Disobedient Objects Exhibition in Victoria and Albert Museum: Social Change

Disobedient Objects Exhibition in Victoria and Albert Museum: Social Change

The term “catalog” is quite well known and well spread all over the world. It is frequently used in various fields such as science, economics, sales, manufacturing, food industry, beauty sphere, culture, and art. The word “catalog” comes from the Greek language. Its meaning refers to the categorization and sorting of some items or notions according to certain criteria and features they possess (Strout, n. d.).

This is the best and most rational way of organizing and structuring various spheres of knowledge and setting order within them. This paper explores the styles and types of street art, graffiti namely, their main features, their kinds, shapes, fonts, and sizes because this kind of art is often overlooked and frowned upon. Street art started to be viewed as a kind of art only several decades ago. Street art professionals, artists, and experts today study this field to reveal its hidden meanings and symbols.

Street art is popular all over the world; it can often be seen in urban areas. In this paper, I intend to reveal the complexity of street art and its connection to typography to show that this subject is worth studying. Street artworks possess several typographic features according to which they can be classified and identified.

Street art is observed and encountered mainly in urban areas that have large buildings and tall walls. In Great Britain, at least eighty five percent of population dwells in the urban areas. The public perception of the urban landscapes is mainly negative, and street art and its perception by the masses adds to the overall dissatisfactory idea about is a phenomenon and the influences it produces (Conway, 1999).

Understanding of street art is complicated by the absence of the information necessary for its categorization. Just like in languages and translation, understanding graffiti styles required proper references to the authors’ intentions (Moi, 2010). Distinguishing the message of the works and their meanings is highly important to avoid misinterpretation (Hooks, 2013).

To study street art better, the object based learning is applied, the learning is based on the specimens and examples of various works, their comparison, and understanding, object-based learning provides the learners with reliable evidence and materials for conclusion drawing (Introduction to object-based learning, 2014). Street art includes various kinds of writings; it has a lot to do typography, which is the art of lettering and fonts.

Over the last several decades, the public perception and attitude towards art and design changed, as a result, many new modern streams of art occurred (Disobedient Objects: About the Exhibition, 2014). It is a well-known fact that today modern street art is established as the subject of municipal legislation that has a goal to protect and preserve the urban aesthetics and property values (Mettler, 2012).

According to the attitudes towards this kind of art, the society is now divided into the individuals that are against it and consider it as visual pollution of urban areas and the ones that support this art and find it unconventional and interesting (Novak, 2014). The complexity of lettering and typography and exclusivity of these writings is often overlooked.