1. Urban art
By Thaddeus O’Connor-Dunphie
In recent years street art has grown bolder, more ornate, more sophisticated and in many cases more acceptable. Yet unsanctioned public art remains the problem child of cultural expression, the last outlaw of visual disciplines. It has also become a global phenomenon of the 21st century.

2. What is Urban Art
Urban art is a style of art that relates to cities and city life often done by artists who live in or have a passion for city life. In that way urban art combines street art and graffiti and is used to summarize visual art forms arising in urban areas, being inspired by urban architecture or urban live style.
Because the urban arts are characterized by existing in the public space, they are often viewed as vandalism and destruction of private property. Even though sometimes this form of art leads to vandalism the creators do not see themselves as vandals.
Although urban art started at the neighbourhood level, where a lot of people of different cultures live together, it is an international art form with an unlimited number of uses nowadays. A lot urban artists are travelling from city to city and have social contacts all over the world.
Urban art is primarily concerned with graffiti culture. Urban art represents a broader cross section of artists that as well as covering traditional street artists working in formal gallery spaces also covers artists using more traditional media but with a subject matter that deals with contemporary urban culture and political issues.

4. The history of urban art
Some of the earliest expressions of street art were certainly the graffiti which started showing up on the sides of train carts and walls. This was the work of gangs in the 1920s and 1930s New York. The impact of this was extraordinarily felt in the 1970s and 1980s. This cultural movement was recorded in the book The History of American Graffiti, by Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon. These decades were a significant turning point in the history of street art. It was a time when young people, by responding to their socio-political environment, started creating a movement, taking the “battle for meaning” into their own hands. Soon, the attention and respect in the “grown-up” world. From the fingers and cans of teenagers it had taken a form of true artistic expression. One of the most respected names in the field of documenting street art and artists, who would gladly testify to this, is photographer Martha Cooper. Soon enough, photographs weren’t the only medium for capturing and “displacing” street art into different contexts. Essentially an illegal activity, a process of creation through destruction began it’s ascend and evolution into numerous forms of artistic expression which found it’s way to galleries and the global art market. Although still subversive, and in it’s large part an illegal movement, through art enthusiasts and professionals, street art earned it’s place in the contemporary art world.