Walk: Via Capitelli, Via Croche, Via S Biagio dei Librai, Via Duomo, Via del Tribunali, Via Pietro a Maiella, Via Port'Alba, Piazza Dante, via Toledo. 
Naples has a very vibrant and active street art scene. The walls, trains, roads, statues are all covered in a layer of spayed on semiotics.
Graffiti - the term comes from both the Greek term "Graphein" meaning 'to write' and the word 'graffiti' is plural of the Italian word "Graffito" meaning 'scratch' and its history can be dated back to prehistoric cave man wall drawings, it can be seen as a human 'need' for communication - "Graffiti represents man's desire to communicate"
Dick Hebdige calls it "symbolic forms of resistance" (subculture and the meaning of style)
"'You're mad,' cried one, 'it is not art, it is never art.'
'No,' said the other, 'I think it's valid'
"graffiti is a kick in the face to the gallery/museum system, where the artist is pimped like a whore for the capitalist system, made into another commodity for people to buy...graffiti art is free for all to come and view, no-one can own it, it belongs to all of us"
I like the notion of graffiti being oggled by all for free.....but is it the fact of being illegal & chaotic and de-facing something else that makes it attractive? You naughty, naughty girl! If the same image was mounted on a wall in an "ART SPACe" free for all & sundry to view ....??????
ReplyDeletewhat about jean-michel Basquiat as an example of street art turned high art? its a bit lame-o but shows the same image being on the street and in the gallery "SAMO as an end 2 playing art with the 'radical chic' on Daddy's$funds". Its not just the illegality, its the message- that expression can and should be free to everyone. That the streets of the city belong to the people of the city. Street art allows greater access to 'viewing' space than any gallery can every claim to- it creates an equity.
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