Last 100 Posts

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Ok I'm kicking the web feeds back into action in the daily sab section. I think it works reall well for a daily up date on the fly, hope you like it. Just press the last 100 button for the latest street art blog headlines.

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For the last few weeks, we've been contributing weekly blog posts to USA Network's new "Character Approved" blog. Here's a selection of some of our recent articles:


Kanye West, Art Patron


Juxtapoz: An Art & Culture Publication at Its Finest



Street Artist Ben Eine in the Global Spotlight


Ryan McGinness

Note: USA Network is a client of my agency, Electric Artists.



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Back when Saturday mornings were all about watching cartoons and getting brainwashed by cereal commercials, Hanna-Barbera ruled the airwaves. They were responsible for creating some of the most iconic animated characters to ever steal the hearts of children across the United States.



From the Flintstones to Space Ghost, Captain Caveman and many more, they drew it. Celebrating this vast history, graphic designer Juan Pablo Bravo, created an infographic featuring 600 of the characters in chronological order (in both English and Spanish). Must be seen full size to fully appreciate its nostalgic staying power.




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…So dope.

By Ripo in Barcelona.

Via Ekosystem.



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Adz7. has added a photo to the pool:



Seen in London



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Dog days of Summer suck and taking a family holiday at the end of August can involve compromise. For me the compromise became apparent a couple of weeks ago when an calling-all-art-knobs email arrived announcing a Poster Boy multi-location book launch, one leg of which would be at the Pure Evil Gallery, London.

Within minutes, a sceptical buddy mail arrived saying “oh yeah – Poster Boy...one dude.....four simultaneous launches around the world [ish, London and 3 in the US] .... does not compute”. Fuck that I thought and got back on the kite board (kinda – day 1 is body dragging)....I wasn’t going to be anywhere near so best not to dwell on the inconsistency.

Reacquainting myself over the past couple of days with what’s new and what’s forgotten in the London street galleries I was really surprised to find today Pure Evil’s gallery resonating with irrefutable evidence of a continuing Poster Boy presence - books, beer and cut out paste ups strewn on the floor.

Before checking out the PVs tonight I found the end of Summer transformed by Poster Boy action on the London streets. No, I don’t know when this happened other than it was today..I was there sometime before, I was there sometime after, here are before and after snaps.






Obviously this is plain simple billboard hijacking. Other than where the eyes are allowed to point through, these pieces involce complete advert obliteration. The message here is simply political. Spending 5 minutes photographing the hijacked billboards gave sufficient time to absorb the impact this communication capture was having. Every passerby and every car driver was studying the anarchist assault.







Thanks to dastardly bastardly agency creatives discovering that mimicking street art has a powerful resonance with a certain trendy target audience, my quest over the past few years to discover more Cut-Up Collective work lurking behind, around and on top of public adverts has involved me look at more street marketing campaigns than any ad exec could dream of. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intended effect!






I had thought, having never previously had direct contact with a Poster Boy environmental enhancement, that Poster Boy’s work was purely about advertising subversion, poser remixing with wit and generally an anti corporate propaganda theme. This may or may not be true, in a couple of years I will have finished reading the book, but Poster Boy’s London blitz is hugely political, a truly remarkable thrust from a dude whose country pulled out of its most recent/current/most public global fuck up only last week.




Poster Boy was arrested in an internationally publicised incident early in 2009, nabbed by covert police pouncing on an advertised private view of a Posterboy art show. Posterboy got sent down, or detained, or sent to bed early or something, yet the posterboy campaign actually intensified. It had both a windmill to tilt at AND a huge profile. Eventually, messages reached some critical nerve endings in some street art keyboard botherers and the question “if he’s inside, whose doing this schizz” was floated. Mainstream press speculated that the wrong guy had been arrested.

Although Graffoto believes these mysteries are best left mystique intact, it seems the answer was/is that Poster Boy is a multi-testicled beast and the authority had yanked its tail (ok, if it wasn’t so late I probably could work a better gag. Fuck off..no really..come back when you’re pissed, it’ll look funny then perhaps). Anyway, the guy in Pure Evil’s gallery tonight was without doubt in my mind the same guy in this famous youtube clip and he seemed to imply that Posterboy is a collective.


Clip by “TheKSkill”

The book is a fundraising exercise to raise money for K.A.R.A .T.E - Kids Are Rallying Against The Empire – a legal defence fund for artists who may find themselves detained at The Man’s pleasure for changing the world without license or authority. When we look at custodial sentences handed down to visual extemporisers then any funding to protect society from the stupid mistakes of its un-elected judiciary has to be a good thing.



Apart from funding a good cause, Poster Boy has a unique way of signing the books, if you look closely you might make out that he has whipped out his razor and incized through the frontispiece to reveal Poster Boy's name on the page behind. Cool. Signed copies available Pure Evil Gallery, London and, I would guess, from Frost Gallery, NY; Carmichael Gallery LA and AE District Gallery, Miami.


copyright - whatever


The book is a photographic collection of the work of Poster Boy, including many before and after shots as well as the photographic inspiration and sources behind the ideas. The introduction nails it, don’t know who the author is but it says “This book is a piece of hypocrisy....Poster Boy’s high-minded rabble rousing is starting to reek of bullshit. After all, Poster Boy detests the media but wholly depends on it as a medium.”

This doesn’t count as Graffoto prides itself on being large, not medium.


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nemo 33 is the deepest pool on earth. it's in brussels and 105 feet deep and 2.5 million litres of chlorine-free water. it was designed by belgian civil engineer john beernaerts and his vision was to create an environment to mimic the caribbean (which is why the water is 33 degrees celsius). since 2004, over 100,000 divers have visited nemo.

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I just posted about Andreas’ new show on the tasj blog (which is where I am when I’m not here), but I wanted to share a sneak peek with Vandalog readers, too. I think that big piece is amazing.

Here are the details in case you’re in Zurich:

Andreas von Chrzanowski aka case

Sex, Drugs and Dusty Pages

ARTseefeld
Seefeldstrasse 301a
8008 Zürich

Opening Reception: September 3, 6-9pm

Thanks for sending the photo, Andreas!

- Elisa




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original
wall for expo in ceintuurban 215 amsterdam by la ira
featuring Dries and Craneo with graffiti on the street walls of the painting, graffiti and canvases in the ofice by la ira
spray paint and marker on wall
http://flickr.com/lairagraffx
http://monmort.blogspot.com
featuring Dries and Craneo with graffiti on the street walls of the painting



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original
hey- i'm in israel for the next week- if you know of any good streetart spots in tel aviv or jerusalem, hit me up! -jake



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original
Juliana hospital apeldoorn roof floor by la ira...
more works on: http://www.flickr.com/lairagraffx
latex on floor
photo: Nan 101
thanks to Natalia for the help rolling, at the end we was on rigth time...



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malinda fisher has added a photo to the pool:



park city, ut



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Electric Picnic: Massive Attack
Irish Independent
It's only recently in the last few years that I've got back into it when James Lavelle asked me to do the War Stories sleeve and Banksy got me to contribute ...

and more &raquo;


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Coastal Currents is set for busy month ahead
Rye and Battle Today
Amid a storm of media attention over the discovery of the St Leonards beachfront mural by famous street artist Banksy, the launch party was held in ...




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original
I'm down in Richmond now and spotted an abandoned building with some nice posters up. Check it out, artist unknown.





