Observations on public art
Graffiti is the most prolific - and enduring - genre of public art. Although its association with vandalism tainted its early modern life, it is rapidly being accepted as a genuine form of art, exhibited in museums and even coming under the high-class hammer at Sotheby's in recent years.
But there are other kinds of street art, made by a new generation that is finding novel ways of making its mark. Last year, the artist "Slink" left a Hansel-and-Gretel trail of art around London. Walking around the capital, the 26-year-old left more than 50 miniature dolls on street corners, at traffic lights and in other places where they would be noticed only by those who glanced in their direction.
Slink went on to place his tiny dolls around Manchester, and then Barcelona and Amsterdam, in the hope of waking passers-by from zombie-like inattention to their surroundings. The dolls - about the size of a thumb but intricately detailed - have long since been swept away or eaten, but the artist is still at work distributing new diminutive items.
Slink is part of a growing trend of anonymous street art projects. Last year, New Yorkers were puzzled to wake up to a number of artistic additions to their road crossings. Instead of the minimalist red and green men, the lit figures at pedestrian crossings were adorned with handbags, shoes, hats and complicated items of clothing.
The endeavours clearly amuse, but their definition as art is hotly debated. What is the aim behind such works? Like graffiti, they offer the opportunity for anyone to "exhibit" work and tend to focus on statement rather than aesthetics. And although graffiti artists identify themselves with tags, personal fame is self-evidently not a priority. Britain's most famous graffiti artist, Banksy, has hidden his real identity despite the global reach of his work, while Slink and the New York dressers have been particularly elusive to interested critics and journalists.
The messages of these kinds of public art deliver more than simple opinions, and are often intended to be socially emancipating. In the United States, the ubiquity of graffiti in downtown neighbourhoods such as Brooklyn proves how useful a way it is for underprivileged citizens to express themselves.
In Northern Ireland, loyalist and republican murals served a political purpose, while the Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti, political and personal and cultural.
For Slink, street art is also a social experiment. "I want to encourage people to look around, at the city, at the things around them," he told an Italian newspaper last month. "Adults pay no attention to their surroundings. We walk around as if we were blind."
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