In the late 1960s, new urban art forms sprang up in cities across the western world, with the aim of redefining the concept of art in public spaces. Today, the label ‘street art’ is an umbrella term for independent public art in a variety of forms that borrow the themes of pop culture and graffiti art and exploit the dialogue between the ‘street’ and the Web to come up with some decidedly innovative art for the new century.
Fifty years on, in fact, urban graffiti art is a socio-cultural phenonemon that is in a class of its own on the #contemporaryart scene. The works of artists such as Banksy have invaded the world’s leading cities; in Italy, #bologna itself has proved to be a draw for a multitude of artists since the ‘80s – the likes of Cuoghi Corsello, Blu, Dado and Rusty – all of whom have left their mark on its storied facades.
From 18 March to 26 June, 2016, this art form will be showcased in its entirety – from its evolution over the years to spectacular examples of the genre – at Palazzo Pepoli – the Museum of the History of #bologna, in a major exhibition entited Street Art – Banksy & Co.
In a first for Italy, the exhibition is a unique occasion to see the collection that the American artist Martin Wong donated to the Museum of the City of New York in 1994, in a show within a show that spotlights New York in the year 1980, with works by America’s greatest graffiti writers and street artists, including Dondi White, Keith Haring, and Lady Pink.
This exhibition, organized by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in #bologna, Genus Bononiae. Musei nella città and #arthemisiagroup, and curated by Luca Ciancabilla, Christian Omodeo and Sean Corcoran (curator at the Museum of the City of New York), aims to explain the cultural and artistic significance of street art.
The street art project was the brainchild of Professor Fabio Roversi-Monaco, President of Genus Bononiae, along with a team of experts in street art and art restoration, with the idea of launching a discussion about the ways to protect and preserve this art form, as well as the principles underlying such efforts.
“The salvaging of #contemporaryart works,” Roversi-Monaco claims, “such as graffiti on the walls of buildings in rundown parts of a city – buildings involved in or risking demolition due to urban regeneration programmes that are often effectively carried out – is not an act of vandalism. We need to move away from the latent and quite harmful conformism on the part of those who criticize this operation a priori and fail to consider its positive cultural aspects, which make it worthwhile. This, in fact, is the guiding principle behind the exhibition “Street Art: Banksy and Co, the Urban State of the Art, and we are confident that the city will participate wholeheartedly in this initiative.”
The project involving the detachment of walls in #bologna containing street art by Blu – one of the ten best street artists in the world, according to a 2011 ranking by The Guardian – and their restoration was an experiment conducted by the restoration laboratory run by Camillo Tarozzi, Marco Pasqualicchio e Nicola Giordani. The operation concerned works such as Blu’s large mural on the former Casaralta factory (Untitled, 2006) and another on the facade of the former Cevolani factory (Untitled, 2003), both of which faced demolition; it seemed like the perfect occasion for an exhibition conceived to contribute to the current international debate. For years now, in fact, the scientific community has called attention to the issue of how to protect and preserve these examples of a vital #contemporaryart form and their possible ‘musealization’, a radical break from their original locations, yet a way to preserve the artworks for the benefit of future generations.
For the first time, the exhibition Street Art - Banksy & Co. highlights the multiple influences of street art on the visual arts on the whole since its inception as an aesthetic that started in New York in the ‘70s, thanks to young people in the city’s poor neighbourhoods who loved lettering and name writing. An array of works by artists associated with graffiti and street art will be on display, enabling visitors to compare them, find their common threads and understand how they were received by the society of the time.
This remarkable artistic legacy is the focus of the original exhibition at Palazzo Pepoli, which marks an initial attempt – one hopes many more will follow – to reproduce what could be considered a part of the city of #bologna, in an ideal environment for showcasing such an important chapter in its history.
The utopian ambition of the show, therefore, is to protect and preserve this art form and exert an influence on current cultural policy in order to see the need to redefine the tools for intervention in urban spaces acknowledged. At stake is the safeguarding the art of graffiti, which, now more than ever, so strongly influences graphics, people’s tastes, and 21st-century art on the whole.
Street Art - Banksy & Co
March 18 - June 26, 2016
Tel. +39 051 7168808
www.mostrastreetart.it
Palazzo Pepoli - #museo della Storia di #bologna Via Castiglione 8, #bologna
Catalogue
Bononia University Press: BUP
Opening times
Mondays 14.30 – 20.00 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays - Sundays 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Fridays 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Tickets
Full-price €13 (audio guide included) Discount €11 (audio guide included)
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