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Chinatown NYC



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Dran


So after posting about Da Mental Vaporz’ kickass recent wall in London, I found out that part of the crew makes up the three-man show Dibujar Mata Violente at Ras Gallery in Barcelona. Bom.K, Dran and Sowat make up nearly half of DMV and (at least to my knowledge) are the more active members of the crew when it comes to painting indoors (but my knowledge of that is pretty limited to what has been shown in the UK, so feel free to correct me). This is definitely something to check out.



Bom.K


Sowat


Photos courtesy of Suben




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Here’s a shot of Eminem and the stage he’ll be performing on tonight with Jay-Z in front of 80,000 or so fans at Detroit’s Comerica Park. (Photo: Detroit News)




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9/2: From the Gift Shop to the Living Room
NBC Bay Area
If you were like everyone else and got caught staring at all those pretty Banksy pictures long enough to miss the movie about the notorious ...




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In pictures: Minehead street art
BBC News
Step mainly uses acrylic paints in his work - which is seen as 'unique and often controversial' - and his style has been described as 'Banksy meets Dr ...




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New Zealand Herald
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Sideswipe: Fishy art work
New Zealand Herald
A new installation from British street artist Banksy popped up at Brighton Pier, described as "reconditioned dolphin ride with crude oil and ...

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This week cannot go by without mentioning the Banksy that has appeared in St ...
Hastings Observer (blog)
While I am not overly enamoured by Banksy -the work, the persona, the intrigue - I have enjoyed the debate. It's like our own personal Jennifer Aniston/Brad ...




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Oh fo’ sure…



From the Gotesk blog on 12ozprophet.



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Wow, it's September already and that can mean only one thing, the countdown has now begun for this years Fame Festival. Having had a blast at the festival last year we here at Hookedblog have already booked our flight for a return visit for Fame Festival 2010 in the small southern italian town of Grottaglie.

The festival now is it's third year is set to be bigger and better with an amazing line-up of international artists creating works for the festival. Curator Angelo Milano has done another fantastic job this year and we are looking forward to seeing the large scale street pieces as well as the studio works which will go on show in an exhibition set to open on the 25 September.

This years line-up includes: JR / ERICA IL CANE / SAM3 / NUNCA / BLU / OS GEMEOS / BORIS HOPPEK / ESCIF / 108 / DALEK / NICOLA TOFFOLINI / LUCY MCLAUCHLAN / SWOON / SLINKACHU / CYOP E KAF /DAVID ELLIS /VHILS / BEN WOLF / WORD TO MOTHER / MOMO / BASTARDILLA

GROTTAGLIE is located between two airports Bari and Brindisi both of which Ryanair fly to from London. There is more info on the Fame Festival website. We will see ye there!

Photos ©Studiocromie



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Detroit's big music weekend; Cee-Lo's 'official' video; and more
AnnArbor.com
A Banksy mural discovered in Detroit's abandoned Packard plant and then moved to a gallery can stay in place for now, a judge has ruled. ...




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…Pretty much every time.



New piece by Blu in Madrid. So damn gooooood!

Via TWBE*who found it via Ekosytem.



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original
Seen on the street of Rome Trastevere
artist sone



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DETROIT: Banksy mural stays in gallery until June trial
Detroit Free Press
A Wayne County judge ruled Wednesday that a mural by the British artist called Banksy -- discovered in the decaying Packard Plant in May and removed by ...
Detroit gallery allowed to display Banksy muralWLNS

all 9 news articles &raquo;


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Denise Cross has added a photo to the pool:



Bringing Back Broadway. Photos from a photowalk in Downtown Los Angeles in the Broadway Theater District.



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Denise Cross has added a photo to the pool:



Bringing Back Broadway. Photos from a photowalk in Downtown Los Angeles in the Broadway Theater District.



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I know, I know… This has nothing to do with street art. But I just liked it, its done pretty well*and it does have a link to graffiti….

(Probably NSFW)



Don’t forget to bag it kids… Pussy loves Jhonny.

Via… Ignored Prayers.



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Due to artbleat towers having no direct Internet access for the next week or 2 and that I have given up trying to post via my iPhone, I will be fairly quiet for a while but will be back as soon as possible.
See you at the Guy Denning show tonight if you are in London town.

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A Canadian soldier looks right at home while patrolling through a thick patch of weed plants in Afghanistan. (Photo: Bob Strong/Reuters)




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There are three big book releases coming soon that I should be talking about. Today I want to just mention two of those.

KAWS’ 250+ page monograph actually won’t be released until November, but The Aldrich Museum (site of his recent solo show) is already selling an signed edition of the book for $45. UNFORTUNATELY, I think you have to live in the USA to purchase anything from The Aldrich’s online store. If you are living in the USA though, you can buy the book now for $45 and it will ship in November.

And there is a similar book coming out from Faile. Faile: Prints and Originals 1999-2009 is pretty much what it says in the title. I recently had a very brief chance to flip through a copy of this book, and it is just about the most comprehensive catalog of Faile’s work you can imagine. So, if you like Faile, it’s a must have, but if you don’t this obviously won’t be for you. This book should be available in stores or online any day now, but the one place you can definitely go already is Paper Monster. They are selling a “studio edition” of the book today for $69. This version of the book comes signed, stamped and embossed by Faile. But as much as you may want to go out right now and buy this book from Paper Monster, there’s something holding me back. Paper Monster notes that Faile will be releasing an “artist edition” of the book sometime in September, and that will be limited to 200 copies (no word on how many copies the “studio edition” is limited to).

Via The Art Collectors and Hi-Fructose

Photo courtesy of Papermonster




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A show definitely not to be missed. Some top names have got involved in modifying their own boy soldier originally created by artist Schoony. These boy soldiers first made an appearance at Mutate Britain last summer and artists such as D*FACE, Inkie, Dan Baldwin & INSA have got involved this time round to add their [...]


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frenchdip65 has added a photo to the pool:





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Who needs all those boring old paintings on the wall when I've got my brilliant avant-garde street-arty stuff?

So before Dave went to India, he said to pick some art for the flat, supposing it ever gets finished, which is so kind of the government to offer but quite disturbing really, because it means Gordon Brown must have personally chosen that flayed lion being eaten by rats, in actual skin, that used to hang over the bed.

But it was thanks but no thanks, I told Mummy, because you'd think from the list there hadn't been an important artist since Sergeant and, to be honest, everyone's got one of those. I mean, hello, Government Art Collection – Banksy or Eine anyone? It's as if the whole avant-garde street arty thing never happened. God knows what you're meant to do if you're going for a pared-down look with basically an eclectic mix of bold abstracts, photographs and irreverent stencils to subvert the hideous corporate vibe – losing battle with Cherie's crystal pelmets, the architect says, since it turns out she actually got them listed.

The little clerk in charge was so sweet at first, said Cherie hasn't returned the Sergeants yet anyway, but he was sure there was a Vanessa Bell somewhere, lots of orange, very modern, look lovely with the futons. Well, I went, absolutely no disrespect but if this is really all you've got, would the government like to borrow some stuff of ours, there's way too much for the flat?

I can't be certain until they've repainted the drawing room in blighted udder, as intended – unbelievable Cable thought I'd be taken in by the Homebase magnolia – but we could probably spare the large Gobshite and a couple of quite rare Philths, from when he was still using his own bodily fluids. Instead of leaping at the chance, clerky man goes all huffy, so I'm like, I do have a degree in fine art, for what it's worth, as well as counting Gobshite, Dregz and the Grotmeister as personal friends.

