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"Street art won't end world poverty, but it can make you think and smile."
Street drawings have long crossed the line when they were considered only vandalism and did not carry anything reasonable, kind, eternal. No, of course, there are meaningless and most often untalented "tags" and will not go anywhere. But modern street art is already much deeper and wider than just tags, an expression of protest or one's position. It has grown and assumed, among other things, a social function.
website prepared a list of artists whose work makes cities more beautiful, and people a little better and happier.
His project "Living Walls" is known far beyond the borders of the country; his works are regularly included in the world's best street art collections. Good-eyed creatures of Nikita, organically inscribed in space, playing with the shape of the walls, already exist in many cities of Russia: in his native Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Kazan and so on.
Alexey Menshikov
Alexei Menshikov, an artist from Penza, decorates the streets of his city with funny drawings, successfully fitting them into the surrounding landscape. His positive characters will not leave anyone indifferent and charge with positive for the whole day.
This talented street artist from Russia is an adherent of a surrealist style that permeates all his work with a thin thread. The subjects of the works are very diverse - from drawing representatives of the heroes of subcultures and various phenomena to surrealistic and fairy tale motifs.
Slava PTRK, an artist from Yekaterinburg, is a real experimenter who often chooses strange and unusual objects for his works. All his drawings and installations are an encrypted message, a call to turn on the imagination and think about the problems of our time.
Another artist from Yekaterinburg, famous for his unusual and topical works, often associated with political events.
Moscow street artist Zhenya 0331C (Ozzik) used to compare what is drawn in his hometown and on the streets of the world. This helps him realize why he creates his work. For Ozzik, street art is a complete art, an opportunity to convey feelings or emotions through what you can do.
A young, productive and damn talented graffiti artist from St. Petersburg. He works in the technique of photorealism and creates bright, unforgettable characters.
Andrey Adno was born in 1986 and now lives in Kaliningrad. The artist claims that graffiti has never been his main source of inspiration. He likes the old school graphic design, Soviet poster and everything that balances on the verge of graffiti and conventional art.
Street art is called the view visual arts characterized by a pronounced urban style. Many people are familiar with one of his directions - graffiti, but this is not the only form of self-expression of street artists. There is also screen printing, the creation of posters and installations, drawing with stickers, monumental painting and other forms street art.
Street art began to emerge in ancient world. Basically, and rock art can be attributed to its manifestations. IN modern form such creativity originated in America in the second half of the 20th century. One of the founders of graffiti was Taki-183 from New York, full name which has not gone down in history. Working as a courier and moving around the city, he left his signature on the walls, fences, in the subway, consisting of the name and number of the street where he lived. Later, newspapers wrote about him, and already crowds of his followers began to leave their marks (tags), more and more painting the streets of the city.
The walls of abandoned buildings served as objects for art. Photo: thinkstockphotos.com
From America, street art is still spreading further only in the form of graffiti. In Europe, this movement has become more "intellectual". Artists began to call on people to think, to fight for their rights, to protest against injustice, to be active. Initially, the walls of abandoned buildings, the foundations of bridges, and metro stations acted as objects for art. Later artists switched to the walls of historical sites, which defined street art as outlawed. It began to be considered vandalism, and so it continued for several decades.
Thanks to street art, the creation of paintings on the walls of entrances or even apartments has become popular. Photo: thinkstockphotos.com
Now street art is not always perceived by others as art. Some areas of street art are still considered vandalism and illegal in many countries. However, smart leaders reconsidered their attitude to such a manifestation of youth creativity and decided to direct its energy in the right direction. The authorities instruct groups of artists to paint the featureless walls of industrial buildings and residential buildings, arrange competitions and give grants. Often, large shops, cafes or galleries resort to this method of decorating buildings. Thanks to street art, the creation of paintings on the walls of entrances or even apartments has become popular.
Gradually, this kind of creativity is selected from the underground. Quite legal festivals, competitions, exhibitions and other events are held for street artists, where young people can learn from the masters or demonstrate their work.
