街头艺术, you are not street enough.

Yesterday my friend Lulu excitedly showed me a copy of something called The Street Art Colouring Book. As the name suggests, it’s a book of black and white graffiti images that the reader is encouraged to color with some crayons that come along with it. She thinks that the book (recently released in China) will be a good way for unfamiliar people to gain interest and appreciation for “street art”. But as a person who spent large chunks of his teen years vandalizing, I was nearly driven to tears by the merciless corniness of the whole enterprise.

The street art book seems to be a red hot item in the People’s Republic these days. Every graphic designer I’ve ever met here has at least three in his office. All the ones I’ve seen are translations of western editions that usually focus on Banksy-type stencils or Shepard Fairey-style wheat paste posters or (rarely) actual spray can graffiti from someone like Twist. You can clearly see the aesthetic (rough, drippy, ironic, etc.) effecting design here, but in a kind of harmless, bland way, sort of like the visual equivalent of a karaoke instrumental. And, with the exception of the very cool but now decade-old demolition-bombing of Zhang Dali, there doesn’t seem to be any actual street art on any of Beijing’s actual streets.

So… I invested a good 30 seconds to hardcore pondering this problematic and came to the conclusion that street art just ain’t street enough. It’s too disconnected, too easy to transplant onto a t-shirt or a flyer or some similarly worthless piece of shit item. So to bring the focus back to what really matters, here’s a little review of artists from around the globe who are keeping it really really street….

São Paulo, Brasil: 6EMEIA

Montréal, Canada: Roadsworth

Drachten, The Netherlands: Henk Hofstra

Washington DC, USA: Mark Jenkins

London, UK: Slinkachu

New York, USA: Kellotron

Prague, Czech Republic: Bog Art

Bloomington, USA: ???

Leicestershire, UK: Julian Beever

Las Vegas, USA: Kurt Wenner

Becheln, Germany: Edgar Müller and Manfred Stader

Barcelona, Spain: Dixon AKA Juan Carlos Noria

Everywhere, Japan: Manhole Manga

This is thrown together quickly and on little sleep. But I did make a point of listening to The Streets while I made this, if that counts for anything. If I’ve missed some good ones, please let me know…

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