Street Art, the Publicity of Art
to be simplistic, misleading and too easily refutable, moreover, the whole art history from modernity to the present day is dotted with subversion without being Street Art. Instead, it seems that this specific “way of doing and making” (Rancière, 2004, 10), radically changes the way of production of the artwork itself.
Stefano Antonelli
In Banksy's work the traditional art aesthetics—in terms of art thesis—and the vandalic, and anti-artistic practice of writing—in terms of art antithesis—coexist in a productive way, fuelling the necessary contradiction that Boris Groys (2008) identifies as modernity of art constitutive element. His “ways of doing” (Jacques Rancière, 2004, 13) emerges in the indefinable perimeter of an idea which combines “art” and “street” and which, at the beginning of the 21st century, puts at the center of its reflections the systematic placement of images in public urban space, given back to us by the media-oriented public discourse with the label of Street Art. The contemporary debate on this topic raises fresh questions whose answers would have different purposes, including determining whether it is art or not, shaping a definition and identifying its specificity. Nicholas Alden Riggle (2010) argues that “an artwork is street art, if and only if, its material use of the street is internal to its meaning” (Riggle, 2010), while Andrea Baldini (2016) singles out street art specificity in the illegality of the practice that would establish its constitutive paradigm, in other words: its subversiveness. We believe that asking whether Street Art is art or not is like asking whether Dada is art or not, the excess of sense and influence over the visible regime that the lemma presents, makes it appear a useless question for its own purpose. We also believe that wanting to define Street Art is like wanting to define Fluxus, still a useless activity for its own purpose, no matter how you try to delimit it, something always remains out. Identifying in illegality the essence of Street Art appears
In Street Art practices, the artist’s studio is no longer the place of creation but the public space, the outcome of creation does not appear as an object that, therefore, cannot be exposed to the market, however, even when objectified, the Artworld (Arthur C. Danto, 1964) uses it to present Street Art. So what is the télos of this way of producing art? Federico Vercellone (2013) reminds us how modernity is a succession of “symbolic murders” (Vercellone 2013), the death of God announces that “there is no power in the world that could be perceived as being infinitely more powerful than any other” (Groys, 2008, 2), modernity is therefore where the only possible belief is the balance of power.
Bibliography and sitography Baldini A. (2016), Street Art: A Reply to Riggle,The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics, Volume 74, n° 2, pp.187-191, visitato il 03/04/2020 17:52 UTC.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510496
Danto A. C. (1964), The Artworld, “Journal of Philosophy”, Volume 61, Issue 19, American Philosophical Association Easter Division, pp. 571-584.
Riggle N. A. (2010), The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces, “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism”, Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics, Volume 68, n° 3, pp.243-257, visitato il 03/04/2020 17:52 UTC.
Debord G. (1992), La société di spectacle, 3e édition, Paris, Les Éditions Gallimard, p. 10. Groys B. (2008), Art Power, Cambridge, London, The Mit Press, p. 2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40793266
It’s precisely by celebrating the modern state based on balance of power, that Hegel announces the death of art, according with Groys, “he couldn’t imagine that the balance of power could be shown, could be presented as an image” (Groys, 2008, ib.). To the thesis of a twentieth century producing an art that has increasingly withdrawn from the public and from the dialectic with the power to identify itself only with its own market, that recedes from taking part in “what is common” (Rancière, 2004, 40) and stops having any kind of influence over the real—so that withdrawing from its own mandate of truth—the twenty-first century opens responding with the antithesis of an idea of art that seems to affirm how in the era when dream becomes sleep, economic culture becomes destiny, time a commodity and “tout ce qui était directement vécu s’est éloigné dans une représentation” (Debord, 1992), the truth of art is replaced by the publicity of art. This is the way Street Art practices turns the civic space established by architecture and urban planning into a “distribution of the sensible” (Rancière, 2004, 12).
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Rancière J. (2004), The Politics of Aesthetics. The distribution of the sensible, New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, pp. 10-12-13-40.
Vercellone F. (2013), Dopo la morte dell’arte, Bologna, il Mulino (my translation).
