Banksy and the Street Art on exhibition in Bologna

Street Art in Bologna. When someone talks about Street Art, we soon think about a group of artists who, since the latest 1960s have used the streets to create innovative works of art; but thanks to the web have soon become representative of historic period we live in.

Maybe in 100 years in art history books Bansky, Dado and Rusty will be mentioned as members of an artistic genre developed from the end of the 20^th century to the beginning of the 21^st century, called Street Art.

An exhibition dedicated to Street Art will be on show at Palazzo Pepoli in Bologna from March 18^th to June 26^th 2016. And a controversy has soon broken out.

I thought that an exhibition devoted to Street Art would be a great idea, but I had no idea the curators and Genus Bononie, which promoted the exhibition, would remove some of the exhibited works of art from the walls of the buildings of Bologna.

The scandal has broken immediately and it has provoked violent reactions and resounding gestures. For example, Blu is erasing with a coat of grey paint all the murals he painted in Bologna in the past 20 years and that can’t be removed because they’re too large.

The phenomenon of the urban graffiti has gained a special importance in the contemporary creativity: works by Bansky have invaded the major cities in the world, and since the 1980s Bologna has asserted itself as a point of reference for several artists- from Cuoghi Corsello to Blu, from Dado to Rusty- who have chosen Bologna for leaving their marks on the walls. These artists are making the history of art now, and they express their opinion on very delicate themes, such as the Syrian Civil War, or they struggle using their spray cans because of their different opinions on the role a street artist should play. The “war” between Bansky and Robbo is rather famous.

The exhibition should have illustrated this art form in its evolution and its spectacular nature bringing for the first time to Italy the collection of the American painter Martin Wong donated in 1994 to the Museum of the City of New York, which includes the works by the greatest American graffiti writers and street artists such as Dondi White, Keith Haring and Lady Pink.

Actually, the exhibition has turned into an act of vandalism, because it doesn’t take into account copyright and commercial exploitation of the works without the consent of the author.
You can buy a wall, but you can’t buy creativity; in the same way you can buy a picture, but you can’t publish it on the cover of a book without the consent of the author, or you can’t sell a song protected by copyright.
The matter has become viral on social networks, and keeping up with it and reading the official announcements will be fascinating.

I side with Blu.

INFO
Street Art – Banksy & Co. L’arte allo stato urbano
March 18 – June 26, 2016 – Palazzo Pepoli, Bologna

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