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Behind the rising popularity in recent decades of street art as an effective method for artists, and as a target for galleries, dealers, and collectors are artists such as [Jean-Michel Basquiat|http://basquiat.com/] and [Keith Haring|http://www.haring.com/], who were at the "forefront" of the street art movement ([Michael Carter|http://www.gallerywalk.org/Street_Studio.html], _The Studio in the Street/The Street in the Studio_). They made celebrated, successful transitions to the established gallery scene, becoming icons seemingly overnight and, tragically, vanishing just as quickly. The fleeting quality of their lives mirrors that of street art itself, and it is precisely the ephemera of the craft that continues to draw artists. [Explains street artist Roger Gastman |http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/05/25/graffiti-takes-on-high-art/]in the _Wall Street Journal_: "I'd say 99 percent of the work \[in a [book|http://www.amazon.com/History-American-Graffiti-Roger-Gastman/dp/0061698784] he has compiled of graffiti art\] is not there anymore, but there will always be new work. In a way, that's part of the art."

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Three years later, the debate continues. The opening of the MoCA exhibition "Art in the Streets," which runs through August 8, has spawned both a flurry of graffiti art in the area and a concomitant crackdown by law enforcement, reports the Wall Street Journal. Retna, an artist whose work is featured in the exhibit and who calls himself a "graffiti writer" and mural artist – specifically not a "street artist" – told me in a phone interview on Wednesday, points out that the "negative press" generated by the entry of street and graffiti art into museums and galleries, much of it the result of the reality that the "art" is also a crime, suggests that we can't look to this development as undiluted evidence that street art has entered the arena of respectability. True, Retna concedes, he and other graffiti writers have achieved success in establishments within the art market and the art world – he shows in galleries and museums in Hong Kong, Miami, New York City, London, and Los Angeles. But "for every ten new supporters, we still gain new people against it. Publicity goes both ways."

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http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mcgee/

http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2008/05/keith_haring_redux.html^{Image Removed}