Texted Dave who said some people are born chippy, look at Pakistan, and forget the big state babes, just ring Govey. Which is a brilliant idea because they haven't got a thing unless you count those seascapes from John Lewis. They must dream of living with a genuine Tosspot.

• Street art
• Samantha Cameron
• David Cameron

Catherine Bennett

guardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds



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David Cameron's choice of present for President Obama propelled a largely unknown street artist into the limelight. So what does Ben Eine make of the accolade?

'So it's been a weird day today," says the most recent posting on Ben Eine's website. "David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama." Weird indeed. You wake up one morning as a street artist known to few outside the aficionados of Britain's urban art scene, and go to bed as the man whose work the new prime minister, for his first official visit to Washington, chose to present to the president of the United States.

"It's quite mad, really," says Eine (real name Ben Flynn), whose early creative life as a particularly productive graffiti artist earned him 15 or 20 arrests, five convictions for criminal damage and, on the final occasion, a narrow escape from jail. "But it's OK. It's not the kind of recognition I seek or get every day, but Cameron seems quite a positive kind of guy and Obama's a dude. I would probably have had issues if it had been for Bush."

But the gift – and attendant publicity – should bring Eine more than recognition. Described by the Nelly Duff gallery in London's Columbia Road, which has been selling his work for the last five years, as "a screen printer of technical brilliance . . . one of the hardest-working and most prolific street artists working today", he can also expect a considerable improvement in his income.

"We've had very significant interest already," says the gallery's Cassius Colman. "He had a fairly large fan base among people who know about street art, but now . . . If people were considering a purchase, this will push them over the edge. I'd say we were probably looking at a tenfold increase in his sales."

Eine, 39, is best known in and around Shoreditch in the East End of London, where he has worked for several years with his close friend, the elusive Banksy. "They're the best of mates, old friends," says Lindsay Alkin, manager of the Artrepublic gallery in Brighton, which also sells the artist's work. "Banksy would do one side of the street and Ben the other, and Ben did all Banksy's screenprints. He's one of the founders of the whole street-art movement. But this is really going to broaden his audience: we've had a great deal of interest this morning. And we've sold one of his originals."

Eine last came to the media's attention when he persuaded the shopkeepers of Middlesex Street in Spitalfields to allow him to paint the entire alphabet, in his trademark vibrant, cheerful colours, on their closed security shutters. Elsewhere in London, his letters spell out whole words – "Exciting" or "Scary" or "Vandalism" – on walls and buildings, or just stand on their own: a solitary "e" or "a" adorning a shopfront or telecomm box. There's a Googlemap of his London work, but similar typographical totems can also be seen in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, as well as Newcastle and Hastings, where he now lives.

"For me, it's mostly about having stuff on the street," Eine says. "You're walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there's something that wasn't there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear. But you know, I have a family, I have a mortgage, I have to make a living. So I do the screenprints too." (Among the cognoscenti, Eine is widely admired as an expert screenprinter, and holds the unofficial world record for the number of colours across an edition: 77 across 200 prints.)

It wasn't easy, once Downing Street had called to say Samantha Cameron really liked his work, to find an Eine suitable for a US president. "A lot of my paintings have quite negative meanings, but painted in a bright and cheerful way," Eine says. "All of those had to be written off straight away; you can't give something that might be misinterpreted." Eventually, he remembered his painting of the letters TWENTYFIRSTCENTURYCITY, laid out on black, in seven rows. "I emailed it, and they said yes straight away," Eine says. "It works pretty well, I think."

Will he sell more work now? "I would imagine, people being what they are, that some more of them might want a piece of it. It's definitely good news."

• Street art
• Art
• David Cameron
• Barack Obama
• United States

Jon Henley

guardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds



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Suspended sentences for duo who made tens of thousands by passing off fake prints of graffiti artist's work as originals



Two men who pleaded guilty to selling fake prints by the graffiti artist Banksy were condemned as "old-fashioned conmen" by a judge today, although they escaped jail with suspended sentences.

Grant Champkins-Howard, 44, and Lee Parker, 45, fooled customers on the internet auction site eBay into believing they were buying originals by the secretive artist.

They claimed the copies were produced by Pictures on Walls, a company which has exclusive rights to produce authentic Banksy prints. The pair made tens of thousands of pounds from the scam and shattered confidence in the market for Banksy's work, the court heard.

Passing suspended sentences of 12 months for both men, Judge Suzan Matthews said: "Neither of you should be under any illusion that I regard both of you as nothing more than a pair of old-fashioned conmen. You saw a way, and exploited a way, of making a quick and easy profit."

They were both ordered to perform 240 hours community service.

The court heard that Pictures on Walls produces tag-stamped and limited edition screen prints of Bansky's signature stencilled images. Champkins-Howard and Parker persuaded both collectors and novice buyers to part with up to £2,000 each for fake prints.

They claimed to have already built their own collection of Banksy posters, only deciding to cash in when the value of originals soared.

Police seized 120 prints, including some that were genuine, during a raid on Champkins-Howard's home after a two-month investigation last year.

Richard Mandel, prosecuting, said Champkins-Howard persuaded one buyer to pay £1,300 for a fake print called Turf War which depicts Winston Churchill with a mohican. When another potential customer became suspicious after being offered £2,000 for a specific print, Champkins-Howard managed to find him the real thing.

"The defendants did have clever management in place," Mendel said.

The pair admitted the five-month scam, between January 1 and June 19 last year.

The judge said: "Regardless of their state of knowledge, they [purchasers] were talked into parting with substantial sums of money, believing they were acquiring something of value - they were buying fakes."

An eBay spokesman said the firm was delighted with the verdict after working with Metropolitan police on the investigation.

"Our long-standing commitment to this case highlights our intolerance for those fraudsters who attempt to sell fake items on our site," he said.

• Banksy
• Art
• Street art

Matthew Weaver

guardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds



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Former graffiti tearaway Ben Eine is at last following the letter of the law... with a complete A to Z on an east London street to prove it

The biggest endorsement for street artist Ben Eine's latest candy-coloured creation, the entire alphabet spraypainted on the shop shutters of a dreary London street, has come from the neighbourhood's children: "The nicest reaction is seeing kids skipping down the street calling out the alphabet – or," he adds, "parents saying my work has helped their kids learn their A to Z."

For the past four years the 39-year-old's vibrant letters have been popping up all over London, sometimes spelling whole words (such as "scary" or "exciting"), more often simply adding a happy "a" to a dull corner. They've become so popular that there's even a Googlemap online for people who fancy a walking tour of Eine's handiwork. But for his latest project, adorning Middlesex Street's shops in Spitalfields, east London, Eine worked with local gallery Electric Blue for a whole year, planning and persuading local shop owners to let him create a whole alphabet in sequence for the first time. The result, finished earlier this month, resembles something from the Sesame Street set (clearly with the same educational credentials), its colour palette seemingly dreamed up by a fan of Love Heart sweets and ice-cream sundaes. No wonder even the local grannies are charmed. "The feedback has been 100% positive," Eine says. "Spraypainting a shop shutter turns an ugly, boring thing into something interesting and colourful. I think you'd have to be a pretty negative person to find fault in it."

