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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 include ‘independent public art’, ‘post-graffiti’, and ‘neo-graffiti’, and is closely related with guerrilla art. Common forms and media 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.
Background
Street art is a form of artwork that is displayed in a community on its surrounding buildings, streets, trains, and other publicly viewed surfaces. Many instances come in the form of guerrilla art, which is composed to make a public 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 simple beauty, to an audience.
Some artists use ‘smart vandalism’ as a way to raise awareness of social and political issues. Others simply see urban space as an untapped format for personal artwork, while others may 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 which 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’ encompasses many other media, such as LED art, mosaic tiling, stencil art, sticker art, reverse graffiti, ‘Lock On’ sculptures, street installations, wheatpasting, woodblocking, yarn bombing, and rock balancing. New media forms such as projection onto large city buildings are an increasingly popular tool for street artistsand the availability of cheap hardware and software allows street artists to become more competitive with corporate advertisements. Much like open source software, artists are able to create art for the public realm from their personal computers, similarly creating things for free which compete with companies making things for profit.
Some observers use the term ‘independent public art’ to describe a type of street art, which can also include work in remote places that may not be visited by an audience, and may also be short-lived. An ephemeral instance of colored smoke in the forest, or a precarious rock balance are examples. Some work has been installed underwater.
Origins
Slogans of protest and political or social commentary graffitied onto public 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 in the vein of corporate icons become well-known yet enigmatic symbols of an area or an era. 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 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 were 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 places with no tickets. Many of these organisations, 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 are able to let people in to 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 its own set of legal issues. 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 exhibits the legal, moral, and ethical questions that can result. 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
Under US law, works of street art should be able to find copyright protection as long as it can fulfill two 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 to 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 the purposes of 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 destruction of street art, the US 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 in a trivial manner, 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 were 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 wilful thought.
Street art, guerilla art, and graffiti
Graffiti is characteristically made up of written words that are meant to represent a group or community in a covert way and in plain sight. The tell tale sign of street art is that it usually includes images, illustrations, or symbols that are meant to convey a message. While both works are meant to represent or tell a message to viewers, one difference between the two comes in the specific viewers that it is meant for. One trait of street art that has helped to bring it to positive light in the public eye is that the messages shown in these public spaces are usually made to be understandable to all.
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