Walking around your town, prison yard or agricultural commune, you may have noticed strange stickers clinging to lampposts or the sides of buildings. You may have noticed them in several places and then been surprised when you kept seeing them again. These strange images – like Shepard Fairey’s “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” sticker campaign and Invader’s Space Invader-inspired “Invader” mosaics – are examples of Street Art. An underground art movement whose chief accomplishment seems to have been to prompt millions of bemused passers by to snort dismissively and ask ‘what’s the point of that then?’ But of course, this is an entirely legitimate question.
At a time when artists garner more critical attention by cutting up dead animals and sticking elephant dung to canvases, questions surrounding the purpose of art and the dividing line between the artistic and the non-artistic have never been more pressing : Is it supposed to be decorative? Is it supposed to make us think? Is it supposed to shock us? Are traditional art forms more useful than these modern forms? Is it supposed to make us ask questions like these?
The problem in part is that there is no clear frame of reference that allows us to begin answering these questions and even if there were, artists would go out of their way to deconstruct it : Art is decorative. Art is inspiring. Art is beautiful. Art is meaningful : Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.
Street Art’s reliance upon mass production and recycled imagery makes it particularly prone to these kinds of questions. In fact, these kinds of questions seem to be the motivating force behind Banksy’s documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop (2009), but as we shall see it is not only stickers on walls that invite these kinds of questions as once you start asking them, it is difficult to stop.
Ruthless Culture 