Such positivity is a far cry from the responses Eine's earlier spraypainting projects garnered. "I was brought up in south London and I started out in the world of graffiti when I was about 14 because I wanted to be part of that hooded tracksuit gang thing," he says. "I did it pretty hardcore for about 20 years – I've been arrested between 15 and 20 times and the last time I had a close escape from prison." He now makes his living as a successful street artist, which, he points out, is different from doing graffiti because "street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don't care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick."

A typography obsessive, Eine's fascinated by how "letters change shape when combined with other ones". His favourites being "e" and "m", his least "the letter 'o', because it needs to be a perfect circle or oval and it looks the most wrong if you don't get it right". Generally, though, each letter takes about one hour to create.

It was after years of "tagging" his own name across London that the alphabet project was accidentally conceived; fearing being caught without permission to paint "Eine" across four shutters, he left having painted just the two "e"s from his name, then, looking at a photo of them later, fell in love with how alone they looked "slightly abstract, slightly weird".

Eine is now one of the leading lights of the street-art scene, his shutters decorating cities as far afield as Tokyo, New York, LA and Paris, as well as Newcastle and Hastings, where Eine lives with his wife and three young children. He might not be as famous as fellow artists Banksy or Jamie Hewlett but Eine regularly works on big commercial projects, including one recently with designer Anya Hindmarch (of "This Is Not a Plastic Bag" fame) as well as with pop acts such as Duffy and, fittingly, Alphabeat. And with his penchant for bright colours he's clearly something of a hero in his own home: "Whenever the kids see one of my shutters they shout, 'Daddy painted that!'" So, aside from cheering up our city streets, Eine's alphabet art is a novel way of encouraging his little ones to learn their letters.

einesigns.co.uk

• Street art

Imogen Carter

guardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds



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Last year I wrote that Banksy should make the Turner shortlist – with no standout candidates for 2010, have things changed?

Tuesday sees the announcement of the Turner prize shortlist. One critic has described the prize as "bipolar", veering between good and bad years. Last year's shortlist – which I was involved in selecting and judging –*was well-received, after a widely criticised instalment the year before. Will this year's list live up to 2009's, or will it outdo it? In other words, can the Turner have two good years in a row?

It's always fun to speculate about who will be shortlisted. I hope this year's judges come up with some unexpected and exciting names – controversy, too, never goes amiss. But it's not been a spectacular year for British art: there has been no equivalent to Roger Hiorns's Seizure, which simply demanded to be considered. On the other hand, the usual suspects who might so easily have been on last year's list are still around: don't be surprised if the names Ryan Gander, Charles Avery or Susan Philipsz appear in the papers next week. Last year's Turner exhibition featured no film or video for the first time in donkey's years, so perhaps they will go the other way and select a video artist such as Hilary Lloyd or a filmmaker such as Rosalind Nashashibi.

But actually, one British artist has genuinely made an impact this year. 12 months ago I wrote here that I had decided not to nominate Banksy for the Turner shortlist: some people seemed to think I had stopped him being on it and that he was being considered seriously by the rest of the jury. In fact, as far as I know, I was the only juror considering him. In the end, he didn't seem to be doing much that was new – but this year it's a different story. In the last 12 months his museum show in Bristol drew delighted crowds and his film Exit Through the Gift Shop revealed a humour about his own enterprise that contrasts wonderfully with the dull arrogance of a Hirst. So for my money Banksy should be on the Turner shortlist this year. It's a no-brainer. I wonder if the jury will agree. We'll know on Tuesday.

• Art
• Street art
• Banksy
• Turner prize

Jonathan Jones

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Senegal's capital city is better known for its music and its tropical beauty, but now a thriving contemporary art scene is attracting enthusiasts from the west

Lindsay Poulton
Michael Tait




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• Banksy alters King Robbo 'tag' on Regent's canal
• King Robbo retaliates but some cry publicity stunt

The history of art has been coloured by fierce and often glaringly public feuds between celebrated artists of the day. From Turner and Constable to Whistler and Ruskin, long-standing and public battles have kept generations of art lovers engrossed, outraged or simply amused.

But few artistic spats have been played out in such a public manner as the current standoff between Banksy, the internationally renowned bestselling graffiti artist, and King Robbo, one of the founding fathers of London's graffiti scene.

The battle, which started on the banks of the Regent's canal in the capital before Christmas, has stepped up a gear with the Bristolian apparently launching a new attack on King Robbo's work.

The graffiti war was sparked before Christmas when an urban artist, thought to be Banksy, painted over a 25-year-old mural by King Robbo.

Hidden under a bridge on the canal and reachable only by water, the tag had been untouched since appearing beneath Camden Street in 1985 – until the artist bearing all Banksy's hallmarks added a stencil of a workman plastering the wall with graffiti paper.

It wasn't long before Robbo, who according to the Treehugger blog "had been 'in retirement' with no new work seen for years, surfaced to create a new work, out of revenge on his old rival". The veteran graffitist, or perhaps his admirers, hit back, manipulating Banksy's workman to make it look as though he was painting a tribute to King Robbo.

So far, so subtle. Until the most recent episode in the spat which apparently saw Banksy, who sold one of his works for £636,500 at Sotheby's in 2008, add a poetically simple "Fuc" to the King Robbo tag. A new blast of retaliation is expected shortly.

The original attack by Banksy has sparked criticism in the graffiti world. One graffitist, calling himself Sigma, condemned the destruction of a piece of street art history. "Now I like Banksy's stuff and I like this but the cost is too high," he blogged. "Fair enough, over the years this piece got pretty dogged and 'vandalized' but for the most part it was still visible history ... long live King Robbo."

The Banksy addition to the tag is the latest in a bitter and long-running, tit-for-tat dispute between the two urban artists. Earlier this year, a Banksy mural showing a signature besuited rat wearing a top hat was labelled "Banksy la Rat", taunting Banksy for copying an image first pioneered by fellow street artist Blek Le Rat, of whom Banksy has said: "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well."

A quick-witted, albeit rudimentary, work attributed to Banksy which showed the words "I DON'T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING" in red capitals disappearing below the water along the canal, was changed to "I don't believe in war". Alongside the sentence, his rivals had added: "It's too late for that sonny, Team Robbo."

Meanwhile, a long-standing Banksy image of Charles Manson on a wall opposite Archway tube station – as a hitchhiker holding a sign saying "anywhere" – was changed to say "going nowhere" and signed "Team Robbo".

While one of Banksy's most famous works – a depiction of three children hoisting a Tesco bag "flag" on the side of an Islington pharmacy – was defaced so the plastic bag bore the tag "HRH King Robbo".

Another Banksy Regent's canal classic, a little boy fishing in the canal, now shows the child fishing for "Street Cred" alongside the threatening: "Did you think it was over? Team Robbo."

Some have accused both artists of courting publicity. One Camden graffiti artist told the Camden New Journal that the row was a "big publicity stunt.

"For Banksy to cover Robbo's mural was interpreted by graffiti artists as a complete lack of respect," he said.

He added: "When graffiti artists spend night after night sitting in bushes or getting arrested for no other cause than representing the culture, only to see street artists do the odd stencil and then whip the whole country into a spin, there's a lot of bitterness.

"But in my opinion it's all about publicity. Banksy is a household name whereas Robbo is very well respected but only in underground circles.

"By bringing attention to Robbo's work, Banksy has drawn attention to himself at the same time as boosting Robbo's profile. I'd put money on the fact that they have liaised on this."

