The Canvas of the City

Imagine you are walking down the streets of a crowded city, think New York, London or São Paulo, you feel the heat of the crowd, its noisy, everybody is moving fast, but if you stop for a second and look around you, you might notice that the walls have something on them. For a long time this paintings and arts that are exposed in the streets were considered vandalism and did not get much recognition in the art world, but recently this has been known as Urban Art. Urban comes from the latin word "urbanus" which means from the city meaning Urban Art is art from the city the art of the people, the art that the city brings with it. Urban Art is a way for people to express themselves and send their message across, a way for young artist to have a voice in the world and feel like they are making a change in the world. For example this piece of art is in Coney Island, NY made from a recognized street artist called Banksy a recognized anonymous street artist, in this particular piece he is trying to tell the message that we are all just robots doing the exact same thing in the world, in other words he is saying society are robots that just follow their leader and do not have a voice for themselves. So basically Urban Art is art exposed and displayed in the streets of cities were artists can express themselves and give a message to their followers weather it is anonymous or not. 

Works Cited

Banksy Street Art, Coney Island, New York, USA. Personal photograph by author. 2013.

"Urban Art." What Is. Osnat Fine Art, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.osnatfineart.com/urban-art.jsp>.

Ward, Ossian. "How Graffiti Became Art." Time Out. Time Out, 29 Jan. 2008. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.timeout.com/london/art/how-graffiti-became-art>.