Guerrilla art
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"Guerrilla art" |
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| Street Art Formats |
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Types of Street Art |
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List of Street Artists |
| Graffiti Culture |
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Activism |
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Art Intervention |
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Built environment |
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Australia • Spain • Germany |
Guerrilla art is an art form that evolved from graffiti culture. The U.S. hosts a number of guerrilla artists, but the scene is more developed in Europe, with most of the biggest artists still coming from the UK, Jamie Hewlett, Mode 2 and Banksy being amongst the most famous.
[edit] Definition
Street art differs from other artforms in the fact that it has no external boundary between the image and the environment: while a traditional painting can be moved from one gallery to another without the artistic credibility of the painting being affected, guerrilla art is environmental, the surface it is applied to being as fundamental to the piece's meaning as that which is applied. This idea has evolved to such a degree that contemporary artists now often see all the work they do as a single piece being added to over time while older, less developed elements of the piece are being erased by graffiti removal efforts and other artists in competition for space.
The most important development in the movement and the reason for its 'guerrilla' tag is the adoption of guerrilla marketing techniques over traditional artistic methods. Many of the more orthodox artists would not create artwork intentionally meaning for it to be mass produced with little fidelity or put up with wheatpaste. The use of guerrilla marketing methods to create publicity for an artist's work has seen the evolution away from artists as creative individuals and towards artists as brands. Many guerrilla artists hijack major branding for their own publicity and identity, often at odds with the brand itself. This can be seen with D*Face's hijacking of the Walt Disney signature or, more recently, with Mr Pink Entertainment System, a pseudo-product styled on older Nintendo brand identity. The product doesn't exist except as a brand, as something to market and promote.
It would be wrong to think of guerrilla art as opposed to materialism or mass media, as it would not exist without them. It is an artform that helps to express life after exposure to these things. The concept behind most guerrilla art is that it doesn't attempt to express something about branding through art, it attempts to express something about art through branding.
