Le street art a-t-il toujours / n’a-t-il jamais existé ?

Abstract

To give a definition of what one calls « street art » today is a very complex issue because one ranks under this name some art (or no-art ?) forms that ultimately just had in common the fact of being produced in situ, « in the street ». A reading of the diversity of these productions, from the earliest times until the explosion of « collages », « stencils » and other « graffiti » as well as of their corollaries since the 1960s will justify the ambiguity of the question in our title. This ambiguity is heightened by the two words « art » and « street » joined in a vague generic term that forces us to ask ourselves the concepts of « art », « low art », « high art », « ratification », and of the loss of sense because of the institutional and market recognition of those practices initially considered as criminal acts and therefore condemnable by law.

Keywords

• graffiti
• Banksy
• street art
• tag
• writing
• muralisme