Once vilified, street art now carries a vast amount of cultural cache. Gone are the days when spray paint on a wall signified blight; today you’re as likely to find a wheatpaste or woodblock inside a gallery as outside. Pieces by renowned artists like Banksy and Swoon fetch thousands of dollars and are collected by rock stars, actors, and museums. Street art has always been cool, but in the twenty-first century it’s become an art.
Nevertheless, the best place to see street art remains the street. Around the world, street artists express emotion, give voice to the marginalized or downtrodden, protest, or simply create beauty. They use a variety of tools, including yarn, stickers, magazines, found objects, tiles, LED or laser displays, and brooms, as in the case of “reverse graffiti,” in which a dirty area is cleaned such that the removal of dust or detritus forms an image. Most of the time, street artists don’t have permission to put their work up in public spaces.
One city noted for its art and artists is São Paulo, Brazil. Known as “Sampa,” South America’s most populous city features lots of very big, collaborative murals, as in a large wall with pieces by Nunca, Vlok, Nina, and Os Gêmeos.
sp2Artists come to São Paulo to both play and display. Paris-based C215 has put up several solemn portraits. In 2008, Eric Maréchal (also known as urbanhearts) began pasting other artists’ work as he travelled around the world; as part of his Street Art Without Borders project, recently he put up lots of pastes here, including edgy skeletons and women in pinup poses by German artist Mittenimwald.
In terms of local artists, the influence of pichação, a type of graffiti that uses single colours and cryptic writing, appears in the drippy, fractal-like pieces by Zezão and long loopy lines of Bárbara Goy. Titi Freak’s stencils often combine hues and patterns. Urso Morto captures cartoony teddy bears in death throes.
Perhaps paradoxically, one of the best districts for urban art, Pinheiros is also one of the city’s wealthiest. Praça Rooselvelt (sometimes called Crackolandia) has a rotating display of murals, posters, and stencils. Riotous colour covers almost every inch of Beco do Batman (Batman’s Alley) in Vila Madalena, probably the city’s most-tagged area.