Street art for the internet

January 30th, 2012 | By | 3 Comments »

Street art is moving online. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that street artists are making art on the street for the purpose of photographing it and sharing the images online (and maybe you remember these posts). I think it is too early to say for sure whether this transition is a good thing, a bad thing or just change, but it has gotten so pervasive that street art that comments on street art now often focuses on pointing out this transition from in-the-flesh street art to art that was intended to be shared digitally. Here are a few recent examples…

1. Reblog This by mobstr (shown above). This piece was painted in Shoreditch, a spot where it would have been seen by countless street art photographers, but it only lasted 7 hours before getting buffed. No matter. Mobstr got a great photo of it and put that photo online. Now it’s all ready to be reblogged on tumblr.

2. What ever happened to street art on the street? by Lush. Both a comment on the proliferation of street art online and the commercialization of the movement. This image is available as a print at Backwoods Gallery. Lush has also made animated gifs of his work, something else that can only be viewed digitally but is created on the street.

3. Fine by Elfo. The text is in Italian and references this work by Giuseppe Chiari. It translates to “Street art is finished, stop all together.” Rather than painting this in a busy city center, Elfo put it on an abandoned building in what looks like the countryside. The audience for the work is (primarily) the audience that will see this photo online and Elfo is well aware of that. Does this mean the death of street art though? Of course not. Chiari continued making art after his declaration, and Elfo has already made more street art. It’s just that Elfo’s public is primarily a digital one, either seeking his work out or coming across it randomly on a site like tumblr, but either way viewing it for free.

For more about this shift towards a digital street and a digital public, here are two posts I wrote a while ago.

Photos by mobstr, Lush and Elfo

Related posts:

  1. Graffiti vs. Street Art: A debate I don’t understand


Category: Featured Posts, Photos, Random | Tags: , , ,
  • Spart

    Many Street artists have referenced the visual pollution of billboards and public advertising and seen their work as a kind of antidote to that. In light of that I see my project, Spart (http://spiced-art.com/) as providing an antidote to email advertising pollution. Incidentally Spart also exists on the streets. 

  • http://blog.vandalog.com/ RJ Rushmore

    I love my weekly Spart email. Had no idea that you got up in the physical world too. Please keep it up!

  • Andrew Steel

    I cannot comment on other regions social and political climates, but here in New Zealand an enormous amount of street work is frequently removed. Not only is there state and private companies buffing works, there is enormous competition for space between artists wanting to paint and space for commercial use to create advertisements. More artists painting less space.

    I feel that street art is largely moving toward an online experience as a means for it, the idea of it and intellectual property of it, to survive longer than the physical property itself. It allows an artist to share his work long after it has been destroyed.

    I would also argue that street art has always been an online experience for a large part of the community. Although we are lucky to see Askew, Drypnz and Deus works in ‘real life’, we rarely get international names in our country. Yet online we are able to experience the latest works of Roa, Os Gemeos and Low Bros within a day of them being completed on the other side of the world.