FROM GRAFFITI TO STREET ARTBy Dom Knowles

Bibliography • McCormick, Carlo. Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art. TASCHEN Gmbh. 2015

• http://www.widewalls.ch/defining-street-art/defining-street-art-repetition-and-evolution/

• http://globalstreetart.com

• https://www.fladgate.com/2013/05/street-art-the-legal-issues/

• http://www.penningtons.co.uk/news-publications/latest-news/graffiti-clean-up-cost-or-windfall /

• Bomb It Documentary - 2008

The Brief History Of Street ArtBetween the 1920s & 1930s gangsters and rival groups used to tag a wall within an area with their name or group name, this caused turf wars and other kinds of violence between rival gangs.

Moving forward in time to the mid 1960s a famous jazz musician named Charlie Parker (also known as ‘yardbird’) died, in honour of his music and career as a whole people would tag “Bird Lives” on walls and other kind of property.

In the late 1970s and early 80s people began using private property and public transport to tag their nickname and street address on, popular graffiti artists Taki 183 and Tracy 168 were well-known for starting this trend within New York.

Historical & Contemporary Developments In Street Art

Street art is art created in public locations such as; shop shutters, walls, signs, billboards and more. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom in the early 1980s, even today it continues to be used on a large scale inside of city centers and towns.

Street art became popular in the 1970s & 80s but gained a huge following in the 21st century, many people believe the explosion of technology and the internet lead this form of art into success, what was once considered vandalism and illegal is now more commonly accepted and portrays a different message to old forms of street art. Artists can use street art to speak to other kinds of people that may not find art particularly interesting or appealing to them.

Some of the earliest forms of street art were graffiti that was sprayed on the sides of trains and on walls, this was originally just used to tag words and gang names around cities in the early 70s and 1980s. Like other art movements street art evolved and changed into what it is today.

Definition Of Street ArtStreet art is not easy to define and even if you manage to find your interpretation it doesn't conclude there, others may have different opinions and feelings towards a piece of street art that are the complete opposite to yours.

Street art can completely vary in styles and meaning, just like other art forms it is used to express feelings/emotions or send an important message, street artists use inspiration from many sources including the web, digital media, famous old art pieces and world problems. As street art became more popular in the 1980s and early 90s it transformed into a more widely accepted form of art and a way to communicate different things through images.

Street Art By Space Invader

Street art, like any other form of art, has many other terms or variations of itself. The terms "urban art", "guerrilla art", "post-graffiti" and "neo-graffiti" are common and represent a more art inspired form of street art rather than pure vandalism.

Art/Design MovementsStreet art has had an impact on modern art movements as a whole, it has inspired new styles and artists to appear online or in galleries, due to its young age street art has a very modern feel that appeals to younger people and others that understand problems relevant to our society today.

Although street art can seem very similar each artist has a unique style and meaning behind their work, this is also more notable amongst different countries street art. Street artists in different countries aim to target problems relevant to that area and feelings and emotions people may have towards the idea.

Street Art By Banksy

The cultural context of street art is what matters the most, how it works to speak out against war, police brutality, politics, freedom of speech etc. I believe street art deserves the recognition it gets for portraying messages clearly and in a powerful way that many people can understand and relate to.

Methods Used To Create Street Art

Many street artists use stencils and templates for their art, the use of stencils makes it much easier to spray onto any surface and allows the artists to recreate the image many times using the same stencil. This method also gives the art a certain style because of all the parts having to be connected together, famous street artist Banksy uses this method and makes it work well with his unique images.

Stencil/Template

Tiles

Street artists can use tiles to make their art, popular street artist Invader is well-known for using tiles in his work. It gives the street art an 8-bit old video game feeling which is exactly what Invader uses to base his ideas off of, it is also relatively easy to do this well and in a way that works.

Methods Used To Create Street Art (continued)

Posters

Posters are another popular method of creating street art, they can be printed large or small to be placed around a town/city. Printing on posters means that the artist that designs the street art can put more work on perfecting the piece and later printing it.Shepard Fairey is a popular contemporary street artist that uses this method of street art to create his work, one of his famous pieces named ‘Obey’ has become it’s own clothing brand recently.

Similar to posters, stickers are used as a method of street art, they can be placed anywhere such as windows, signs, public- transport and more. Unlike other forms of street art this requires the additional pro- cess that you need to make the sticker which can take some time.

Other Relevant Methods

Jenny Holzer LED Lights

Knitted Graffiti Movement

Jan Vormann Lego

Classic Free Hand Graffiti

Sculptures/installations

Destruction Or Creation?Graffiti started out as vandalism, it was originally known as tagging, it involved people tagging their name on walls, billboards, windows and the subway. During this time graffiti writers such as Taki 183 and Tracy 168 became popular for their tags on the trains that moved around New York City.

