Street Art VS Graffiti

Banksy’s rise to fame amazed me. Overnight, Exit Through the Gift Shop transformed him from an anonymous graffiti artist into one of the best known artists of the generation.

Wait, he’s not a graffiti artist? He’s a street artist? What’s the difference? Recognition? I wonder if, in the eyes of someone who doesn’t know who or what a Banksy is, there is any distinction?

I asked a friend, an Australian street artist that goes by the moniker Adol, to explain the definition to me. He wasn’t sure. “I’ve taken gigs where the client’s asked me to ‘graffiti-up’ their building, and done the same kind of work I’ve done for people who’ve hired me as a street artist. Nobody’s complained yet.”

Adol and Banksy are artists, undeniably, but the public manner in which their work is displayed has been creating both cultural and legal conundrums that date back to the ancient Egypt and Roman empires.

More recently, Brisbane street artist Anthony Lister was found guilty of wilful damage graffiti and fined over the incident. Lister is one of the country’s best known contemporary artists, and has been creating street art for two decades. His work is iconic – the magistrate affirmed as much – and inoffensive, yet was branded as graffiti. “There is something wrong with the law if what I do is deemed graffiti and I’m guilty of damaging something I intended to make beautiful,” Lister said outside court.

Lister obviously considered his intentions a crucial factor in defining his work as street art, yet the point seems invalid. Graffiti artists place in much stock in the quality of their work as any street artist.

Except for a certain type of graffiti artist.

In local Collingwood, the city council and energy supplier Citipower have recently commissioned street artists to produce a piece for the walls of the Collingwood power substation. One of the artists, Shaun Hossack, is the Creative Director of award winning art company Juddy Roller. He told community newsletter Just Yarra “A collaboration of this kind is so rare that street artists will protect it”.

When he says that, he is, of course, talking about protecting it from those who would deface the work, or turn it into something offensive. This kind of graffiti artist is rare, but their vandalism tends to attract the most attention for obvious reasons.

Perhaps, then, the distinction is not found in the art, but the attitude. Street art, as a term, has the ability to dislocate those whose work is either commissioned or created for aesthetic purposes from those who set out to interfere with the work of others.

If this is the idea, maybe it explains why so many governments and companies around the world have been commissioning street artists to creating the kind of work they were tearing down not so long ago.

Whatever the case, if it’s good for the art, it’s good for all of us.

What do you think the difference between graffiti and street art is? Let us know in the comments.