Berlin, London, Paris, Hamburg and other cities all have popular street art tours running all year round. In London alone there are supposedly ten different graffiti tours available for tourists. Many of these organizations, such as Alternative London, ParisStreetArt, AlternativeBerlin, pride themselves on working with local artists, so visitors can get an authentic experience and not just a rehearsed script.
Many of these guides are painters, fine-art graduates and other creative professionals that have found the medium of street art as a way to exhibit their work. With this commercial angle, they can let people into the world of street art and give them more of an understanding of where it comes from. It has been argued that this growing popularity of street art has made it a factor in gentrification.
Legality and ethics
Street art can have legal problems. The parties involved can include the artist, the city or municipal government, the intended recipient and the owner of the structure or the medium where the work was displayed. One example is a case in 2014 in Bristol, England, which illustrates the legal, moral and ethical questions that can occur. The Mobile Lovers by Banksy was painted on plywood on a public doorway, then cut out by a citizen who in turn was going to sell the piece to garner funds for a boys' club. The city government in turn confiscated the artwork and placed it in a museum. Banksy, hearing of the conundrum, then bequeathed it to the original citizen, thinking his intentions were genuine. In this case, as in others, the controversy of ownership and public property, as well as the issues of trespassing and vandalism, are issues to be resolved legally.Copyright
In 2005, Banksy's Wall and Piece included in the publisher notes that "Copyright is for losers ©™".Under United States law, works of street art should be able to find copyright protection as long as they are legally installed and can fulfill two additional conditions: originality in the work, and that it is fixed in a tangible medium. This copyright would then survive for the lifespan of the artist plus 70 years. In case there is a collaboration between two artists, both would hold joint ownership in the copyright. Street artists also hold moral rights in their work, independent of economic rights arising from copyright. These include the right to integrity and the right to attribution. Recently, street art has started to gain recognition among art critics, and some major companies have found themselves in trouble for using this art without permission for advertising. In such a case, H&M, a fast fashion retailer used street art by Jason "Revok" Williams in an advertisement series. In response to Williams' 'Cease and Desist' notice, however, H&M filed a lawsuit, alleging that since the work is a "product of criminal conduct", it cannot be protected by copyright. This view has been taken earlier too, in the cases of Villa v. Pearson Education and Moschino and Jeremy Tierney. In all three cases, before the judge could make a ruling on the issue of the illegality of the art, settlements were reached. These companies typically settle out of court to avoid costly, time-consuming litigation.
When it comes to the question of the destruction of street art, the United States has applied the Visual Artists Right Act to introduce moral rights into copyright law. In English v. BFC & R East 11th Street LLC and Pollara v. Seymour, it was held that this Act was inapplicable to works of art placed illicitly. A distinction was also made between the removable and non-removable works, indicating that if a work can be removed trivially, it cannot be destroyed, irrespective of its legal status. Another important factor considered by the court in the latter case was whether the artwork was "of a recognized stature".
In a case where a group of artists was awarded $6.7 million, the judge held that the art was not made without permission of the owner of the building, and that an important factor was that the demolition was done ahead of the intended date, indicating willful thought.