Street art
Street art is unsanctioned artwork made in public space. It grew from the graffiti writing that spread across Philadelphia and New York in the 1970s, when teenagers tagged and painted whole subway cars, and from the stencil figures Blek le Rat began spraying on Paris walls in the early 1980s. Its vocabulary soon widened to wheatpaste posters, tile pieces, sticker art and large freehand murals. What began as turf-marking became a global visual culture, driven by anonymity, speed and the desire to speak directly to passers-by rather than gallery audiences. Banksy's satirical stencils made its names famous worldwide, and by the 2000s cities and galleries had begun commissioning and collecting what they once scrubbed away. Much street art still disappears within days.
Defining characteristics
- Made without permission in public space, executed quickly and often anonymously
- Bold graphic clarity readable at a glance: strong outlines, flat colour, high contrast
- Mix of techniques: freehand spray murals, stencils, wheatpaste posters, tiles and stickers
- Site-specific images that play with walls, shutters, street furniture and architecture
- Serial motifs and characters repeated city to city as a personal tag or signature
- Ephemeral surfaces: layered paint-over-paint, peeling posters, works buffed or painted over by the city
Key figures
- Blek le Rat (b. 1952) — French pioneer of stencil graffiti, spraying rats and figures on Paris walls from the early 1980s
- Keith Haring (1958-1990) — American artist whose radiant outline figures moved from subway drawings to the street
- Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) — Co-author of the SAMO tags that brought poetic street writing to attention in late-1970s New York
- Banksy (active since the 1990s) — Anonymous British satirist whose stencilled interventions made street art globally famous
Example works
- Girl with Balloon — Banksy (2002)
- Crack Is Wack — Keith Haring (1986)
Sources
- Street art - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Banksy - Wikipedia encyclopedia