Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination

198 Pages·2014·10.326 MB·English

by  Alison Young

Street Art, Public City
What is street art? Who is the street artist? Why is street art a crime?
Since the late 1990s, a distinctive cultural practice has emerged in many cities:
street art, involving the placement of uncommissioned artworks in public
places. Sometimes regarded as a variant of graffiti, sometimes called a new art
movement, its practitioners engage in illicit activities while at the same time
the resulting artworks can command high prices at auction and have become
collectable aesthetic commodities. Such paradoxical responses show that street
art challenges conventional understandings of culture, law, crime and art.
Street Art, Public Cityengages with those paradoxes in order to understand
how street art reveals new modes of citizenship in the contemporary city. It
examines the histories of street art and the motivations of street artists, and
the experiences both of making street art and looking at street art in public
space. It considers the ways in which street art has become an integral part
of the identity of cities such as London, New York, Berlin, and Melbourne,
at the same time as street art has become increasingly criminalised. It
investigates the implications of street art for conceptions of property and
authority, and suggests that street art and the urban imagination can point
us towards a different kind of city: the public city.
Street Art, Public City will be of interest to readers concerned with art,
culture, law, cities and urban space, and also to readers in the fields of legal
studies, cultural criminology, urban geography, cultural studies and art more
generally.
Alison Young is a Professor of Criminology in the School of Social and
Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
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Street Art, Public City
Law, Crime and the Urban
Imagination
Alison Young
RO Routledge
U
TLED Taylor & Francis Group
G
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
A GlassHouse Book
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Alison Young
The right of Alison Young to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, Alison.
Street art, public city: law, crime and the urban imagination/
Alison Young.
pages cm
1. Street art. 2. Graffiti. 3. Urban beautification. 4. Crime.
5. Public spaces. 6. Sociology, Urban. I. Title.
NA9052.Y68 2014
701′.03 –dc23
2013021441
ISBN: 978-0-415-53869-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-79691-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond Three and Gill Sans by
Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents
List of plates vi
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 The situational artwork 1
encounter: watching JR 37
2 The cities in the city 41
encounter: criminal damage? 59
3 Cityscapes 61
encounter: losing the image 95
4 Criminalising the image 99
encounter: things on walls 125
5 Street art and spatial politics 127
encounter: Banksy under glass 147
6 Transformations: urban imagination in the public city 151
Bibliography 165
Index 175
List of plates
1 Banksy ‘Very Little Helps’, London 2010
2 Meggs, Los Angeles 2013
3 Knit the City, ‘Handmade Herd’, London 2011
4 Shepard Fairey, London 2012
5 MOMO, ‘Manhattan Tag’, New York 2010
6 Slicer, Melbourne 2012
7 CDH, ‘Weeping Portrait’, Melbourne 2012
8 Brad Downey, ‘Ladder Stick-Up’, Aberdeen 2007
9 Dan Witz, New York 2011
10 Miss.Tic, Paris 2010
11 Cake, Berlin 2012
12 Kaff-eine, Melbourne 2012
13 C215, London 2008
14 Banksy, ‘Slave Labour’, London 2012
15 Anthony Lister, Sydney 2011
16 Conor Harrington at FAME, Grottaglie 2012
List of figures
1.1 Be Free, Melbourne 2011 12
1.2 Civil, Melbourne 2009 15
1.3 Shepard Fairey, Andre the Giant sticker, New York 2010 17
1.4 Kripoe, Berlin 2010 20
1.5 Memorial tag for Dick Nose, Melbourne 2012 22
1.6 Pure Evil, London 2009 26
1.7 JR, London 2008 38
2.1 El Bocho, Berlin 2010 47
2.2 Miso, Melbourne 2010 54
3.1 Faile, New York 2011 66
3.2 Elbow-Toe, New York 2010 67
3.3 L’Atlas, Paris 2010 70
3.4 Everfresh, Melbourne 2009 73
3.5 Just, Berlin 2010 75
3.6 Invader, Rome 2010 86
3.7 Laser 3.14, Amsterdam 2008 88
3.8 Swoon, London 2011 90
4.1 Eine, London 2009 105
5.1 Ghostpatrol, Melbourne 2013 134
6.1 Mobstr, London 2012 153
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Acknowledgements
My encounters with individuals in the world of street art have been charac -
terised by the great generosity of those I have met. Street art is often located
within the economy of the gift, through which an artist creates an image and
places it in public space, to be viewed at no cost by anyone who passes by; to
that extent, generosity is a defining feature of street art. But it’s never
something that should be taken for granted, or forgotten, and so I’d like to
note here at the outset of this book how indebted I am to the many, many
people who gave up their time to speak with me, walk the city with me, send
me links and images, and refer me on to other individuals. I could not have
carried out this research without the fundamental generosity of these
individuals with their time, ideas, words and images. So my primary thanks
are to all of you who helped me in many ways: Alexone, Fletcher Anderson,
Acoris Andipa, L’Atlas, Banksy, Blék le Rat, Kai Brethouwer, Garrison
Buxton, C215, Cake, CDH, Civil, Satta Van Daal, Dave the Chimp, Dcide
Now, Deadly Knitshade, Dora Dewsbery, D*Face, Ad Deville, Disturbanity,
the Doctor, Brad Downey, Adrian Doyle, Dscreet, Eine, El Bocho, Luca
Borriello, Elbow-Toe, Lorraine Ellis, Emess, Jean Faucheur, John Fekner,
Thierry Froger, Ellis Gallagher, Ann Genovese, Samuel and Joseph Genovese-
Ronfeldt, Ghostpatrol, Ha-Ha, Mark Halsey, Steven Harrington, Logan
Hicks, Mark Holsworth, Russell Howze, Nasser Hussain, Nick Ilton, Ingo,
Kurt Iveson, Jaybo Monk, Adeline Jeudy, JR, Just, Kaff-eine, Andrew King,
Johann Lanzenauer, Steve Lazarides, Patrick Lerouge, Cedar Lewisohn,
Anthony Lister, Ian Loader, Clare Long, Samantha Longhi, Andy Mac, Mary
McCarthy, Lachlan MacDowall, Fiona MacKinnon, Shaun McVeigh, Tristan
Manco, Mare139, Meggs, Angelo Milano, Esther Milne, Miso, Miss.Tic,
MOMO, Alan Montgomery, Adrian Nabi, Nails, Sandy Nairne, Jeff Newman,
Patrick Nguyen, Nikos Papastergiadis, Luna Park, Arnaud Oliveux, Ollie,
Giuseppe Ottavianelli, José Parlá, Chris and Pam Pascuzzi, Alice Pasquini,
Brice Pericard, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Pisa 73, Sandra Powell,
Pure Evil, Puzle, James Reka, Marc Rigney, Roa, Jaime Rojo, Rone, Paul
Ronfeldt, Remi Rough, Christian Ruggiero, Peter Rush, RJ Rushmore,
Léanne Sacramone, Marc and Sara Schiller, Anton Schutz, Jordan Seiler,