With the popularization of alternative lifestyle and street style on the rise you must be wondering where they came from and how artistic manifestations arose in urban centers, right?
In this post you will learn about the history of street art from its origin and development to its configuration today. Check below the main characteristics of this type of art that is increasingly reproduced by youth.
What is considered street art?
Street art is about paintings, sculptures, installations and artistic interventions in general that you find in urban centers. This type of art does not usually follow any aesthetic pattern, exactly because each artist has an individual purpose that fosters their creativity.
What most of these manifestations have in common is that they appeared as alternatives of communication, denunciation, and even income for marginalized people who lived in peripheries, where their poor living conditions were hidden and their voices could not be heard.
The intention of this type of cultural manifestation is to communicate varied messages, but mainly, to transmit some kind of criticism. That is why many of the artists involved in street art practices are young people willing to deconstruct prejudices and patterns and seek new world views.
What is its purpose?
Urban street art communicates struggles, denunciations and protests related to social and political issues or poetic manifestations while fulfilling an aesthetic purpose of urban intervention. The main example is the paintings, such as graffiti and graffiti, which you have certainly seen or heard a lot about, right?
The cock, in its versions purposely made outside an aesthetic pattern, unreadable to untrained eyes, served as a means of communication between marginalized artists, denounced their reality and recalled their existence. In its readable versions, such as those we see appearing more and more on the walls of large urban centers, it has the purpose of passing short and objective messages, political or poetic, to society.
Graphite, on the other hand, is also loaded with concepts and seeks to stimulate some kind of reflection in those who see it. It is an art more aesthetically pleasing and, consequently, more easily accepted. But, if we stop to analyze, no matter how much graffiti, for example, is seen by many as “dirty”, all these artistic manifestations end up fulfilling their communicative role, isn’t it?
How did street art come about?
When we talk about street painting, again, the focus is on graffiti and graffiti. Besides the peripheral origin, there are reports of graffiti that had a political imprint, taking a stand against the military dictatorship. There was no aesthetic concern with the letters, all that was needed was for them to be legible.
With the emergence of the punk movement, the political graffiti was maintained, but this time inspired by the logos of heavy metal, punk, rock and hardcore bands. Many of these typographies had been inspired first by Anglo-Saxon runes and the writing of barbaric peoples. This kind of art developed along with other similar manifestations such as stencils, licks and graphite itself.
Although paintings are more remembered when we talk about street art, musicians, poets and actors are also part of this form of expression. In ancient Greece, for example, singers presented legends and traditions through street verses.
In the Middle Ages the first literary works made in the form of poems were also declared in parties in squares and palaces. The medieval festivals, in turn, had theatrical presentations and “living statues”, art forms that can be seen even today in corners of large urban centers.
How is it seen by society?
Most of these street art manifestations are made without the authorization of the person in charge of the space. We can take into account from residential and business walls to the occupation of squares and public places. Even in public places these artists can be unwanted and even considered criminals. For this reason, over time, street art has gained fame as marginal art.
Nevertheless, the conceptual and critical character of urban art is what has led young people to enter this culture while maintaining its growth. Graffiti, thanks to its aesthetic character, is the main factor that has attracted more and more artists to the urban art movement.
It had already become a means of promoting art as a new alternative for young people from less favored social and economic classes. A few years ago, even with its marginal character, young people from the middle class began to create interest and reproduce this type of art, even though it was generally not well received by the majority.
