Abstract
What is street art? This paper offers a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value: its subversiveness. It argues that street art is essentially subversive in virtue of using public space as a technical resource. By hijacking a portion of the urban landscape with its colourful forms and witty designs, street art challenges familiar ways of practising the city, while creating a ‘temporary autonomous zone’ of free expression. There, corporate control over the city’s visible surfaces is ridiculed and people reclaim their right to use the city. In this sense, street art functions as a carnivalesque tactic of social resistance, favouring the emergence of alternative ways to imagine our urban life and our uses of public space. By considering its subversiveness, one can also explain how street art (i) significantly differs from official public art; (ii) includes graffiti as its original and most radical style.
Highlights
What is street art? This question has attracted much scholarly interest from both philosophy of art and other related disciplines.[1]
What is street art? This paper offers a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value: its subversiveness
In continuity with such an optimism about the possibility of demarcation, I offer a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value
Summary
What is street art? This question has attracted much scholarly interest from both philosophy of art and other related disciplines.[1]. In continuity with such an optimism about the possibility of demarcation, I offer a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value. My definition exhibits strong explanatory and critical power, whose effectiveness is best exemplified when distinguishing street art from official public art. This in turn provides us with good reasons to accept my account as a serious candidate in the theoretical pursuit of defining this urban art form. Street art is subversive insofar as it turns inside out accepted norms of visibility in public spaces.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