Street art is done by people who want to make the city better and more beautiful. Photo: thinkstockphotos.com
A relatively new trend in street art is 3D graffiti. Artists manage to create unique and realistic masterpieces on asphalt, which from a certain point seem voluminous. Creation three-dimensional picture can take several days, and its life is rather short: until the first rain or road cleaning. Here it is important to have time to capture your masterpiece in the photo.
Street art is done by people who initially do not seek recognition or fame. It is important for them to do the world a little better and more beautiful, to touch on some important social problems, show hidden edges modern city and your view of the world. If a person can see beauty in a crack in the pavement, a defect in the wall of a building or an ordinary concrete fence and decorate this place, should he interfere?
The concept of "street art" is translated into Russian as "art of the street" and in a broad sense means the creation of art objects right on the streets of cities.
streets?
Many artists believe that such a phenomenon as street art cannot be defined in principle. This phenomenon is too complex and multifaceted. Nevertheless, it is possible to single out the general. Firstly, street art is the fruit of the work of a street artist, and secondly, it can only exist on the street. There are four sides to street art: the idea and the place, the reference to the external or internal, the claim to eternity or its absence, intimacy. For every job, these components are as important as windows are needed for a house. There is a popular phrase among artists that the work you have completed will remain only yours until dawn, and then it will become common. This is the essence of street art. But this frankness leaves its mark - the artist often has to open his soul, expose own feelings in front of strangers.
Art in action
How does street art work? Photos, anime, comics, celebrity portraits, current events in the world - all this does not go unnoticed by street artists. The plots of art objects located on the streets in all parts of the Earth are extremely diverse. One thing unites them - this is the opportunity to convey the idea to the widest circle of people. Therefore, the artist has such a responsibility, because he creates art for the masses. And it resonates in the hearts of the citizens. Today, museums are opening around the world, festivals, meetings the best craftsmen and ordinary lovers of urban beauty.
How is street art made?
Artists know that sooner or later the idea will take over the heart and thoughts completely, so much so that it is unbearable to do nothing. This means that it's time to pick up paint and go outside. Even those who have long ceased to consider themselves a beginner know that anyone healthy person it's scary to start. This fear is normal. And in some ways even necessary. The main thing is to overcome it in time and decide on the execution of the idea. One of the most important tools of a street artist is not a spray gun or a brush, but a generous dose of healthy irony and sarcasm, devoid of obtrusiveness and arrogance. It is humor that allows you to achieve the effect when everyone sees and discusses the work itself, and not whether it was possible to paint something on this wall. No less than the right attitude, important and technical means. Artists have a rule: take with you twice as much as you need. Then they are enough. And professionals joke that the best cure for the looks and distracting questions of the curious is the phrase: "We are making a movie." As a rule, after such onlookers leave the artists alone.
A bit about street artists
And now about those who, thanks to talent, a share of adventurism, a sense of humor, have acquired world fame. However, "famous" is not quite the right word. After all, it often happens that the creation of a master is seen by millions of people, the fame of him spreads around the world, and no one really knows anything about the artist himself. Something like this happened with Banksy from London. His famous "Nude" (pictured) is famous all over the world. And all that was known about the master was a short pseudonym. Now Banksy is coming out of the shadows, participating in international projects, travels around the world. One of the admirers of his talent is Angelina Jolie.
Portuguese Alexander Farto (Vhils) amazes the public with incredible plots, huge works, intricate interlacing of many the smallest details. A peculiar feature of the artist is a partial mechanical effect on the surface. One of his "autographs" is also in Moscow.
Californian Above creates on the topic of politics, society, culture. His works can be found in more than fifty countries around the world. In the photo - the work "First Love".
Portuguese artist Peter Roa also loves to travel. He draws black and white pictures of animals. On one of the Moscow walls, squirrels painted by him flaunt. But such a giraffe settled in Africa.
Our contemporary and compatriot from Simferopol in just a few months acquired world fame. Someone with the pseudonym Sharik paints his street canvases condemning the war and murders, showing the whole unpleasant side of the Ukrainian conflict. Sharik's works can be seen in many cities of Crimea.
