Pictures on walls? Producing, pricing and collecting the street art screen print

Luke Dickens

City, 2010, vol. 14, issue 1-2, 63-81

Abstract: When graffiti writing was transferred onto canvas for sale during the Manhattan art boom of the 1980s, it was widely felt to have 'sold out’ to the exploitative interests of the art establishment and become a 'post‐graffiti’ art movement. In contrast, recent British street art demonstrates the capacity to be both more critical and complicit in the influential spheres of art and commerce. Yet, despite growing recognition of these 'new directions in graffiti art’, there remains little critical attention to how such post‐graffiti aesthetic practices are mobilized, not simply by the heroic tactics of the lone male street artist, but by a significant body of cultural intermediaries, institutions and firms. Established in 2002 by the notorious street artist, Banksy, and his agent, the photographer Steve Lazarides, Pictures on Walls Ltd (POW) was a company that in many ways stood at the cutting edge of these developments. As such, it serves as a rich case study of the ways street art can be understood as a sophisticated form of creative industry. Specifically, as a key way of buying into the street art scene, the limited edition POW screen print is used here to exemplify a cultural economy that is both rooted in the contemporary city, and poised at an intersection between the urban and the virtual. Following the printing, pricing and collecting of such products, this research traces street art from its production in the fashionable art district of Hoxton, east London, and into the everyday lives of a passionate group of Internet collectors and fans.

Date: 2010
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DOI: 10.1080/13604810903525124

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