The traditional path to art world notoriety has usually included art school followed by showings in galleries, and being noticed and collected by well-known art patrons and eventually museums, with the accompanying media attention to keep it all going. Urban art has by all accounts turned this system on its head and instead of artists praying to start out in galleries they are finding their audience first, literally, out in the open, on the street. From there, with the masses telegraphing their preferences via the internet, the attention-getting artwork then moves into the galleries.
Artists' long-held frustration at often not being able to have their work seen in galleries has, in the case of Urban Art, found an outlet in having unlimited audiences able to view their art, thus propelling it into the galleries. In February, 2008 when Bono's Red auction was held in New York it was Banksy's work that set new price records even in the rarified company of work from some of the art world's most lauded producers. The Tate Modern in London, the world's most visited Modern Art Museum, in May hosted 'Street Art,' an exhibition during which an entire side of its building was utilized by Urban artists.
As accessibility has driven the meteoric rise of Urban Art sales worldwide, the availability of emerging artists' work on facilitating mechanism that is the internet will eventually yield the same trajectory.
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Although the Tate's show was timely and highlighted "street art" as a curiosity, it doesn't really mean that the art world has been turned on its head. The structures and powerbases are still in place and although a few (like Banksy) will become household names, it's too early to tell whether this is going to be just a fad. Graffiti artists have been around for an awful long time (see Brassai's work on Graffiti about 60 - 70 years ago) so I'm not sure that it is finally being discovered as much as that 1 or 2 exceptional artists have cleverly masterminded their own meteoric rise to fame and success in the marketplace.
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