Banksy's first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, had its debut at the 2010 Sundance film festival in this year and was released in the UK last month.

Featuring footage of the hooded anonymous artist Banksy at work, alongside some of the world's most celebrated graffiti artists perched perilously on high billboards in Paris or suspended high above the traffic in Los Angeles, the film is billed as "the world's first street-art disaster movie".

• Street art
• Banksy

Alexandra Topping

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How street artists and civic leaders transformed a rundown neighbourhood into a temple to pop art

The Market-Frankford Line, Philadelphia's east-west commuter train, feels like any large city's underground: a necessary evil of dull metals and unyielding seats, democratising all in its cacophony of late arrivals and unpleasant noises. The line becomes elevated on entering 46th St Station, four stops out from the skyscrapers of Center City. One rides at rooftop level past the once-prosperous terraced houses, half-shuttered shopfronts and vacant lots of Market Street, as the city's principal high road courses through the area known as West Philly.

Among the great northern cities of the United States, Philadelphia has a fairly low reputation for its treatment of its underclass and ethnic populations. That reputation can be hard-earned, as in 1985, when police firebombed a radical black activist group in its West Philly rowhouse, killing 11. More often, that reputation is earnt passively in an ongoing neglect: the elevated train, for example, took over a decade to complete, all but closing down sections of Market Street – the lifeblood of the community – for close to a generation.

The low-rent neighbourhood looks particularly dun on a recent rainswept afternoon. Literally dun: a decade ago, the city painted over hundreds of building faces and rooftops which had been steadily covered by graffiti since the early 1970s, using a shade of paint charitably called "chestnut brown". That changes dramatically two blocks out of 46th St Station, where 50 rooftops and buildings have become vibrantly coloured graphic messages, turning the skyline into a 15-block pop art canvas.

IF YOU WERE HERE ID BE HOME NOW reads a three-storey wall, whitewashed like a refrigerator. Its 5ft letters, replicating the block shapes and nursery colours of fridge magnets, run haphazardly down the right side of the wall. A clump of other letters, from which the message has been culled, cover the wall's left. REMEMBER, reads a 20ft yellow Post-It spraypainted on a wall, SOMETIMES IT HURTS, SOMETIMES IT DOESN'T. Written in flamboyant white script emerging from a sky-blue building face on 48th Street is FOR WHAT I WANT, I'LL WAIT 4800 YEARS IF I HAVE TO. And four blocks up: MEET ME ON FIFTY-SECOND FOR FIFTY SECONDS.

Philadelphia is a city of murals. More than 2,800 have been commissioned by the civic Mural Arts Program, which itself grew out of the city's Anti-Graffiti Network. Typically, murals here celebrate ethnic traditions or Philly mainstays like jazz, or basketball legend Julius "Dr J" Erving; but these messages are far closer to graffiti, their boldness drawing attention to their huge words and whimsically postmodern cartoons and motifs. Unlike traditional graffiti, however, where the message is often simply the artist's street-name, these are consistently positive and amusing, equally thought-provoking and eye-pleasing.

They are romantic, too: for the next four stations, one is riding through a billet-doux. A Love Letter for You is a collaboration between the Mural Arts Program and Stephen Powers, a 42-year-old artist who emerged on West Philly walls and rooftops 25 years ago, under the street-name ESPO. As a 17-year-old hoodlum then, Powers was inspired by Cornbread, the seminal graffiti writer who covered Philadelphia with his name to catch a girl's attention. Cornbread spraypainted not only walls but police cars, the visiting Jackson 5's private jet and an elephant in the city zoo. Love Letter reads like a series of notes left on a bedside table or refrigerator – if the lover happened to be Keith Haring or Marcel Duchamp.

Powers (and ESPO) relocated to New York City 15 years ago. Love Letter, ostensibly to his wife, Maryann, is clearly a paean to Powers's childhood neighbourhood as well, to the buildings and rooftops that were his original canvasses, and to the Market Street businesses so vital to the enduring community. A number of walls denote businesses and services within the buildings: I GOT DAYCARE MONEY AND CARFARE HONEY (for a day-care centre on 61st and Market). ILL SHAPE UP reads a black razor and electrical cord on the wall of the Heaven Barbershop on 6223 Market. CO-SIGN ON OUR LIFETIME on a 62nd St bank. On a particularly bleak corner, 52nd and Market, the message is meant simply, Powers explains, "to activate the area": enormous letters reading OPEN YOUR EYES I SEE THE SUNRISE.

The project, boosted by a $263,000 grant from the Philadelphia-based Pew Center for the Arts, took the best part of six months. Some 40 artists, as many as 25 at a time, painted through Hurricane Bill last September, and December's "Blizzard of '09", which dropped 18in of snow on the city. "That was during Bill," Powers points appreciatively to a building whose letters bleed noticeably, even as the train hurtles from station to station. We stand at the front window of the first car: the messages are on both sides of the line, half read best as we head west, the other better for eastbound passengers. "Our paint didn't have time to temper in the rain," Powers says. He will often savour the fact that pigments are already faded by sunlight: "Red goes first," he says, "then yellows. Black lasts longest." More important is the sense that these images are testament to the forever-young dedication of the street-artist. "It shows we were willing to write into a hurricane," Powers says.

While the project seems so much to be his, Powers insists he can take authorship of no more than 50%, even of the murals' ideas, which he would communicate on scraps of paper and cocktail napkins to painters – a mix of established graffiti artists, professional signpainters and locals. "Many of these guys started as kids in the pitch-black of a rooftop, trying to squeeze out a painting in the course of a night," he says.

Powers is grown-up now. His work shows worldwide, is mentioned in the company of Robert Crumb, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, and his graphics grace New Yorker stories. His job description, aesthetic and provocateur attitude, however, remain fiercely underground: shortly after relocating to New York, he was arrested for protesting against the then mayor Rudolph Giuliani's decision to close a controversial Brooklyn Museum exhibition. His Guantànamo-inspired Waterboard Thrill Ride, a faux peepshow in a disused storefront on Coney Island, uses mannequins to simulate torture.

Powers drew down $12,000 of Love Letter's grant – a quarter of the 20% artists typically take for such projects – and he returned $2,000 at the end, though work continues. He spends an increasing amount of time in his studio, but says he's still "most alive" when painting outside, particularly some wall or billboard he's not necessarily supposed to be painting. Or on a rooftop, buffeted by wind and rain, like the one he and I find ourselves atop toward nightfall, at 4548 Market St. West Philadelphia's chief historical landmark, the building was once home to the legendary TV show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Despite protection from a massive rooftop satellite dish, a 4x8ft painted aluminium panel that read I BEEN has been blown away by the storm. "Probably some aluminium collector's $12 find," muses Powers, as he examines the torn rivets where the panel once adhered to the first of three adjoining walls. It began the longest of Powers's love notes: I BEEN A RACONTEUR TALKING MY DREAM /I BEEN A SABOTEUR KILLING MY DREAM /NOW I AM AN ENTREPRENEUR LIVING THE DREAM

"I was under orders to get the word entrepreneurship up there, to promote that dream among West Philly, where the neighbourhood is so dependent on small-business ownership. I really just wanted to get the word saboteur up there, you know," he says. "And entrepreneurship is 16 letters. That's tough for a graffiti writer to fit in."

"But you are something of an entrepreneur now, aren't you?" I ask. "And this project reads to me like you're coming of age."

