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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The removal of street artworks from urban walls, their restoration, and their
(re)contexualisation into institutional and regulated frames, such as art museums and
galleries, as well as the decision to sell them to the highest bidder, are aspects that not only
raise moral and legal issues, but also seem to deprive street art of those peculiarities that
make it different from other artistic expressions produced to be inside artistic institutions or
private (either institutional or non-institutional) spaces. This study aims at shedding light on
the effects of the museumification and institutionalization of street art, on the pro and cons
of regulating a phenomenon born “to challenge and call into question dominant uses of
public spaces in contemporary global metropolises” (Baldini, 2018:29). Art dealers, city
inhabitants, artists, curators’ viewpoints are here critically analysed to try to understand how
the ways to approach street art have changed over the last two decades as well as to find out
if street artists’ self-claimed purpose of making a gift to city dwellers to make them feel part
of the city life (Young, 2014) is still alive. Indeed, as Young claims after interviewing several
street artists such as Pure Evil, Kaff-eine, CDH and many more: “Street art is often motivated
by generosity: the artist seek to make a gift of the artwork to the spectator, the neighbourhood
and the city itself” (2014:27). A gift that according to Waclawek, often comes from artists’
wish to “create a space for reflection and observation in otherwise utilitarian streets and to
motivate people to reconsider their environments” (2011:76). This inquiry seeks to bring out
under what circumstances and to what extent the logic of profit has taken over the idea of
accessible gift in the street art world.
Description
Keywords
Street art Museumification Urban context Public space Visuality Art market