Nikita Nomerz creates interesting images from buildings and structures. His works shock, amaze and bring a constant smile to the inhabitants of several Russian cities.
Philosophy of street art
Street artists make the black-and-white world colorful, faceless walls of housing estates are turned into objects of art. But main value street art is not in its aesthetic side, but in the fact that thanks to it people think about modernity, about eternal values and their role in this world.
Instruction
On the one hand, the art of street art, at its core, is designed to resist the aggressive urban environment, on the other hand, without the aggression of the modern city, street art itself would not have arisen.
Street art originated from street tags, which, in turn, in the late 60s of the last century in Philadelphia (USA) were transformed into graffiti. By the beginning of the 80s, when competition arose between graffiti artists, graffiti from poorly readable font tags increasingly began to be transformed into interesting ones. artistic compositions and catchy slogans: “Boredom is counter-revolutionary”, “Run, comrade, for old world”, “Culture is life in reverse” or “Be realistic, demand the impossible!”.
Now, in the era of continuous eclecticism and post-post-modernism, the boundaries of the concept of street art are blurred, like the boundaries of other art forms.
Street art is any creative action created in the urban environment, in the space of streets and squares. Street art can be not only artists who directly transform a static space, giving it new meaning and codes.
Street arters are Street musicians, mimes, break dancers, flashmobers and actionists. That is, all those who go out into the street to create. And it doesn't matter, does it creative person constantly or performs one, but important for himself and, as he believes, for those around him, the Action.
Street art is an aggressive art that actively draws all participants in the life of the city into a dialogue. Even if, for some reason only known to him, the street arter places exclusively “cute cats” in the urban environment, in any case, he imposes them completely shamelessly, regardless of anyone's opinion.
Anyone can do street art. If only there was non-standard idea, which I would like to tell the world, since street art can be expressed by any means, but it must carry the concept. Street art - concept art.
Street art artists choose the means of expression based on the concept. And these means of expression can be different: stickers, stickers, posters, spray cans, crayons, stencils, plastic, electrical tape, laser projections and LEDs - everything from which you can quickly create an artistic object and have time to blow your feet. The fact is that in many countries of the world, street art is still considered vandalism, and not a transformation of a boring gray urban environment.
However, when the authorities of some countries realized that street art can bring profit to cities, as it attracts tourists who are willing to pay even for tours of
Carolina A. Miranda, a journalist and blogger based in New York, wrote an article about street art for a well-known American magazine about contemporary art ARTnews. The magazine has been published since 1902 in 120 countries and is an influential media in the art world. Publication for the first time for a long time published a detailed material on street art, which, of course, indicates the growing interest of the global art community in this topic.
Carolina A. Miranda is a journalist based in Brooklyn. Writes about culture, art, and travel for Time, ArtNews, Budget Travel. Runs a program about cultural events on New York Radio WNYC. In 2010, the New York Times named her one of the 9 people to follow [on twitter](https://twitter.com/cmonstah). She has written a number of research papers on street art. He maintains an art blog (http://c-monster.net/), which was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times among the recommended ones.
Thinking about street art, people immediately imagine cartoon characters or constructivist patterns: the ubiquitous and stern black-and-white face of the giant wrestler Andre "Obey" by Shepard Fairey (Shepard Fairey), depicted on the streets of the world; portraits of impudent rats from Briton Banksy (Banksy); or an endless number of symbols of various street artists flaunting illegally all over the world.
Trends are changing. Now young artists are moving from endless mindless tagging to more conceptual and rich in meaning, abstract and voluminous works.
Franco-Spanish artist Eltono draws geometric labyrinths that resemble a tuned fork or fantasize the name "Ton". Gabriel "Specter" Reese, a Canadian-American artist, turns urban waste into sculptures by installing them in abandoned places in New York and Toronto. Brad Downey, an American by birth and living in Berlin, dismantles paving stones and builds all sorts of geometrically ordered structures from it. The objects are part of a long series of "Spontaneous Sculptures", the logical conclusion of which will be the release of the book of the same name.
As in most street art objects, the main idea of this "reorganization" is opposition to the law.
