Street art has a long history as a social form. Artists, activists, and troublemakers since ancient times have used public space as their canvas. Creators as early as the Romans have taken the risk of community retribution to spread their message. The public space offers visibility and a guaranteed audience, as well as subverting traditional notions of studio space and art presentation. From blunt declarations scrawled on the sides of bathroom stalls to ornate aesthetic arrangements running along fences and building walls, street art and graffiti covers a wide range of statements and styles. Since the early 90s, street art has progressively diffused into the collective conscious from it's original position as an underground, rebellious art activity. For my research this semester, I will explore two-dimensional forms of street art as a cultural artifact. My area of focus will be with spray-paint graffiti, stenciling, wheatpasted posters and drawings, stickers, and murals. I want to find out how they have influenced style and trend in popular culture, as well as their effect on the fine arts scene.
 | |
| Source: keusta.net |
Although it has historical roots, modern American graffiti began in the late 1960s in Philadelphia. The original intention was exposure and notoriety, but the form's strength for territory-marking and political activism was quickly realized. Contributing to this was the boldness necessary to create a work of graffiti art - the artist typically had to work under cover of night and quite often trespass. Inherent was an anti-establishment connotation, and artists who practiced tagging naturally arose from subcultures friendly to those inclinations. In addition, the content of the work often reflected a defiant sentiment. This fact was the foundation of graffiti's commercial marketability. Graffiti represented the alternative, and therefore allowed the alternative culture to be condensed, packaged, and attached to a product in the form of a font styling. Soon enough, market researchers began utilizing graffiti as a technique to associate with two sprawling, developing demographics: hip-hop culture, blossoming alongside and intimately connected to graffiti, and the hardcore punk scene, which used graffiti as an opportunity to declare and advertise for their preferred musical acts. These subcultures were dangerous, alluring counterparts to tradition American value systems. They were very attractive and interesting to your average suburban kid, and once the market was able to embrace these cultures and make them commercial, it became safe for the average kid to participate.
Street art, derived from graffiti's specific strength for activism, took a slightly different route. It did not suffer so explicitly DeBord's process of recuperation... it was embraced more readily by the art gallery structure. Artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring brought street art to the focus of high-culture artshow curators. As an avant-garde, street art reflected the hyperexplosive, burn-out-bright 80s art scene. Galleries, especially in New York, ate it up. Recently, street art has been returning to it's activist, protest-oriented roots. Not limited to aerosol spray-paint, street art can manifest as orchestrated visual pieces worked in a studo and cut out from paper. Pasting them guerilla-style on walls and city-surfaces in the dead of night, artists such as the infamous Banksy create social statements with a highly developed, individual aesthetic. However, galleries and traditional art distribution venues are beginning to incorporate street artists as popularity rises, primarily through exposure on the Internet. There are many street art collectives and websites recording the work of artists across the globe, and through them people are beginning to become more aware of street art as a form seperate from graffiti.
My research will explore graffiti as a presence in pop culture and street art as a developing presence in high culture. Utilizing blogs, movies, and books, I will study the dissemination of two-dimensional street art into popular awareness. I want to discover attitudes towards street art... where is it accepted and celebrated? Where is it demonized? What do street artists seek to accomplish from their art? Does the average person appreciate the work or find it distracting or unsightly? How does street art fit into the artistic atmosphere of America? Also, I want to know about the cultural effect of street art. Is it noticed? When it is noticed, does it shock the viewer into a specific awareness or state of mind? Psychogeographically, does it create a mood in a space? Do people learn to block it out? What exactly is the cultural lineage of street art? How will street art move from high culture into low culture? Answering these questions will help discover the place of street art and graffiti in the awareness of American society, and detail it's significance as an art statement and artifact of our culture.
