Argumentative Essay Street Art

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In ‘Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces’ Riggle presents his theory of the conditions in which an artwork can be considered ‘street art’. One of the most important of his points being "An artwork is street art if, and only if, its material use of the street is internal to its meaning” (246). Riggle also presents a series of conditions for art to be considered street art. These are conditions are:
1. The art is open to being destroyed, stolen, defaced etc.
2. The artist relinquishes any claim over the works integrity
3. The meaning of the art is comprised when moved from street
4. The work is anonymous or pseudonyms and normally act of vandalism
5. The work is deeply antithetical to the art world

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Not only is there commissioned street art, legal street walls in London, Auckland etc. but the origin and everyday meaning of vandalize is “to destroy culture and/or something beautiful” (“vandalize”). If this is the definition Riggle is using, which he does not specify, but should use as otherwise the word would become meaningless, then would we really call street art vandalism? Most would say it in fact does the opposite and adds to the culture and beauty of the streets but again this is all personal interpretation. He counter acts this by differentiating between “mere graffiti” and “art graffiti”, but if his conditions are to hold extra weight this should be further clarified in the fourth point.
It seems that Riggle’s theory of street art is particularly strong however there are minor flaws which seem to result from overlooking specific details. If Riggle wanted to convince his audience even further on how these conditions can define “all street art and exclude everything that isn’t” then he would need to specify further what he means by ephemerality, vandalism, anti-thetical and meaning. Otherwise the counter-examples provided such as the Mona Lisa, Swoon and Banksy could be considered exceptions to the conditions he has

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