As graffiti evolved and became bigger and bigger, people began to experiment with other methods of showing their art. In the mid to late 80s graffiti artists would paint art pieces that gave a strong message to governments and authorities, they needed a creative way to portray what they wanted to say and it worked.

When authorities began to punish people that were caught tagging subways, other graffiti artists moved back onto tagging and spray-painting walls. They now had a lot more time to design and create their graffiti which allowed them to try new images and focus on detail, this led graffiti to become more complex and interesting from the original tags.

Destruction Or Creation? (continued)

Street art has become it’s own kind of artistic expression, even with it being relatively modern it has gone through many changes and forms and is still transforming today. I believe street art is one of the few forms of art that will stay relevant throughout the future, it moves with the times and focuses on relevant styles and topics unlike other forms of art.

Nowadays street art, if done legally, is widely accepted and people enjoy looking at it whether it’s on a shop shutter or in a gallery. Older street artists such as Shepard Fairey and Taki 183 aren’t as comfortable with street art moving into galleries and art exhibits, they feel that street art belongs on the streets to keep it raw and unique like it still is and that to put price tags on street art in galleries makes the art form more commercial and less enjoyable/understandable by the majority of the public.

Social Impact

Although some street art is well-made, legal and fits well within an area, a large majority is just generic tagging of names, areas or racist slurs. Council’s within an area will try to combat this form of illegal street art by removing it with pressure washers or painting over it, this costs tax payers money. In 2015 Penningtons website reviewed the price of cleaning up graffiti in the UK and valued the cost to be over £1 billion, London Underground alone estimated that the cost of removing glass marked with graffiti costs up to £10 million a year and up to £2.5 million to clean up other types of graffiti. Does the end justify the means when people use graffiti to get their point across, does vandalism and the damage it causes make it worth it?

The broken window theory is the idea that if graffiti within an area is not cleaned then it leads to others neglecting that area and it building up a bad reputation, if they choose to remove illegal graffiti and monitoring an area it helps to prevent against small crimes such as vandalism and public drinking helps to create and atmosphere of order and lawfulness. The idea was first introduced in a 1982 article by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling.

Links To Pop ArtPop art was an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Many artists contributed to pop art in it’s earlier years; Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton in Britain, and Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns among others in the United States.

Pop art includes aspects of mass culture with things such as, advertising, comic books and average every-day objects such as soup cans, microwaves and other technology. This links it well with street art because of how it relates to life and other things you see regularly. Although pop art is still popular today the hype around it died out only shortly before street art boomed and became really popular which leads people to believe that modern street art is the direct product of pop art.

Andy Warhol and fellow pop-artist Roy Lichtenstein seem to celebrate modern society and a modern way of life whereas famous street artist Banksy seems to despise it and often mocks things such as governments and modern technology within his work.

Difference: Graffiti Or Street Art• Graffiti & street art are often confused of being the same thing, both of them are

art movements where work is displayed in public on streets rather than a gallery setting (although some exceptions apply for artists such as Shepard Fairey, Banksy etc).

• Graffiti artists work in public spaces, however, they don’t generally care about what authorities see there work as, vandalism or art, they try to target other graffiti writers and people interested in the topic within that area instead.

• Street artists want others to see their work and be engaged by it, they are trying to make a statement and make people think about a deeper meaning. Graffiti writing and Street art are closely related art movements but both differ in terms of technique and function.

• Graffiti derives from the italian word sgraffiti (scratch), meaning drawings or scribblings on a flat surface. “Tagging” is a modern form of scratching your name on a wall, it is usually done with spray paint or markers.

Laws On Street Art• Trespass: Unless the surface is public property the artist will have to trespass to reach

the area, this is a civil wrong and the the owner could claim for damages or get and injunction if the artist can be identified.

• Crime: An old debate is that if street art is classed as criminal damage to property or not. In order to prove if something is criminal damage you must first show obvious evidence of whether or not someone destroyed or damaged property which belongs to someone else.

• Attribution: This concerns buying and selling street art, a buyer needs to find out if the street art they’re buying was in fact made by the person selling it, for most street artists there is catalogue giving a full list of works done with respectable credits which allows them to sell their work easily.

Legal Street ArtBuff Diss is a relatively well known street artist that works with masking tape to create non permanent art pieces, he works legally and in public places so that others can see his work.

The art is usually like outline art because of how masking tape works and the challenge that comes with trying to create curved or obscure lines.

Street Artists sometimes use chalk for their work, chalk is non-permanent and cleans away easily. Most artists that use chalk move into public spaces to do their pieces of work.

