Graffiti und Street Art
Graffiti and Street Art are independent forms of art in public space. In a narrower sense, Street Art is the super-ordinate concept and Graffiti (singular: Graffito) takes a particular position. Characteristic features of Street Art - art that happens on the street, are proof of this art form's special status. Street Art is not for sale, it often constitutes an act of malicious mischief and it is fugacious. New York City is the center of Street Art and Graffiti, from where important impulses have come since the end of the 1960s.
Street Art combines various forms of artistic expression. Besides Graffiti, poster art is also part of it, in which advertising posters are redesigned and repainted ("affichage détournée", which means "indirect billposting" in English; one of its most important representatives is Ernest Pignon-Ernest, born in 1942). Additionally, artists also post self-made posters.
The graffiti artist is also called sprayer, which is derived from his equipment, the spray can. The weather-proof color spray is applied to almost any surface by means of a spray can. Popular places for graffiti are walls, among which the Berlin Wall occupies a special role. The beginnings of train spraying were in New York in the late 1960s. Another special form is commemorative Graffiti on public lavatories, its roots go back to the ancient time - scratched traces had been left behind in public bath houses in Athens, Pompeji and Rome.
Commemorative Graffiti also laid the formal basis for the development of the Graffiti movement, as the so-called "tag" was at first a simple, single-color signature that indicates its creator, the "piece", which was a further step in the development, is a multi-color signature with decorations in various forms and styles. Graffiti's special esthetics, emphasized by its colorfulness and line, had left clear traces behind, particularly in the works of American representatives of the Graffiti Movement, among them Keith Haring (1958-90) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88).
There are various Graffiti techniques, a basic distinction must be made between a free execution and the stencil technique. Among the best-known stencil graffiti artists are Banksy (born in 1974) and Thomas Baumgärtel (born in 1960), who has been placing the "Banana" in museums and galleries since 1986.
