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

Abstract

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.What is street art? Who is the street artist? Why is street art a crime?Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination engages with those parad..