“The original idea was to add something bright and colorful to the urban environment,” Downey says of her work. “Now I think the best thing to do is to change the meaning of what is already there, to reorganize the existing information.” As in most street art objects, the main idea of this "reorganization" is opposition to the law. Downey was repeatedly detained by the police.
Despite various vandalism laws, new school street art attracts increased attention international curators. In 2008, Tate Modern presented an exhibition featuring many street artists. Last year, Fundación Caixa Galicia organized a city-wide exhibition "Post-graffiti, Geometry and Abstractionism", which was attended by artists of the abstract-geometric style. And finally, in January 2011, Long Live the Revolution: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, featuring works by Akay, a Swedish artist who once built his own home on a median of the road.
Street art is more than the brainchild of graffiti: it contains cultural and historical value.
Interestingly, aesthetic theories some forms of street art look, in fact, quite academic. Studio artists John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys and others were doing illegal street installations as early as the 1960s. What makes street art special is that it was inspired and developed from graffiti. Most of these artists have at some point taken spray paint and tagged the walls.
“These artists brought graffiti materials, techniques and ideologies that are extremely ambitious,” says Cedar Lewisohn, curator of the Tate Modern street art exhibition and author of Abstract Graffiti (to be released by Merrel in March). “But street art is more than the brainchild of graffiti: it contains cultural and historical value.”
Artists came to new forms of street art in a variety of ways. MOMO is a New York-based artist who has been creating collages of vibrant paper and paint since 2004 in swirls of color and clear geometric shape. Like most street artists, he started out inspired by traditional methods, from tagging to freight trains and portraits of acquaintances on abandoned walls. (MOMO is a childhood nickname, like many interviewed artists, he prefers not to give his real name).
Back in 2003, with the Iraq war looming, MOMO was increasingly uninspired by its own work.
“It was a moment when I felt cut off from society as a whole. I didn't want to indulge him with figurative drawings. I didn't want to evoke a sense of nostalgia."
As a result, his work on the streets turned into pure abstraction. At that time, he created a number of canvases commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts and Sound in Sao Paulo (Museum of Image and Sound) and the Caisa Foundation (Fundación Caixa Galicia). Like many street artists, working on the abstractionist and conceptual scene, he did not exhibit in the gallery and lived on commissions from the sale of works in small galleries, showrooms and museums.
Of course, the fact of the departure from the figurative principle of the image is due to the fact that many of today's street artists have a minimal artistic education. Downey has a master's degree from the College of Fine Arts in London (Slade School of Fine Art in London), Eltono has a diploma Polytechnic University in Madrid. Others, like MOMO, were graduating from art school.
"These guys aren't just trying to 'rise up'," says New York art critic Carlo McCormick, who has supported urban guerrilla art since the early 1980s. “There are much deeper roots here, which makes me think of artists like John Feckner and Gordon Matta-Clark as people who came to this conceptual way.”
"Abstract art doesn't try to get the message right out of the throat, it's more poetic." C. McCormick, "Infringement: A History of Forbidden Urban Art."
McCormick explores street art in his new book Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned UrbanArt (http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/05719 /facts.trespass_a_history_of_uncommissioned_urban_art.htm) with Marc and Sara Schiller of the popular street art blog Wooster Collective. “Most of what was done in street art and graffiti was declarative,” he says. - We can talk about abstract art that it doesn't seek to rip the message straight out of the throat, it's more poetic." For many artists, moving away from words and figurative images has been key. “This is not to impose an idea,” says Madrid-based artist Nuria Mora ((http://www.nuriamora.com/)), whose angular abstractions are chaotically intertwined with floral elements inspired by textile patterns. - It's quiet work. I try to create a little silence in the city." For a Johannesburg art gallery, she built a dirty pink wooden structure inside the museum, then took it apart piece by piece and rebuilt on the streets of the city center - sometimes with the appropriate permission from the authorities, sometimes without.
Representatives new wave street art tried to create something different from the abundance of illegal tags left on any accessible surface of the city. For many years, Eltono bombed the tunnels around Paris with tags, but when he arrived in Madrid in the 90s, he found that the whole city was filled with graffiti.
