Street artists have been making waves in the mainstream art world in recent years
Just minutes after the hammer came down on the winning bid of £1.04m at a Sotheby’s auction in London last October, British street artist Banksy remotely sent his Girl with Balloon painting through a shredder concealed within the frame. As far as pranks go—even by the elusive artist’s standards—this surprise intervention will go down in the annals of art history. The buyer of “the first piece of live performance art sold at auction” (later renamed Love is in the Bin) went ahead with the purchase, calling it her “own piece of art history”.
Such is the creative audacity of street art, which has steadily gained mainstream influence and rising interest in the commercial market among collectors in recent years. “Street art is gaining momentum and attention as a serious collecting genre, much like impressionism or abstract expressionism, when only a few years ago, it was considered a form of subculture that only a small community in certain parts of the world responded to,” notes Ning Chong, founder of boutique art gallery, The Culture Story.
To prove the investment worthiness of this contemporary art genre, Chong cites the recent Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong from the personal collection of Japanese streetwear entrepreneur Tomoaki Nagao. The sale in April set a new auction record for American street artist Kaws, whose 2005 painting, The Kaws Album, fetched US$14.8m. All 33 artworks and collectibles, which included those by street artists Futura and Stash, were sold above their estimates, for a total of US$28m.
The street art movement’s roots can be traced to 1970s and ’80s New York, where pioneer artists such as Futura, Dondi White, Coco144, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat worked their aerosol sprays on sidewalks, street hoardings and subway stations, spreading anti-establishment ideologies, often in political or social protest. Most of them incorporated elements of graffiti into their work, through stylised lettering, often bearing their name or moniker, and were influenced by the emergence of hip-hop, rap and street fashion. Then there are those who pioneered a totally different style—Futura is one of them.
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