How Does Street Art Humanize Cities?

For every commissioned piece of public art there are countless unlawful works — scrawled spray-painted initials, cheeky visual pranks, massive murals soaring up buildings and across rail cars, shrines tucked into unused corners. Street artists have become figures of global recognition, even acceptance. Artist collectives in Berlin take over buildings; London-based Banksy puts on pop-up exhibits around the world and debuted a film at Sundance; Shepard Fairey papered the U.S. with his Andre the Giant sticker campaign and went on to create a much-copied campaign poster for Barack Obama. But street artists also remain the subject of controversy, forcing cities to consider what art is acceptable, who should be allowed to create it, and where. In conjunction with the Fowler Museum's exhibition of Larry Yust’s photographs of street art in Los Angeles, Berlin, and Paris, Zócalo invited arts writer Jori Finkel, Fowler Museum curator Patrick Polk, Aaron Rose, co-curator of MOCA’s forthcoming street art exhibit, street artist Retna, and artist and curator Man One to ask how street art humanizes cities.