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Street art, known in some quarters as graffiti, experienced a proliferation in recent decades with the rise of alternative and multicultural social and political movements in the 1960s and a growing interest among socially conscious artists to increase public accessibility to art. The method goes back millennia, but we can trace its most immediate origins, perhaps, to the New Deal murals created in the 1930 and 1940s by artists employed in the Federal Art Project commissioned by the Works Progress Administration. The tradition continued in the 1960s and early 1970s, when communities of marginalized citizens, inspired by the Black Arts Movement, rallied to create public murals, such as the Chicago "Wall of Respect," produced by hundreds of African-Americans on Chicago's beleaguered South Side, using art as an instrument of collective self-empowerment and as part of a larger movement for social justice. Street art has a long history of drawing art out of the exclusive and cloistered realm of high-brow culture and into arenas where more people can participate in its creation, appreciation, and social and political ramifications. It is not surprising, of course, that what garners widespread attention is going to be susceptible to commercial exploitation. In tandem with its rise in the public profile, street art icons and symbols have been pursued and snatched up by various sectors of the advertising and retail world. At the same time, street artists have become desired entities in the aforementioned high-brow art world, their art appearing in galleries around the world, as well as in the most exclusive and profitable auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's. The art has also begun in recent years to enter museums – a phenomenon which has helped to raise its level of prestige and status as a respectable art form and which, consequently, has infused it with more economic value on the art market in which Sotheby's and Christie's are such major players.

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Basquiat, a black artist from a working-class family, began what became a successful career sketching images around New York City in the late 1970s under the tag name "SAMO." In his early drawings, he "transformed his own observations" about life around him "into pithy text messages inscribed on the edifices of the urban environment," according to his biographer, Fred Hoffman. This method "became the basis for his early artistic output," characterized by an effort to "distill" an idea, passion, observation, or perception "down to its core." In 1979, he began to sell "hand-painted" T-shirts and postcards, according to the Brooklyn Museum's chronology of his life.

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"Attracted by the wild-style energy, outlaw glamour, and public accessibility of the graffiti underground, many formally trained young artists in the early 1980s were inspired to work outside the rarified studio-gallery continuum, experimenting and 'tagging' alongside the graffitists on subway station platforms and urban wall space" (Carter).

Elements of the stunted but fruitful career of Keith Haring, who died of AIDS in 1990, shed light on many of the issues and questions that can be raised by the relationship between street art and the art market. Haring devoted much of his life to "public works," many of which "carried social messages," according to the biography on his web site. After dropping out of commercial art school because he wanted to create art "for the people" (Haring, "Art in Transit"), he moved to New York City and began to draw "in white chalk on blank paper panels throughout the subway station," according to the biography on his web site. He created hundreds of these "public drawings," soon referred to as the "subway drawings" and consisting of "rapid rhythmic lines," between 1980 and 1985, and came to be known as the "subway artist." By 1989 Haring had "achieved international recognition and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions," writes the web site biographer, but he continued to be concerned first and foremost with exposing broad ranges of people to art. Haring wrote:

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Wiki Markup

It was this experience that propelled Haring to open the [Pop Shop|http://www.pop-shop.com/drupal/?utm_source=haring&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=haring-home] in 1986. A retail store located in New York City's [SoHo District|http://www.sohonyc.com/], the Pop Shop sold "T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons, magnets," and other paraphernalia "bearing \[Haring's\] images." Haring looked upon his shop as "an extension of his work" and his philosophy: it was "intended to allow people greater access to his work, which was now readily available on products at a low cost," explains his web site biographer. It was a place where "not only collectors could come, but also kids from the [Bronx|http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.02d9ee26d69924f6a62fa24601c789a0]" ([Jade Dellinger|http://www.amazon.com/Jade-Dellinger/e/B002YRFBNS], ["Art and Commerce"|http://www.haring.com/cgi-bin/essays.cgi?essay_id=15]). The Pop Shop was subject to criticism from those in the art world who questioned whether it represented a turn toward the commercialization of art. But in that respect it was hardly different from high-end galleries and auctions -- except for the demographical constitution of the population it catered to. Haring maintained that the aesthetic quality of his work was not compromised with the opening of the Pop Shop, noting that "\[it\] was less about 'purity' and much more an issue of integrity" -- and the intention behind the Pop Shop fell comfortably in line with his sense of integrity.

Of course, Haring did participate in the aforementioned high-end domain of the art world and its market. His art was and is available for extravagant prices in the most exclusive art galleries and auction houses. As Michael Gross of the New York Times noted, "Mr. Haring used to offer his art free on subway walls. Now he sells it for five-figure sums" (quoted in Dellinger). Indeed, the subway art was what made him famous and gained him critical acclaim: they were "murals-in-motion to the cognoscenti," writes Carter. But Haring continued in his conviction that all of his actions, and his resulting success in the art market, fulfilled only his objective of reaching as wide an audience as possible. He made a video for MTV, created vodka ads, designed anti-drug and AIDS-awareness campaigns, and sold his art in multiple galleries. But the more successful he became, he maintained, the more people would be exposed to his art. The art market and commitment to social justice are not necessarily mutually exclusive but are, at times, according to theories of the "democratization of culture" (Marcia Tucker in Dellinger, "Art and Commerce"), interdependent. Haring "understood his role in merging" art and commerce as "a combination of Inc. and ink" (Dellinger, "Art and Commerce").

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Museum Exhibitions and Gallery ShowsShowcases

The most recent development in street art is its entry into museums. Participation in museum exhibition confers a certain respect and prestige upon works of art that suggest an enhancement of status as recognized, quality work. The appearance of works by little-known as well as already-established artists in exhibitions such as "Street Art" at the Tate Modern in London in 2008 and "Art in the Street" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MoCA), which has already drawn thousands of viewers since its opening on June 13, 2011, underscores the rising prominence of graffiti as an accepted form of 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/

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