Street Art  

Study Case 2, FPD09, Pt2
In tis pictures you can note:
how nobody loose the opportunity to promote at least a little bit with the web page or whatever, and all is sponsored by the paint brand 😉
I wonder Why I paid more atention to these issues than to the art itself......?

Study Case 3, Six feet
Study Case 3
Six feet store.
(See link below)
I live 50 meters away from this store, so I saw since they open how it was. About a year ago, just about when this thread was open.
It's a store/art gallery. You can buy whatever you want, since a REAL ...:)... piece of street art, by the real artist of the month. Every month they change the collection and the artist with an event with a vernissage, wine or beer to choose in the middle.
Don't worry if you couldn't go to the event. You can purchase in the week, as well as clothes, books, toys and what ever you can imagine in the store to be a real transgressive. But chic-transgressive, since you could afford their prices, since they are at least 50% more expensive than the average price tag of the other neighbour stores of the already expensive neighborhood.
http://www.sixfeet.com.ar/sitio_en/

Study Case 4 Ads Street Art
Study Case 4
Top brands, Ads street arting
In the week I have to take the camera, at lest 4-5 places, with AD-graffiti for at least two brand-products.
One is for cookies, the other an energy drink (perhaps?) related with the energy graffiti idea)
Promise pics for the week.
Please somebody tell me that's this issue is just here...

Gustavo...
I first saw this kind of street art in 1984 in Los Angeles. It could well have been long in existence at that time and may have been in use in eastern USA cities that I did not then travel to very much. In any case, it was elaborately evolved even then. It was called graffitti, or gang graffitti. It was generally used by street gangs to communicate to other street gangs in code about territorial disputes. It started out on retaining walls and building corners in neighborhoods, and slowly migrated onto freeway bridge abutments and was for a time ubiquitious on the walls of industrial buildings and right of way walls along train tracks and switch yards. Some speculated it spread to the transporation corridors, as the importation of illegal drugs moved into high volumes that had to be moved on railroads, on trailer trucks on the freeways, and on container vessels in the ports. I could never decipher the code of the grafitti, but it was widely assumed to be business communication among drug pedalling gangs related to market areas.
The best known (and most feared) gangs in those days tended to be composed of either African Americans, or Latinos (mostly from Mexico I suppose).
The amount of this street art appeared to increase sharply in LA, shortly after the Federal government applied pressure to Colombian narcotrafficers in Miami and they switched a significant part of their drug operations to Los Angeles and began using LA street gangs as their retailers on the street. The CIA was also reputedly involved in dumping first cocaine and then crack cocaine in south central Los Angeles, also, but little of that story ever was fleshed out and confirmed in media, reputedly, because journalists that brought it to light were said to have short careers.

continued
Anyway, several years into the gang embrace of this street art form, the city, after futilely fighting grafitti, began to embrace it and grant grafitti artists certain areas of the city to paint "murals." It was quite some time after this legitimzing of grafitti art, and the popularizing of persons like Keith Haring, that this street art seemed to lose its hold on the imaginations of the anti-social types in Los Angeles, or perhaps it was the narcotrafficers transhipment point moved from LA to Arizona, or south Texas. I never heard. There is still grafitti art in LA and there are still gangs, but my visits in recent years suggest a sharp drop in its practice. Now there are just lots of really mediocre murals. 🙂
I was never able to tell where the street art in Los Angeles originated from. Los Angeles attracts persons from all over the USA and from much of Central American and Northern South America. I suspect some one has studied the grafitti there and could give an answere with some evidence.
Anecdotally speaking, some of it looked cartoon-derived. Some of it looked derived from Latin American muralists--both high brow and low brow. It mixed symbols and words. It was extravagantly expressive as the examples you give above. In fact, what you have pictured above looks pretty much indistinguishable from what was painted in Los Angeles almost 25 years ago. The difference is: the stuff I used to see painted 25 years ago seemed more ominous somehow. Perhaps it was only more ominous in my mind's eye, because it was reputedly gang driven marking of territory. Who knows? Maybe much of the street art 25 years ago was just kids in poor neighborhoods amusing themselves. Whatever, there is a strinking similarity between what you pictured above, and what I used to see ubiquitously in Los Angeles.

We're just
We're just (thankfully) wrapping up a retrospective of Shepard Fairey at the Institue of Contemporary Art in Boston. Fairey is best known for the Obama 'Hope' poster, as well as for the 'Andre the Giant OBEY' images.
I wasn't impressed. The Andre campaign was interesting in it's randomness and it's viral execution, but most of the rest of Fairey's work is sort of overly pretty and overwrought. Not that sweetness is problematic, but it seems counterintuitive to the act of street art - which is inherently one of transgression and violation.
His subject matter is usually dark: oppressive big-brother eyes, barren landscapes, torsos strapped in bandoliers. The prettiness is SO pretty that you forget his message - which itself is a little straightforward and obvious. I'm never surprised by his imagery or his message.
I sort of think of Fairey as a poor man's Banksy. Banksy being more wry and surprising. In one ironic note Fairey's LA home is coated with a material that makes removing graffiti easier. 😉

Fairey
Is weaksauce. But I appreciate his Obama work.
Neither him nor Banksy are really street artists anymore... They have been "elevated" to the realm of contemporary art, whether they wanted to be or not.
I am thoroughly enjoying Banksy's shows and art installations. From his LA show, to the pet shop in Manhattan, and his most recent Banksy vs. Bristol Museum. All great stuff.

These are some fascinating contemporary images...
I look forward to digesting them and seeing if they have any lasting taste. 🙂
And it all triggers a wave of Robbie Conal nostalgia. Oh, how we used to look forward to the next wave of his posters showing up on lamp posts and telephone poles in the good old days. 🙂

Movie recommendation!
See 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' if you haven't yet.
It's been out since April, I finally saw it this weekend-- excellent. Just released on DVD, I think. Synopsis below.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587707/plotsummary

Yes
An excellent film... Rather hilarious as well.

P.S.
Recent Banksy install.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/banksy-bp-oil-spill-kiddie-ride-...

Another.
"Dirty Hands: The Life and Crimes of David Choe" isn't out on DVD yet, but it's playing around the country... It'll be showing in NYC next weekend, 19 September.
More info and trailer here:
http://www.dirtyhandsmovie.com/

Katutaiteiden yö etc.
This is subject where I'm not always proud of my country.
Unless scratching windows, kicking trash cans and public urinating is art.
Although one young lady was flashing her boobs in Matti Nykänen's trial.
http://www.graffiti.org/

Circus of skateboarders in concrete jungle rarely...
...offers any surprises.
But we have designing contests like this:
http://www.missplastic.fi/

Jyri-- you're a kook!
But, a likable kook.