User:NailsONeil/sandbox

Guerilla artist is someone who creates unsanctioned visual displays; painted, stenciled, or wheat pasted onto street objects such as subway cars, building walls, and street posts.  Born from the 1970’s urban environment of the South Bronx an imperceptible movement of creativity and anti-authoritarian artwork took hold.  The canvas at that time was the multitude of subway cars that ran under, over and through the city.  The artists were the disaffected inner-city youth looking to express themselves as society had closed off the normal avenues to the arts.  The hostility was apparent in the graffiti as well as the music known as hip hop which both juxtaposed each other and became the tools that defined that generation. The authorities at the time were taken off guard but there was much discourse of disdain.  It was deemed vandalism, destruction of public property, or even worse. It was called delinquent and anti-societal.  The guerilla artists did not know each other personally yet they all seemed to be saying, “We are here.  We will not be ignored”.

There is a fork in the road between two-dimensional and three-dimensional street art but the underlying premises remain the same.   Just as a wine connoisseur can seem to talk about all the differences between the liquids, the essence of the message always comes back to the grape.  The backplane is electrified by social dissent and is exhibited beyond the control of museums or galleries.  The meaning of Guerilla Art can best be associated with its borrowed namesake, Guerilla War: little battles waged by untrained soldiers beyond the conventions of state control.  The launching pad of the article describes the surreptitious and overnight appearance of an unsanctioned sculpture of Edward Snowden onto a column in Forte Greene Park in New York.  The article uses this incident as a symbol to describe the latest manifestation of Street Art, ‘Guerilla Sculpture’.  It is gaining in pace not only in New York but throughout all the major cities of the world. 

The author, Sisko, plainly exhibits an intimate grasp of the subject and also expresses opinions about the necessity of Free Speech in a global world.  He emphasizes his call for artists to relinquish their desire to be anonymous and take responsibility for their artistic works.  It appears that anyone who is interested in the evolution of Street Art cannot disregard the advent of this new incarnation.  It was a service that the author has brought to us all; for shining a light on Guerilla Sculpture and the impact it is having.

I know this article is just the first for me regarding the sculpture aspect and I will expand my research.  I just got a taste of this new art-form and find that the artists not only use disdain to represent political dissent but are also adept at using humor.  In many cases the sculptures integrate two dimensional backdrops so there is a hybrid of installations that we can learn more about.  What is next on the horizon for Guerilla Art?

****************************************May use this ****************************** Guerilla Sculpture  There is a fork in the road between two-dimensional and three-dimensional street art but the underlying premises remain the same.  Just as a wine connoisseur can seem to talk about all the differences between the liquids, the essence of the message always comes back to the grape.  And so it is true for the relationship between Street Art and Guerilla Sculpture.  The backplane is electrified by social dissent and is exhibited beyond the control of museums or galleries.  The meaning of Guerilla Sculpture can best be associated with its borrowed namesake, Guerilla War: little battles waged by untrained soldiers beyond the conventions of state control.  A renown example was the surreptitious and overnight appearance of an unsanctioned sculpture of Edward Snowden onto a column in Forte Greene Park in New York.  This incident is a symbol that describe the latest manifestation of Street Art, ‘Guerilla Sculpture’.  It is gaining in pace not only in New York but throughout all the major cities of the world.  It appears that anyone who is interested in the evolution of Street Art cannot disregard the advent of this new incarnation.  This is a shining a light on Guerilla Sculpture and the impact it is having.  In other cases the sculptures integrate two dimensional backdrops so there is a hybrid of installations. This manifestation would incorporate a two-dimensional drawing on a wall with a three-dimensional sculpture in the forefront.  As an example, Banksy created just such a mixture of street art and sculpture with a piece called “Spy Booth” in 2014.  The backdrop had a painting of cold-war era style spy characters with microphones and 50’s era tape decks.  In the front of this was an old decrepit phone booth; a real phone booth.  It appeared as it the spies were monitoring this old phone booth with their equipment. The trench coats, soft hats and antiquated accouterments exposed the daftness of the enterprise.  The pivotal lark may have also been attributed to its close proximity to the English Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) which is the main listening base for British Intelligence.  This and many street artists mix their art into politics and do so camouflaged for the subjective eye; vis-à-vis Global Surveillance. Street art will continue to incorporate sculpture as standalone objects or assimilated with painting as expressions of the artist.  Sculpture will endure prolifically in the museum of the street. 

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