Powers isn't comfortable with any of that. "Things change," he'll allow. "I started out wanting to be an aberrant signal, and ESPO was my signal that everything was out of control, and that it probably should be. If I've learnt anything, over time, it's the difference between doing that from the centre of the community, broadcasting out, rather than just heckling from the periphery."

aloveletterforyou.com

• Street art

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The Powers of love: a selection of the 50 murals painted as part of Philadelphia's Love Letter project created by the artist Stephen Powers. The paintings are positioned on walls and rooftops so that two thirds of them can be viewed from the city's Market-Frankford elevated train line which is used by 160,000 commuters every day





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Graham Hudson, sculptor in residence at the building site north of King's Cross station, shows us around the space that will be his studio for the next six months





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Could Banksy ever be nominated for the Turner prize? It would certainly put the cat among the pigeons: for all his massive popular appeal, he is not much rated among the mainstream art establishment. In fact, the idea of Banksy being up for the prize would be bizarre, were it not for the admiring tweets emanating from Turner prize judge Andrew Nairne, head of arts strategy at Arts Council England. "Some of his work is twee (he must know that), but also smart, funny, generous, and original. Respect due," wrote Nairne. I wonder whether his fellow judges agree. Somehow, I doubt it.

• Banksy
• Street art
• Turner prize
• Art

Charlotte Higgins

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A new online archive records painted advertising across the country. Find out where your local signs are
• Get the data

The History of Advertising Trust launches its Ghostsigns Archive today, documenting and archiving painted advertising on buildings across the UK.

Painted signs were once common but have been replaced by printed billboards, and those that survive are fading fast, or being demolished during building work.

Project manager Sam Roberts has documented over 650 painted 'ghostsigns' around the country, with the help of interested photographers through the Ghostsigns Flickr group.

The spreadsheet here records the location of each advert (with partial postcode where available), enabling you to find your local signs. The History of Advertising Trust has also provided image links for some of the ghostsigns, and further URLs will be added as they become available.

Are there painted adverts in your area that haven't been documented yet? If so contact the Ghostsigns archive, and help the History of Advertising Trust to preserve this important piece of our advertising past for future generations.

Check out the list of images below, or download the spreadsheet for the full dataset of archived adverts, and see what you can do.



Download the data


• DATA: Ghostsigns archive with location and image links

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Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

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• Advertising
• Architecture
• Street art
• Photography
• Flickr
• Internet
• Software

Katy Stoddard

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From the slums of Kenya to the Paris banlieues, the guerilla photographer JR aims to put a human face to the most impoverished areas of the world. Just don't ask him who he is

The Parisian photographer JR is a man routinely touted as the hippest street artist since Banksy. His work has sold at Sotheby's and been plastered 100ft high on the wall of Tate Modern. His celebrity admirers include Trudie Styler and Damon Albarn. But regardless of his undoubted artistic pedigree, it seems inevitable, given his name, to ask him about Dallas.

So is his two-letter moniker a tribute to the fictional 80s oil baron JR Ewing?

"No," he laughs when we meet in his Paris studio, a bright, airy space filled with video-game consoles and designer chairs. "It's just my initials."

And they stand for?

"I can't say."

The deliberately enigmatic reply is more than mere artistic pretension. In fact, JR's anonymity is crucial to the integrity of his work: this is an artist who prides himself on operating under the radar, on creating dazzling installations in unexpected places through the force of his personality and vision.

As a teenager, he started out as a graffiti artist but began taking photographs when he found a camera on the Paris Métro. Now aged 26, he mixes the two forms and styles himself a "photograffeur", pasting oversize black-and-white photographic canvases in surprising public locations. It is something of a point of honour never to ask permission from the authorities.

"The fact that I stay anonymous means I can exhibit wherever I want," he explains with a broad grin, a plate of microwaved lamb tagine balanced precariously on his knees. "No one knows my name, so it's easy for me to travel."

In the aftermath of the 2004 riots in the Parisian suburbs, JR chose to exhibit in the grand central districts of his home town, pasting up photographs on the walls of the Marais. Portrait of a Generation featured close-up pictures of the young residents of the banlieues pulling funny faces through a fish-eye lens. Instead of the immigrant thugs of popular imagination, the Parisians who walked past JR's photographs were confronted with a more human image. "Most of the media shots of the rioters were taken with a long lens," explains JR, who comes from a mixed-race background with Tunisian and Eastern European heritage. "I used a 28mm lens to capture them really close up."

The second phase of his 28 Millimètres project took JR to the Middle East, where he mounted what is believed to be the largest illegal photo exhibition in the world. Appropriating a border wall running the length of the disputed areas between Israel and Palestine, JR pasted a giant triptych of a rabbi, a priest and an imam wearing deliberately comic expressions. The message was simple but arresting: when you are mugging it up for the camera, what brings you together is more in evidence than what sets you apart. "It's about breaking down barriers," JR says. "With humour, there is life."

Most recently, JR's ad-hoc exhibition space has included some of the most dangerous and poverty-stricken places in the world. Women Are Heroes is the third phase of the project and has seen him travelling to the slums of Kibera, Kenya, where he covered 2,000m² of rooftops with blown-up photographs of the women who lived there.

"I was interested in women because I realised in the projects I'd done before – most of the time in the kind of places I was going to – it was men on the street, but it's actually the women who are the ones holding the community together."

Then in 2008 he went to Morro da Providencia, the oldest and most perilous favela in Rio de Janeiro, to paste portraits of its female residents on the sides of the houses in which they lived. The distinctively monochrome eyes and faces were positioned looking towards the centre of Rio, a constant reminder of the grinding poverty that exists on the doorstep of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

"I asked each woman to give me something real," says JR, recalling the process. And it is true that, in contrast to the usual media images of grief and despair, the women project a pride in where they come from and a certainty about their own identity. "The photo is the story," he says. "They all gave me really strong eyes because they knew they would be facing the city."

It seems difficult to imagine JR in the heart of a drug-ridden favela. He is a slim and smiley young man, today wearing the casual uniform of the urban hipster: a Day-Glo sweatshirt, a black trilby and a pair of fashionable, thick-rimmed glasses. Was he scared? "Yeah of course," he says, nodding his head vigorously. "You can't even get a taxi to take you there… There are kids with guns and bulletproof jackets on the street. It's like finding yourself in the middle of a war."

In fact, the favela is so lawless that journalists are banned and no NGO operates there. Undeterred, JR simply drove himself to the centre of the shanty town and started chatting about what he wanted to do to anyone who approached him. He had been drawn to the favela by news reports concerning the murder of three innocent young men caught up in the brutal turf wars between drug traffickers and corrupt military police.

"Everything is about eye contact," JR says. "The first thing they have to know is that there's no brand behind it, that's really important… I'm not trying to use the favela to advertise Red Bull or BMX bikes, and I'm not a journalist either.

"I could speak for hours about the origins of the poster technique, but out there, there is not the same frame of reference. You have to go straight to the point. There's this person in front of you and there's no fucking around. That's how I test my projects: if they get it, it's going to work."

Almost immediately, the women of the favela understood what JR was trying to do. He asked anyone interested in participating to come along to an informal meeting. "The women who came were the ones related to the three kids who had been killed: the grandmother, the mother, the best friend. They reappropriated my project to tell their story." The end result was startlingly beautiful: a faceless community with its humanity regained.