"On the streets, the spray can is the devil." Eltono.
Then his recognizable today was born form style- multi-colored straight lines and figures. (Today, Eltono primarily creates art objects and installations, his work appears in galleries such as Tate Modern and Miró Fundación (Miró Foundation).
The attitude towards technical materials also played a role in this evolution. In many cities spray paint associated with the most destructive example of vandalism. According to Eltono, he changed from a spray can to a brush, not only because it gives an expressive and clear line, but also because "on the streets, the spray is the devil." But if you paint with a brush, then “no one touches you. It doesn't look aggressive." Often, on the contrary, this gives him the opportunity to argue with ordinary passers-by, as some people begin to argue with the person painting the wall.
"If you're going to do street art, I think it should be more street and less art." Ad Deville.
The illegality of street art is a far-fetched issue for many of the artists interviewed. They see their creativity as interesting way communications with the urban environment. Skewville is a duo from New York whose ironic voluminous installations flirt with the architecture of the city (their work has been exhibited in galleries in London, Dublin and Lille). They taunt passers-by with carved wood Snickers on power wires and make sculptures out of cable ducts that they mount on building facades.
“If you're going to do street art, I think it should be more street and less art,” says Ad Deville, one-two of the duo. “For us, it means staying real – but literally, playing with real streetwear and embedding it into the urban environment.”
Reese, whose work has been shown at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, says he started out with more conceptual and larger-scale projects. For the Canner Tribute series, he designed a pedestal with a supermarket cart filled with empty boxes. glass bottles, as a sign of respect for people who recycle aluminum cans. He installed art objects without permission in unused spaces near bridges and railroad tracks in New York. “I want to create an object as a sign of respect. But I also like its aesthetic. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it."
"The streets are for cars, not for art." Patrick Miller.
As work moved beyond the established boundaries of graffiti and street art, the question arose among artists as to what to call it. The term "street art" is blown out of proportion. "I struggle with the idea of 'street art,'" says Patrick Miller, a member of the New York-based Faile collective, who started out with stencils in the '90s before diving headlong into 3D installations. “The streets are for cars, not for art.”
In 2009, Faile installed two large prayer wheels carved into the streets of Brooklyn depicting consumerism and greed. They were inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels. On the streets, the installations offered an unexpected neighborhood: a ritual object illegally and suddenly installed in the middle of a shabby cityscape.
In general, Faile's work is at the intersection of partisan and visual arts, pop art and conceptualism, sculpture and architecture. Despite the fact that the duo are involved in illegal art, they are the only artists mentioned here who have their own representative in galleries in New York and London. Their wood collage is valued at over $60,000. Last year, the couple completed a major commission - a historical copy of the temple in mall in Lisbon - as participants in the Portugal Arte 10 festival. "This is a blurred area at the intersection of street and public art and intervention in public space. Somewhere in between."
Javier Abarca, curator, critic and lecturer at the University of Madrid who runs the graffiti blog Urbanario, says it's time to rethink the street art system. While graffiti is a term for spray-paint tagging, street art, accommodating everything-that-is-implied-by-street, becomes too unwieldy a concept. Abarca uses the term "post-graffiti" to refer to any kind of iconic street tagging.
"If we have problems with words - how to drink, something new is coming." MOMO.
At first, the term referred to such figures as the 80s pop artist Keith Haring, who came up with a clear vocabulary inspired by graffiti, but not copying it. Today, post-graffiti can include the work of artists such as MOMO and Eltono (as well as Fairey and Banksy), who have completely expanded the set of visual symbols. To classify more environmentally dependent objects as Downey's or Reese's, Abarka uses the term "intervention" - the intrusion of an art object into the street environment.
Of course, it is not always possible to clearly define the typology of street art. Almost all artists talked about shifting boundaries and moving from one category to another, avoiding categorization: from the street to the galleries, from graffiti to post-graffiti and intervention. “I am attracted to this indefinite zone, where words no longer play big role says MOMO. “If we have problems with words - how to drink, something new is coming.”
