Street Art - New culture of the cities

Street art emerging from the underground

Today street art is well known for many of us, living in cities and passing the evidence of this relatively new art form every day. Even unnoticed. It's part of our life now.

You can find marketing agencies using street artists to cooperate with them and high street brands inviting some of these artists to collaborate for the new collection or they moved into interior design and create amazing workspaces for companies who pay a lot of money for their service.

New York, New York

Street art was formed in the 60's in the cities of America, some stated it came from New York and mostly it was the joy for the younger generation. They painted on the walls and underground stations and first used just tags, slogans, not so detailed works like you can see now. These signatures were called graffiti. Many people taught it was just vandalism and did not have any artistic value. It was just a hobby for renitent youngsters they thought.

Although it was forbidden to paint on community buildings or private houses without permission (still is today) they enjoyed this activity and the youth wanted to express themselves in this new form of art.

Rebellion against authorities

In the beginning, artists often ended up running and hiding from the police and some were arrested as well. They were against authorities and regulations and the adrenalin which came during these illegal activities could fire them up so it was a regular activity for these young artist to hide, paint and run. Especially in the underground where the possibilities of escaping was limited.

Wikipedia about street art:

Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. Other terms for this type of art can be "urban art", "guerrilla art", "independent public art", "post-graffiti", and "neo-graffiti".Common forms and media can include spray paint graffiti, stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art, sticker art, street installations, and sculpture. Video projection and yarn bombing have also gained some popularity near the turn of the 21st century.

Evolution

Later the street art evolved and now implements many other things than just sprayed slogans, names and images like in the beginning.
You can find light paintings as well and the spectrum is always growing with the technology that these pioneers use now to spread their statements.

Thanks to the internet artists can spread their ideas, videos, photos within minutes and art galleries and curators can find them much easier.

There is a line between artists who made it into galleries and who did not. Some choose not to because for them it's representing something against their values. Almost every street artists is against global companies and brands, fighting against consumerism and promoting local interests.

Some of the names I will write later about and worth checking:
Swoon, Banksy, Basquiat, Space Invader, Inkie, Keith Haring

One of the first slogan which is called graffitti showed up during WWII, Kilroy was here - a bald figure which became a meme of that time.

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picture made by @coinkingz, Samsung S4