But however successfully JR's installations work as art, they have a social conscience, too. In Kibera the photographs of women on the rooftops were printed on to vinyl so that their homes would be waterproof. The sheets of corrugated iron used in another part of the shanty town were distributed afterwards to those who had taken part. Last April JR returned to Rio to set up a cultural centre in the heart of the favela. All of the money he makes from the sale of his work – in 2009 a print of one of JR's most famous photos, "Ladj Ly", sold at auction for £26,250, and he has just sold an image to Damon Albarn for the cover of the forthcoming Africa Express album – is ploughed back into his projects so that JR can ensure his continued independence. "The finance is a key part," he says. "You wouldn't take it in the same way if I did it with L'Oréal."

There is a sense, also, that if JR were to reveal his name or speak more about his background, this would somehow detract from his work. Most graffiti artists start out by tagging their name on empty walls and tube carriages. JR does something different: he takes those who live on the margins of mainstream society and he gives them back their individuality. Paradoxically, perhaps, the photographer without a name creates extraordinary art by restoring the identities of the nameless.

• Photography
• Street art
• France
• Art
• Brazil
• Kenya

Elizabeth Day

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He was heir to one of America's greatest family fortunes and a multimillion-dollar art collection. But Dash Snow rebelled to become a self-styled outsider, a penniless "downtown Baudelaire" obsessed with drugs, sex and self-destruction. Sean O'Hagan traces the reckless life and untimely death of New York's most controversial artist

In 2008 Dash Snow was interviewed by the French magazine Purple Fashion. He described his art as a kind of storytelling and said it was about "trying to preserve a moment". By way of illustration, he talked about a piece he had recently made entitled A Means to an End. With hindsight, his description seems chillingly prescient.

"Sometimes the story is more important than the visuals, like A Means to an End, the table with all the stuff on it, the empty bags of coke and dope, and needles and diamond rings and all kinds of stuff. I was living on Avenue C in this really screwed-up house. When I moved it took seven days to clean it up, and this is all the stuff we found."

On 24 July Snow was found dead in a room at the Lafayette House hotel in New York's East Village. At the scene, detectives found two empty cans of beer, an empty bottle of rum, 13 glassine bags bearing traces of heroin and three used syringes. A means to an end.

Snow's body was discovered by his girlfriend, the model Jade Berreau, and a friend of the couple, the photographer Hanna Liden. They had gathered for lunch in a nearby restaurant with some friends, apparently to discuss what to do about Snow's worsening addiction. The pair had rushed around to the hotel after Berreau had received a call from Snow in which he'd sounded distressed and incoherent. His last words to her were: "Goodbye. I love you. I'll see you in another world."

Snow was pronounced dead by paramedics at 12.24am. He was just 10 days away from his 28th birthday. If his life and art constantly blurred into one, his death, too, had been foreshadowed in his work.

"If you look at the books he made, one is called In the Event of My Disappearance," says his gallerist, Javier Peres. "It was as if he was disclosing his state of mind. I never encountered anyone who lived more wildly and recklessly and freely, but I think he had lived the life he wanted to live and he was done living it. He had done what he wanted to do."

Snow's friend, the photographer Ryan McGinley, who documented their shared downtown scene - the all-night parties, the drugs, the sexual adventurism - until it grew too dark for him, says ruefully that Snow's death was not altogether unexpected. "I guess I wasn't surprised. It was one of those phone calls you always expected but hoped might never come. But it was still mind-blowing. Dash had such energy, such life force."

In death Snow, whom the New York Times dubbed "The latest incarnation of that timeless New York species, the downtown Baudelaire", has become an even more iconic figure. In downtown Manhattan, his playground as a graffiti artist, tributes to him have already appeared on walls and buildings, some depicting his raggle-taggle image, others his graffiti tag, SACE. Last month that same tag was writ large across the facade of Deitch Projects on Grand Street in Soho, one of the hippest galleries in New York. At the gallery's request, the building had been "bombed" by a graffiti artist known as GLACER, one of Snow's close friends from his years running wild with a spray can as part of the IRAK graffiti crew. In the early hours of the morning, GLACER had sprayed a jet of paint on to the facade from across the street using a customised fire extinguisher.

Inside, Snow's work - his edgy self-reportage Polaroids, collages, ornate homemade fanzines and grainy videos - was on display alongside the work of fellow New York artists-cum-friends. One wall was covered in McGinley's photographs of Snow and his crew drinking, smoking weed, snorting coke and having sex. Another featured an array of Snow's own Polaroids, the cruel and tender snapshots of a life lived - depending on where you are coming from - in the pursuit of total freedom or utter irresponsibility.

An adjoining room was filled with impromptu tributes from friends and strangers alike: collages, photographs, prose and poems, including one from the filmmaker and fellow free spirit Harmony Korine. All were a testament to Snow's charisma as well as his burgeoning cult status.

It was clear that Snow, through his wild life as much as the makeshift art he made from it, was viewed by both the coterie of cool young New Yorkers that knew him and the young wannabees who only knew of him, as a contemporary urban outlaw, a renegade, a self-styled outsider. At a cultural moment when those terms have all but lost their currency, Snow insisted on their continued importance, drawing on an "outsider" lineage that harked back to punk, the Beats, and beyond.

Snow's friend Kathy Grayson, a curator at Deitch who organised the memorial show, elaborates: "There are very few wild spirits in New York any more. Everyone plays it safe and goes for the money. But the more shitty and shallow New York gets, the tougher the rebellious people get. The whole street-based counterculture may have shrunk, but it's more diehard, and Dash was a figurehead for that kind of rebellion. He had that spirit of no fear that comes from being on your own and living by your wits. He hated authority, the police, anyone telling him what to do. He just danced to the beat of his own drum."

In Snow the New York art scene had finally found an edgy young artist to compare with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Like Snow, Basquiat had emerged out of graffiti subculture and died at 27 from a drug overdose. Unlike Basquiat's art, Snow's art had not yet been commodified by that same voracious art world, though whether this was down to his refusal to play the game or the perceived notion that his work was not original enough is a question that has been left hanging in the air by his untimely death.

Despite, or maybe because of, his self-styled mythology, and the confrontational and often wilfully adolescent thrust of his work - he once made a series of collages by ejaculating on to tabloid images of Saddam Hussein, then encrusting the sperm with glitter - Snow leaves behind an already fiercely contested artistic legacy. Even a casual perusal of the blogosphere reveals how much he divides opinion. He is dismissed as a chancer by some, exalted as a figurehead by others. Much of the scorn seems to come from those who saw Snow, as one blogger puts it, as "a rich kid and a hyped-up scenester". Both Grayson and Peres insist he was neither.

"People say he was a child of privilege," says Peres, who knew Snow for several years before he represented him, "but he rejected his family and their wealth apart from the support he had from his grandmother, who was a kind of patron."

Even before he became an artist, Snow's life was colourful, intriguing and seemingly intensely troubled. He was born into the kind of vast wealth that is usually described as "old money". In a 2007 New York magazine profile that incensed Snow and his friends, Ariel Levy wrote: "Snow's maternal grandmother is a de Menil, which is to say art-world royalty, the closest thing to the Medicis in the United States. His mother made headlines a few years ago for charging what was then the highest rent ever asked on a house in the Hamptons: $750,000 a season. And his brother, Maxwell Snow, is a budding member of New York society who has dated Mary-Kate Olsen."

