STREEET ART
Street Art is a visual art form, created in public locations for public visibility and viewing. Generally, the works are displayed on public buildings, on streets, or any publicly viewed surfaces.
At the very beginning of the practice, Street Art is rebellious by nature, and illegal in practice. The artists utilised public spaces to showcase a variety of concerns, themes, and raising awareness to social & political issues.
The origin and purpose of Street Art, was to provoke thought. The artists were making personal statements about the society in which they live. While others made running commentaries on their specialised interest.
POPULARITY & ACCEPTANCE
Some artists enjoyed the risks and fearless challenges, creating illegal art works in public places. At that time, the driving motivation for art works in a free public space; it allowed artists to reach a much wider audience.
Once considered to be only involved with illegal activities, Street Art can now be created by agreement, or as a commission. Street Art popularity and social acceptance around the world, is fairly recent.
Yet, defacing private & public property, whether considered art or not, is an illegal activity. Many complicated legal problems and major challenges have arisen, some relating to the controversy of ownership and public property.
STREET ART & HIGH ART
Since the 1980s, a small growing number of artists, have generated international attention, and moved into the mainstream of the commercial art world.
The high profile of Banksy, has led Street Art to become one of the ‘Sights To See’ in many European cities. There are local street art tours, where artists share their knowledge, explaining the thoughts and ideas behind many works, and the reasons for tagging.
Berlin, London, Paris, Hamburg, and other cities around the world, have popular ‘Street Art Tours’ for tourists, all year round. Organisations like ‘Alternative London Street Art Guides’ – ‘Paris Underground Street Art’ & ‘Alternative Berlin, pride themselves working with the public and local artists.
Street Art has also gained recognition among major companies. A number of companies were in court, for using street art for Advertising, without the permission of the artists. H&M a fashion retailer, used street art by Jason ‘Revok’ Williams. In most of the court cases, out of court settlements were reached, to avoid costly time consuming litigation.
Many people are now supporting the claim, that Street Art provides cities and neighbourhoods with more colourful sceneries, brighter and beautiful communities.
They say, without street art, these places would be empty, a nothingness, but ugly dilapidated wall spaces.
“I’ve learnt from experience that painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments we have about it.” Banksy.