My favorite thing about street art is that it puts art, literally, in context. Rather, it creates art within a context: expressing something about local and / or popular social mores in a forum that allows denizens of that context to be disrupted with a different kind of conversation starter. It addresses issues relevant to specific populations and brings unexpected creative inspiration to the urban grind.
Music is a great forum for bringing pervading issues related to the human condition to the masses – but street art takes a different tack. It discusses human and cultural issues in a memetic format – using imagery to evoke a depth and breadth of meaning. And it does so by allowing everyone to participate in the conversation – rather than limiting the appreciation of an artistic message to a select few museum-goers. It speaks by showing without telling in a fleeting space of time. You can walk by a piece of street art and bring a lifetime’s worth of personal and social meaning into a moment. It’s an opportunity to meditate on life without going to church or finding a quiet “happy place”.I suppose my passion for street art is really rooted in it’s context. It’s an accessible, grassroots commentary on the human condition. And we all know that this human experience can be beyond words sometimes.
Thanks to my friend and colleague Katarina for sharing the following link of some of the best street art examples, to prove my point:
The Best Examples of Street Art from 2012
Enjoy!
Related articles
- The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti (english.mashkulture.net)
- In These Streets: Top Street Art From August (complex.com)
- Street Arts…. (mariakertel.wordpress.com)
- 15 Street Art Terms You Should Know (complex.com)
- Inventive Street Art (makesomethingmondays.wordpress.com)
- Street Art Is (yewknee.com)
- Streetmix Lets You Play Urban Planner Online (complex.com)
- Graffiti and Street Art (World of Art) (creativecloseup.com)
- Discourses in Context (mlorenz5.wordpress.com)
The Narcissistic (American) Anthropologist 
That’s Art. 🙂
Indeed. I hate that it has to be qualified with the word “street” / but I consider it a genre classification and not a subjective judgement. 😉
Even though it is qualified with word “street”, it still remains art…”street art”. 🙂