Street art

THE STREET ART

Lemarchand Solène

The street art in general has a lengthy and intricate story. First, words like « arts, fine-arts, artistic expression » were under dogmas, rules, etc…

Then, gradually, the Art has been freed for all these expectations and all its chains.

C215 (nickname for Christian Guemy is a french street-artist who practises the stencil) said that street-art was a catch-all term. There isn’t any distinction of art’s kind in this term. Many artists think that it’s not good to use a catch-all term for many arts.

THE GRAFFITI is very old, like Magda Dnaysz (an art curator and art dealer, she owns her galleries in Paris, Shanghai and London) says « from the Lascaux cave to the hieroglyphics, graffiti has always existed ».

In the state of Philadelphia, in the United States of America, at the end of 1960s, Darryl McCray a.k.a Cornbread became a graffiti legend. In 1965, Cornbread was a regular in reform school for minor and he suffered of an obsessive timidity. But he was in love. So, he decided to wrote on many walls in his school or in his district « Cornbread Loves Cynthia ». And all his life, he will be Cornbread and not Darryl McCray.

Hugues Bazin (an author) said that « the street-artist appropriation of a public space was born in the convergence of aesthetic movements and the New York’s 1970s sociocultural and economic context ».

Earlier, the graffiti was an expression of the identity, it was about displaying his name, conveying his own message. It was the medium of expression of a disadvantaged population with the use of colour as a fundamental basis.

There was no border between the artist and his work.

This new form of artistic expression was unconventional, there was no apprenticeship, these artists didn’t come out of art school like Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, for instance. As a result their works weren’t understood as art by critics, no recognition could be given. In addition, these works were carried out by a mixed population.

But these people wanted to assert their identity, and this within the city in front of the whole population. Initially by displaying their names everywhere, then by imposing colour to bright up their environment. No one realised it at the time, but these graffiti artists and taggers were creating the greatest popular art movement of all centuries.

There hasn’t been more authentic and more sincere than their work.

MANY KINDS OF STREET-ART, BUT THERE FOLLOWS FEW OF THEM:

Graffitis

The most popular street-art, many people use the word « street-art » to just talk about the graffiti. It goes back to the Egyptian and Greek history. Used to give out a message or just to make a plain wall look more attractive.

Sculpture

It includes processes such as carving, modelling, and casting it make it. Many materials can be used to make it like stone, wood or else paper. For instance, in the movie Sexy Dance 4, they use a sculpture made of metal. The context is about the gentrification of a poor district

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