Mockupesssie

Graffiti is like the bastard son of Art, most art forms have had some sort of succession to its own era (e.g from realism to cubism). There is more to art than what is seen in galleries and churches, the streets is this giant playground for artists, who have something to show more than just advertising. This new word ‘Street art’, has nothing new but its Idea is, this Idea is unofficial. The beauty is not the aim of it, but the outcome is what is rewarding. Since the 70s in New York, Street art has taken a great leap of faith, and the peculiarity of it is that it’s a movement started by the younger generation, which nowadays is an art form fit to have as a piece at home. Pioneers of the Art movement such as Keith Haring or Jean Michel Basquiat, created this freedom of speech through art in public spaces, one of my favorite quotes is “Your House, My Canvas”, it depicts so well this idea of freedom of ‘placement’. Like most art and artist, a culture builds around it not only in styles but in context such as language, music and lifestyle which to an outsider can be difficult to understand. Which is what makes it so controversial through its publicness, it is not meant to be there to please but to be seen as opposed to a painting in a gallery, the environment takes part of the artwork by creating textures. The question Who came first? The egg or the chicken is applicable to street art, The writing on the wall or the art?

Now, what a street artist needs to consider when making something in public, is not so much for the wider audience. Depending on what the art work actually is, it will drastically change the viewing of it, through observation, so called ‘outsiders’ will be more attracted to characters in street art than the alphabetic style hand made by writerz. What plays a major role here is that spray paint (although being the main medium) is not the only medium that can be used, a wide range of tools such as stencils, stickers, posters, markers, chalk but also the support itself, doors, benches, traffic signs, soft or hard surfaces all these mediums that are to be used of and used on is what will make the artwork work. Marshall McLuhan states in his lecture ‘The Medium is The Message’: “ I put people on. Putting people on means teasing them, challenging them, upsetting them, befuddling them.(…) The technique of putting people on in my case, consists simply pointing out the things they’ve ignored, the things that concerns them very nearly, but have been pushed aside as completely insignificant. Advertising is to put people on, but there has to be a sense of comic in good advertising.”, in street art the medium will affect different people, for instance a street writer will pay attention more to the details that surrounds him, thinking “Where can I place my tag or my sticker?.” The following image describes the POV: What someone might see as just a street crossing, the red dots would be where the writer would do his tag or stick his sticker. Picture by ME.

This is where the idea of the audience within the culture would have similar thoughts, certain things are obvious to me but when asked I realise people see the city very differently.
Keeping in mind the idea that the audience in alphabetic graffiti, almost only attracts other graffiti writerz, it becomes this game of who you recognize the most and who is the quickest to place his art somewhere, a sense of community is created through these interests.
All cities and capitals have have thousands of spots, to place artwork using any medium, again these supports are generally public spaces, such as traffic signs, traffic lights, windows, telephone boxes, bars, bus stops, roof tops… The city is an artists paradise, the world and the environment becomes the canvas. An important aspect of sticker art, are traffic signs, they are everywhere and anyone is driven to look a them, they are in all cities and many writerz use them as a way of advertising themselves as much as big companies do with their own advertisement but with the freedom of placement, passerby’s have gotten used to these giant advertisement, and this is where graffiti comes in it adds a bit of colour, in both cases people are accommodated to see these ‘advertisement’ whether they are legal or illegal. “Adverts are as far from the truth as it is possible to get. They represent the utopia that you must pay for as you slope through your trashy end of town without a penny to scratch your arse with. But to go out in the dead of the night when even dogs are asleep and you put up on a wall a picture of the way you, as a free citizen, see this whole set up is to have the courage of your convictions so the general public can witness how you see it, for free. And we all know graffiti can be exquisitely poignant and beautiful, more than any advertiser can co opt or come up with. As long as there are advertising billboards there will be graffiti and there is no contest as to which is the more creative and true. SO forget having a clean-walled town for the foreseeable future.” Clark, Robert. Seven Years with Banksy, Michael O’Mara.

Following pictures are not so much on the esthetique of the art work but the places, where graffiti is made. Picture by ME.

The major problem when it comes to graffiti is the legality of the
placement of an artwork, which often involves problems with law,
so whether the art is vandal, artistic or philosophic, it is a
game of cats and mice with law. Legal spots are made available,
by the mayors of cities, for the cause of mixing these art pieces
with the architecture and its environment, such as Leeke Street in
London which becomes a meeting point, where this goes beyond,
the simple understanding of what the work is and more for the
esthetiques of the work in the urban city.

LONG FORM, SHORT FORM

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