Art in the Streets

 
Is Banksy a brilliant social commentator, an artist or a criminal? His 2010 Oscar nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop doesn’t answer these questions, but it takes viewers on a wild ride through the history of street art in Europe and America. Just when it seems like a stylish contemporary documentary, the film switches gears to focus on a fascinating pseudo artist named Thierry Guetta, or as he prefers to be called, Mr. Brainwash. Any doubt or suspicion the audience may have about street art is personified in the manic Frenchman. I don’t know if the film is real or a satire, but I loved watching it. 
 

 

I wasn’t the only one interested in learning more about these artists. When the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) made the controversial decision in April 2011 to hire New York gallerist Jeffery Deitch to lead the museum, he made a bet that street art would put the struggling museum on the map. 

I visited the Street Art exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in June 2011. It was housed in a cavernous space in downtown Los Angeles. I found it visually overwhelming and in order to take it all in, I wish I had more than the few hours I spent there. Unlike many museum exhibits, photography was allowed and it seemed that everyone was taking pictures.

This is how the museum described the event:
“Art in the Streets is the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art. The exhibition traces the development of graffiti and street art from the 1970s to the global movement it has become today, concentrating on key cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Sao Paulo, where a unique visual language or attitude has evolved. The exhibition features paintings, mixed media sculptures, and interactive installations by fifty of the most dynamic artists and emphasizes Los Angeles's role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with special sections dedicated to seminal local movements such as cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture.”