[5] New media forms such as video projections onto large city buildings are an increasingly popular tool for street artists—and the availability of cheap hardware and software allows such artwork to become competitive with corporate advertisements.

[8] Much of what can now be defined as modern street art has well-documented origins dating from New York City's graffiti boom, with its infancy in the 1960s, maturation in the 1970s, and peaking with the spray-painted full-car subway train murals of the 1980s centered in the Bronx.

Wheatpasted street poster art used to promote bands and the clubs where they performed evolved into actual artwork or copy-art and became a common sight during the 1980s in cities worldwide.

[citation needed] A series of murals by René Moncada began appearing on the streets of SoHo in the late 1970s emblazoned with the words I AM THE BEST ARTIST.

[7][12] Recognized as an early act of "art provocation",[13] they were a topic of conversation and debate at the time; related legal conflicts raised discussion about intellectual property, artist's rights and the First Amendment.

Traditional graffiti and street art motifs have also increasingly been incorporated into mainstream advertising, with many instances of artists contracted to work as graphic designers for corporations.

The Mobile Lovers by Banksy was painted on plywood on a public doorway, then cut out by a citizen who in turn was going to sell the piece to garner funds for a boys' club.

[37] In a case where a group of artists was awarded $6.7 million, the judge held that the art was not made without permission of the owner of the building, and that an important factor was that the demolition was done ahead of the intended date, indicating willful thought.

[43] On 15 July 2020, a month after the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down during Black Lives Matter protests in Bristol, artist Marc Quinn used the empty plinth to display his sculpture A Surge of Power (Jen Reid).

The exhibition has been promoted as being of 'major national [UK] importance' and celebrating artists such as Banksy, Damien Hirst, My Dog Sighs, the Connor Brothers, Pure Evil and Blek le Rat.

[55] Given the various benefits and sometimes high return on investment[56] street art provides businesses, schools, neighborhoods and cities with a movement as a tool to create safer, brighter, more colorful and inspiring communities, a trend which has recently been more widely recognized.

Organizations like Beautify Earth have pioneered cities to leverage these benefits to create widespread beauty where it would be otherwise empty or dilapidated public wall space.

Some actions were taken by the unit, including arrests of artists deemed vandals, caused community opposition; some considered the city's efforts as "misdirected" or "futile".

[80] Denver street artists have been busy brightening (and enlightening) the urban landscape for decades by making canvases of the city's alleyways, building exteriors, warehouses, garage doors and storefronts.

"Population density" and "urban anxiety" are common motifs expressed by "Grafiteiros" in their street art and pichação, rune-like black graffiti, said to convey feelings of class conflict.

[91] Bristol has a prominent street art scene, due in part to the success of Banksy,[92] with many large and colorful murals dominating areas of the city.

Having seen the light of day in 2016, every year, The Crystal Ship paints the town of Ostend red (and blue, and green, and yellow, and quite possibly every other colour you can imagine) by inviting a host of acclaimed street artists to get inspired by its people, landscape, and heritage.

Nouveau realists of the 1960s, including Jacques de la Villeglé, Yves Klein and Arman interacted with public spaces but, like pop art, kept the traditional studio-gallery relationship.

[94] Between October 2014 and March 2015, Fondation EDF hosted Jérôme Catz's exhibition "#STREET ART, L'INNOVATION AU CŒUR D'UN MOUVEMENT", which featured new technologies integrated with pieces by artists including Shepard Fairey, JR, Zevz, and Mark Jenkins.

[95] Street artist John Hamon's work primarily involves projecting or pasting a poster of his photograph above his name on buildings and monuments across the city.

Post-communism, cheap rents, and ramshackle buildings gave rise to street art in areas such as Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, and Friedrichshain.

[99] The street art scene in Greece has been active since the late 1980s but gained momentum in Athens leading up to the country's 2011 financial crisis, with a number of artists raising voices of resistance, creating allegorical works and social commentary in the historic city center and Exarhia district.

In the early 1990s, Amsterdam became the epicenter of the graffiti movement, with a focus on its Metro system, bringing writers such as Mickey, Zedz and Yalt to the capital of the Netherlands.

[citation needed] Wheatpaste and stencil graffiti art in Denmark increased rapidly after visits from Faile, Banksy, Ben Eine, and Shepard Fairey between 2002 and 2004, especially in urban areas of Copenhagen such as Nørrebro and Vesterbro.

Street art serves as a strong tool among young artists to protest against the many controversial issues in the social and political life in Georgia and thus gets considerable attention in society.

In George Town, Penang, Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic created a series of wall murals depicting local culture, inhabitants and lifestyles.

In South Korea's second-largest city, Busan, German painter Hendrik Beikirch created a mural over 70 metres (230 ft) high, considered Asia's tallest at the time of its creation in August 2012.

[153][154] Street art from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya has gained notoriety since the Arab Spring, including a 2012 exhibition in Madrid's Casa Árabe.

In 2011 the festival introduced a Going Vertical mural program and its Cellograph project to accompany the street drawings that also are created by renowned artists from around the world.

This exhibition in virtual reality offers works from Banksy, JR, Jef Aérosol, Vhils, Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring, among others.