A popular style of this art is illusions and 3D art that looks photo realistic. Similarly to masking tape art this is done legally with permission to draw on public spaces.

Legal Street Art/Commissioned Work

If any form of street art or graffiti is commissioned (paid for) by someone who owns the property it is legal as long as it isn’t offensive in any way. Commissioned street art is actually very common, An area filled with legal, and illegal, street art is The Northern Quarter in Manchester, England. Artists from many different countries and areas come to the northern quarter to leave their mark and their art in an area known for it’s wide variety of street art.

The area is filled with commissioned work and other professional street art for people to look at and interpret in their own way, as well as this there is also some illegal street art including littering with stickers and advertising, however this tends to be non permanent and eventually washes away or falls off.

Legal street art is easy to notice because of the time and effort that has gone into it, street artists have the time to think about and plan their artwork before they begin working on the final thing. Once it is completed and the artist has proven that their work is theirs and original then it can be copyrighted and protected just like art in a gallery or online.

Bomb It - Reference• Bomb it is a graffiti documentary all about the history of graffiti from ancient cave paintings

to a contemporary boom in the 1970s, it follows many well-known graffiti artists and original taggers showing them in action and their history within the graffiti movement.

• Because of the way it presents each graffiti artist it makes you think about their reasoning for their work and why they choose to do it on walls and other buildings rather than anywhere else, the question why is often what most people ask about street art and other graffiti.

• Shepard Fairey is just one of the popular street artists that was involved within the bomb it documentary, Fairey’s most notable work is his Obey posters and Obama Hope poster that was used within his presidential election. Fairey works from commissions and tends to have 1 style for every piece he does, his newer work is also done legally and is protected so that it cannot be repeated elsewhere making it unique and special. Other artists have copied his style online but including their own thought and design into the image, changing colours, text and using different images to make something their own.

Primary Research: Northern Quarter Photos

Primary Research: Edited Images

Shepard Fairey

Shepard FaireyShepard Fairey is an American street artist, graphic designer, illustrator, activist and founder of the clothing line OBEY that came from the skateboarding scene. Fairey’s work began in 1984 when he began drawing his artwork on skateboards and T-shirts, in 1988 he graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. In 1992 he also earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design.

In 2008, Fairey designed the ‘hope’ poster in a series of posters supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama, this quickly gained popularity by the public and was adopted to be used by Obama within his presidential election.

Fairey had already been making posters and street art for some years and with his new found public popularity his work began to get noticed on streets and more requested commissions were designed by him, he followed the legal side of street art by painting on walls that were owned and commissioned for him to design on.

ConclusionAs a conclusion to my street art essay I will give my opinion on what I think about street art and whether or not it is a valid art form.I like street art styles/ideas and for that reason I will always support it being a legit art form that should be shown the attention that it deserves, I also feel as street art is a very influential art style that is an affective way of delivering a message or voicing thoughts & feelings. I enjoy art that is larger than life and can be done on walls, murals or as an installation such as sculptures.

Just like other art movements, street art is a modern example of how art goes through many changes to stay relevant and interesting. First recorded street art appeared around 30 years ago with rival gangs tagging walls and windows around New York, it has quickly evolved like a snowball effect to become a more meaningful and impactful like other art forms that came before it, it has traveled the entire globe and become a career choice for many people around that do it regularly.

Street art is international, it is an art form that is portrayed and incorporated in many different countries and nationalities, although they are different in style and what message they are trying to communicate most street art is larger than life and communicates to the many or the few.

Street art relies entirely on how the general public feel towards the certain subject or image, if the street art is exploring the idea of politics or the government the general public tend to view it as humorous and relatable because it’s something that affects them all, whereas, if street art was to go down the path of bringing global issues to light such as refugees or discrimination then it becomes more taboo and people feel as though the issue is relevant to them.

Final Outcome ResearchFor my final outcome on street art I wanted to create a 2 point perspective sticker that would give the illusion of writing in 3D, I worked on a couple sketches by designing the word ‘Manchester’ in 2 point perspective and 1 point perspective.

I later moved onto the computer to get a more refined idea of what the finished design would look like and how I could edit and change certain things within it.

Final OutcomeThis is a first draft of my final outcome, based off of my initial sketches. These screenshots show the steps involved with making the design, I started out by dragging the text into 2 point perspective. I then began filling in the area behind the word to give the illusion of 3D and added some colour shading.

Adding colour will make the writing stand out more and will make it a lot more eye catching so that people notice it. The current colour’s are too light and don’t contrast or stand out that well from certain backgrounds.

Final Outcome Designs