About Montreal Street Art / Art Urbain de Montréal
A group for your local sublime stencils, magnificent stickers, elegant posters, graceful graffitis (...)
Only try to post your best/most interesting pictures.
Avoid annoying tags and boring throw-ups.
I found this great summary of 'what is street art?' in a review of the new Banksy film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, on the website www.pajiba.com/. It was written by Seth Freilich.
here is the original article: part 1 part 2
Street art is a curious thing. It’s art where there’s not “supposed” to be art. Generally illegal, often subversive, and usually temporary, street art is capable of offering the type of quick glimpse at an honest moment in time that typical gallery/museum art often eschews and/or is incapable of. To be sure, there’s graffiti that amounts to nothing more than ugly vandalism, gang tagging, stupid teenagers with too much time on their hands, etc. But there’s also graffiti (and stencils, stickers, etc.) which rises above thoughtless self-indulgence, intending to make an activist statement, to offer a derisive jab at some aspect of society, or maybe just to pretty things up. Street art is a beautiful and fascinating aspect of the art world often ignored by the mainstream and looked down upon by the artistic elite.
