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What Exactly Is Street Art, and How Can We Define It?

Updated: Oct 15




What is the precise question that we are dealing with here? What could be the definition of street art? It can be argued that this is a topic best left to cultural theorists or art historians. The first school of thought, however, appears to require a temporal gap since they argue that in order to establish a movement or an art form, there must be a substantial and specified era with a beginning, climax, and future view. As for cultural theorists and sociologists, the question always has to do with a cultural background, identity discussion, or consideration of intricate social structures and semiotic interpretation. All of this does not preclude us from considering what street art might be, and where will it goes from here on.


History of Street Art


It should not be assumed that the roots of what we now consider street art determine the category. It is accurate to claim that graffiti was the beginning. The contemporary artistic expression of street artists still carries some elements of the original graffiti artists' drives to produce in urban environments. This is significant—the same spirit that drove street artists to emerge at the start of the twenty-first century is also evident in the activities of those artists. One must use caution when thinking about the roots of street art so as not to establish a rigid relationship between the teleological conceptions of the historical forms of urban art.


Repetition and Evolution: The Definition of Street Art

The idea of repetition served as the main foundation for the existence of street art in an urban setting. Why does this matter? Graffiti artists were forced to repeatedly recreate their typography or other symbolic expressions since the impact of the message can only be felt through its perceptible presence in the urban environment. Artists had to strive for the opportunity for their work to be seen in an era before the digital global community we take for granted today.


There Is (Not) a Conclusion to Defining Street Art

Street art originated in the setting of urban spaces, but it now exists in cultural venues such as galleries, online communities, and public discourses. Recently, it has also become a target of appropriation by mainstream contemporaneity and popular culture. The highest points of the contemporary art market were attained by works of art that were created for city walls. Additionally, the debate over what street art is takes place in the classrooms where researchers and their students examine the connections between the concepts of performance art, conceptual art, and visual art as well as how to incorporate these art forms into the world of street art. It is obvious that we are past the formulation stage.A straightforward definition of street art would be a particular movement or subculture. It would be taking the simple route to claim that it might represent an exceptional hybrid form of artistic expression. A straightforward definition of street art would be a particular movement or subculture. It would be taking the simple route to claim that it might represent an exceptional hybrid form of artistic expression.


The following would at least be included if we were to articulate the somewhat stable viewpoints that may serve as an explanation of what constitutes street art: 2. Street art is a phenomenon that, through self-transformation, is constantly transforming the reality of contemporary art. 3. Street art incorporates a strong devotion to social activism (although this is not always the case, it seems that this was an attribute of artwork that survived the test of time). 3. In particular, street art new cultural discourses are shaped and built through practice.



Mishkaat January

#streetart #art



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