Hip Hop Art (Street Art / Graffitti)

HIP HOP ART (STREET ART / GRAFFITTI) 1. Hip Hop Hip-hop is a form of popular culture which started among young black people in the United States in the 1980s. It includes rap music and graffiti art (including writing) and breakdance. Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army by scat singing the made-up words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into his stage performance. 2. Street art Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. Common forms and media include spray paint graffiti, stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art, sticker art, street installations, and sculpture. Video projection has also gained some popularity near the turn of the 21st century. Street art is a form of artwork that is displayed in a community on its surrounding buildings, streets, trains, and other publicly viewed surfaces. Many instances come in the form of guerrilla art, which is composed to make a public statement about the society that the artist lives within. Slogans of protest and political or social commentary graffitied onto public walls are the precursor to modern graffiti and street art, and continue as one aspect of the genre. Some credit the “Kilroy Was Here” graffiti of the World War II era as one such early example. As the 1980s progressed, a shift occurred from text-based works (writing) of early in the decade to visually conceptual street art such as Hambleton’s shadow figures. This period coincides with Keith Haring’s subway advertisement subversions and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s SAMO tags. The northwest wall of the intersection at Houston Street and the Bowery in New York City has been a target of artists since the 1970s. The site, now sometimes referred to as the Bowery Mural, originated as a derelict wall which graffiti artists used freely. Some of the anti-museum mentality can be attributed to the ideology of Marinetti who in 1909 wrote the “Manifesto of Futurism” with a quote that reads, “we will destroy all the museums”. Many street artists claim we do not live in a museum so art should be in public places with no tickets. 3. Writing and Wild Style Some people consider writing as the starting point of the street art. It consisted initially of writing his/her name on a wall as a narcissistic sign or track of his/her passage in a place. Wild Style is a complicated and intricate form of graffiti. Usually, this form of graffiti incorporates interwoven and overlapping letters and shapes. It may include arrows, spikes and other decorative elements depending on the technique used. 4. Graffiti Etymology:”Graffiti” is from the Italian word graffiato (“scratched”). “Graffiti” is applied in art history to works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. Graffiti is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and it has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (Catacombs of Rome or at Pompei), but even before in prehistoric rock engravings (in France and in Africa the oldest). Origins A. Petrogliphs (rock engravings) Lascaux cave (France – the age of the paintings is estimated at around 17,000 years) Laas Gaal cave (Somalia – Africa – estimated to date between 9,000 and 3,000 years BC) We find Petrogliphs examples even in Sardinia in many Domus de Janas Oniferi tombs (2700 B.C.) Montessu tombs (3rd millenium B.C.) B. Muralism Muralism is a art movement born in Mexico after the Mexican revolution in 1910. Murales in Mexico – Presencia de América latina Murales in Sardinia Murales in Orgosolo, San Sperate, Tinnura, San Gavino e Burcei 5. Street Artists: Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, Banksi and Mani Invisible Keith Haring (1958 – 1990) Keith Haring is one of the key members of a group of avant-garde New York- based artists who helped to redefine the boundaries of Modern art in the 1980s. His work run parallel to that of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and other 1980s artists and engages with a variety of media and techniques, such as drawing, painting, body art, graffiti. Haring produced monumental public works that contributed to bringing recognition to Street art and to its entrance into museums. Haring’s signature style is based on abstract, stylized forms worked into interlocking human figures and tightly arranged patterns. He used few basic colors in hyper-saturated hues, applied as flat areas of paint and shaped into thick silhouettes. He gave his works a distinctively graphic, cartoonish quality and relied on repetitive motifs in creating a visual commentary of both his private experiences and the larger culture of his time. Haring, indeed, sought inspiration for his artistic practice in the popular culture that surrounded him, from New York’s hip-hop scene to Disney’s cartoons, and also engaged with the main social and political issues of his time, such as the AIDS epidemic, South African apartheid, and the American conservative politics of the 1890s. Jean Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988) Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip- hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Basquiat’s art focused on “suggestive dichotomies“, such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a “springboard to deeper truths about the individual”, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism, while his poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle. Basquiat’s art has inspired many in the hip hop music community. Banksi Banksy is one of the world’s most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today’s society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. He often draws in high visibility public places such as on buildings or train stations. His paintings are often about politics, war and other important topics. His satirical street art and mind-hurting pictures combine dark humour with graffiti. Street Art in Sardinia: Manu Invisible Il suo percorso artistico affonda le radici negli studi sul lettering (studio di nuovi caratteri: lettere, numeri e punteggiatura con una particolare forma), primo campo di esplorazione, per poi abbracciare l’arte figurativa in un continuo intrecciarsi di sperimentazione e ricerca stilistica. Dapprima è conosciuto per le firme propagandistiche comparse in diverse città d’Europa, per poi essere il marchio Manu Invisible associato a graffiti e opere di street art. Il filo conduttore del suo percorso artistico è la tendenza alla comunicazione e alla propaganda di temi di interesse sociale, nell’azione e nel messaggio; proveniente da un background legato al mondo della street-art e del muralismo, predilige mantenere l’anonimato indossando una maschera nera da lui stesso disegnata, ispirata alla geometria e ai colori della notte, suo momento di maggiore ispirazione. Diplomato al Liceo Artistico Foiso Fois di Cagliari, ha svolto negli anni diversi lavori su commissione per enti pubblici, aziende multinazionali, istituti di credito e scolastici. .

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