Born to Christopher Snow and Taya Thurman - his aunt is the actress Uma Thurman - on 27 July 1981, Dashiell Snow was the great-grandson of Dominique and John de Menil, French aristocrats who amassed what is generally regarded as America's finest collection of art. It is based in a museum bearing the family name in Houston, Texas and includes works by Magritte, Ernst, Duchamp, Matisse and Picasso as well as American masters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Their Rothko collection is kept in Houston's famous Rothko Chapel, itself a work of art.

"Dash grew up around Rauschenbergs and Twomblys," says Peres, "and he definitely had a sensibility that he had honed as his own, but without any formal training. He was someone who was giving voice to people who were on the outside, on the margins."

Snow's rebellion against his family, and his mother in particular, seems to have begun in earnest when, as a disruptive child, he was sent by her to a boarding school called Hidden Lake Academy in Georgia which specialised in the treatment of children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It was recently described by a local fundamentalist clergyman as "a last-chance boarding academy that offers objectively defined teenagers an alternative to prison". Whatever happened to Snow during his enforced tenure there, he held it against his mother until his death.

"He hated his mother more than anything," says McGinley. "But he never really spelt out why. He would even tell people his mother was dead. He never mellowed out on that.

I did meet his father once, and he was cool, a musician with a more bohemian spirit that Dash chimed with. I guess his closest family relationship was with his grandmother, Christophe. She kind of supported him and he loved her. She was a big part of his life."

When Snow was 18 he married a Corsican-born artist, Agathe Aparru, five years his senior. They lived with his grandmother for four years. It was Christophe who provided him with money when he was living by his wits on the streets of New York as a young teenager after coming out of Hidden Lake and fleeing forever the family home, and she who funded him as a struggling artist.

"His grandmother's help and support was considerable," says Peres, "but I think the amounts of money have been exaggerated considerably. Put it this way, I'm used to working with struggling artists before they make it, and I was shocked when Dash told me how much he was living on. It was small. Then again, he was a guy who didn't need much. He grew up in a world where he could not reconcile his wealth with what he was feeling. I think he rejected it in order to find some kind of freedom beyond it."

Initially that freedom manifested itself in petty crime and the buzz that being a graffiti artist constantly dodging the law brought. One unforgettable, and to a great degree, defining image of the young Snow in excelsis is McGinley's photograph of him balanced fearlessly and precariously on the ledge of a New York hotel roof, spray can in hand. His art, too, tended towards the transgressive and often the wilfully destructive. Alongside his friend Dan Colen, Snow created a series of installations called "hamsters' nests" that adhered to a ritual wherein they got off their heads on liquor and drugs, then shredded hundreds of books and whatever else came to hand. The nests were supposedly a male-bonding ritual and were created in hotel rooms - they famously trashed a suite in the Mayfair Hotel while staying there as guests of the Saatchi Gallery - as well as galleries.

"The one and only show they did at Deitch was a nest," says Grayson, smiling ruefully at the memory. "This crazy expression of bonding and freedom that got so out of hand.

It was absolute madness, sustained for over four nights, with different people dropping in and out, graffiti kids, street people, artists, all helping to essentially destroy the place. There's a photograph of Dash igniting a jet of vapour from a spray can amid all this paper and stuff while a skateboarder jumps over it. When my boss saw that, I almost lost my job."

Grayson tells another wild tale of Snow inviting a local homeless character, who goes by the name of Pap Smurf, to live in the gallery while the show was on. "Dash just had this ability to connect with every kind of person on the street. I watched him a million times walk up to truly terrifying-looking people and ask them if he could photograph their gang tattoos or their missing teeth. He had no fear and no sense of his own safety."

The artist Jack Walls, partner of the late Robert Mapplethorpe and someone whom McGinley describes as " a kind of mentor to us all", remembers the first time he met Snow. "He must have been 15 or 16, and he was friendly with Patti Smith's son Jackson because as children they had attended the Little Red School House together, which is where all the artists' kids go. I was walking along with Jackson and I saw this gang of graffiti and skate kids across the street. Suddenly one of them came running over and just stood right in front of us, blocking our way. That was Dash. He was kind of in-your-face even then, a little rebel."

Grayson, too, attests to Snow's "ability to be friendly and open and mischievous to everyone", then adds, laughing: "Except the cops." Snow's loathing of authority is the stuff of legend among the kids he ran with. It crops up again and again in conversation often as the defining element of his all-important street cred, his authenticity. Like the addiction that laid him low, though, it seems also to have been a symptom of something deeper and darker.

"He hated any kind of authority so much," elaborates Grayson. "Not just the cops, but anyone telling him what to do. So much so that it was hard to talk to him sometimes about certain things, or even advise him. Basically, if you didn't accept him for who he was, the way he was, he would not accept you. You could never tell him what to do, you had to just..." Her eyes fill up with tears and she shakes her head:

"Just appreciate him, I guess."

For a while, Snow seemed to have found a degree of contentment with Jade Berreau and their young daughter, Secret, but the demons that helped propel his art once again began to stalk him. In March of this year he checked into a rehab facility for the second time in a year. "He could go a month clean," his ex-wife Agathe told the New York Times, "but then if he had one glass of wine, it would become a bottle, then coke, then heroin. There was not a slow build-up; it was like a beast building up."

Ryan McGinley spent the Memorial Day weekend in late May at Jack Walls's house in upstate New York. Snow was there also but the two did not actually meet. "Dash never came out of his room the whole weekend," says McGinley.

"I didn't see him. He had gone to rehab just before that, but he had started using again. He was probably high in his room. I spent the day with Secret. It was kind of sad that I didn't see him. But it was a really great day, too."

Looking now at Snow's work, and his Polaroids in particular, you get a glimpse of a certain kind of early 21st-century urban American youth cultural sensibility: a sensibility that has its roots in punk and notions of outsiderdom and authenticity, and that, like punk, trails a recklessness bordering on nihilism as a kind of defining badge of identity. That sensibility is detectable in disparate places - in the early work of Harmony Korine, in the extreme outer reaches of rap and indie-rock culture, in some of the more reportage-based photographs of McGinley, and to a degree in the messy, always unfinished-sounding music, of Pete Doherty. You can trace it back through the work of photographers such as Larry Clark and Nan Goldin, mythmakers whose myths depend on an unvarnished and often hardcore portrayal of the lives of the beautiful losers they ran with, took drugs with and whose defiance and despair - and sometimes even their deaths - they turned into art of the most relentlessly uncompromising kind.

Snow was in, and of, that lineage, just as he belonged to that arty, druggy, downtown demi-monde that has survived even the gentrification of the entire Lower East Side. His art was not so much a reflection as an extension of it. He undoubtedly had an eye for the telling detail, the captured moment, and because of this, I think, his often unflinchingly confessional Polaroids will live on. They possess a grim beauty that those of us who do not live such wild and reckless lives seem to find irresistible.

"He wasn't a flash in the pan," says Walls. "He was up there with any of them. He had it. Completely. He was the whole ball of wax. He was for real."

Grayson concurs. "Was he a great artist? Hell yeah. He has the most impressive photo archive of any young American artist in decades, though most of it is unseen. There are boxes and boxes of Polaroids that just took my breath away. It's an extraordinary documentation of an extraordinary life. He had what all great photographers have: a signature. I just hope," she adds, again fighting back the tears, "that his work will come out in a considered way and that everyone will eventually see the legacy. There certainly won't be anyone like him again, that's for sure."

• Art
• Photography
• Street art
• New York

Sean O'Hagan

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