Arte di Frontiera (LArt des Frontires):paramtres et enjeux dans la dfinition des contours de lesthtique urbaineChristian OmodeoLe Grand Jeuhttp://legrandj.eu

Bologna, 1984The exhibition Arte di Frontiera, which was organized in Bologna, Milan and Rome in 1984, was, until Art in the Streets (Los Angeles, MOCA) in 2011, the best show ever realized to deserve graffiti and street art cultures.

Arte di Frontiera. New York Graffitis importance didnt rely on the artists involved, but in the the critical approach to New York underground cultures, which was developed by the Italian art critic Francesca Alinovi.The concept of frontier was very relevant to her.

Lart dAvant-garde actuel est un art de frontire plus quun art souterrain ; soit parce quil voit littralement le jour, le long des zones situes aux marges gographiques de Manhattan (Lower East Side et South Bronx), soit parce que, mme mtaphoriquement, il sous-tend un espace intermdiaire entre culture et nature, masse et lite, blanc et noir (je fais allusion la couleur de la peau), agressivit et ironie, ordures et finesses exquises.The art if the current Avant-garde is more of a frontier art than it is underground; either because it literally occurs at the geographic edges of Manhattan (Lower East Side and the South Bronx), or because, even metaphorically, it underpins an intermediate space between culture and nature, mass and elite, black and white (I allude to skin colour), aggressiveness and irony, trash and exquisite refinement.The FRONTIER concept

While new avant-garde movements were undergoing in the streets in the 1970s, Francesca Alinovi immediately pioneered her discoveries all across Italy and New York.She was also one of the first who created a new figure in the contemporary art world: the art critic as artist. Francesca Alinovi 1948-1983

Despite urban art practices have had totally changed our way to look at urban space during last 30 years, the academics still look with no interest to these subjects.Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat are still considered as the most important representative of something that has only inspired their art. They have done to graffiti culture what Dave Brubeck had done to jazz: whitening.Real graffiti has been judged as vandalism and linked with Hip Hop culture.

The hard path to institutionalize urban art practicesForced to explain to Academia why they had to finance my researches on these topics in 2011, two points became central to my eyes:1. Give access to documentation: books, books, books2. Redefining Art History frontiers, in order to include urban art practices

1. Books, books, booksWithout having access to graffiti and street art documentation, it is impossible to study the history of their history and to demonstrate the importance of these subjects. Public libraries have only a few books. Thats why Ive started a huge bibliographic research, in order to check what books, magazines and catalogues have to been primarily used to study urban art practices.

The first four stepsSpring 2014 : Preparation of Crossboarding: an Italian Paper History of Graffiti Writing & Street Art (120 records, a bibliographical essay and a complete bibliography)

October 2014: opening of a book exhibition in Paris.

March 2015: Le Grand Jeu opens a new bookstore, focused on rare and important graffiti and street art books, magazines and catalogues + some nice memorabilia.

May 2015: curating a book show, centered on international graffiti books and magazines, inside the exhibition The Bridges of Graffiti in Venice, which is part of the Biennale.

which lead to the fifth oneAutumn 2016: on-going paper, which will be published in Perspective, the journal of the Institut National dHistoire de lArt (Inha). The paper will, first, focus on the lack of documentation on urban art practices in French public libraries and, then, try the define:- which kind of documentation would be available in a center like that;where this center could be created in France (Inha, Centre Pompidou, MUCEM, Palais de Tokyo, etc).

2. Redefining Art History frontiersStarting from Hans Beltings LHistoire de lArt est-elle finie? (1983), Art History as a discipline was forced to redefine its frontiers and its role within humanities.The appearance of visual studies, after what W.J.T. Mitchell has defined as a pictorial turn, and the growing importance of anthropology, which forced to look artworks as objects more than consider them as part of an unique and elitist history of art.The reaction of academics and institutions to theses leanings has often been consider as conservative and reactionary. Its normal, because, since XIXth century, society has asked art historians to take on heritage defense and to preserve the cities as old as possible, to transform them in a museum. This has led to some clash as the Baris case can prove.

Stop theory (for some minutes), lets see what has appened in the real worldHow urban art practices has been institutionalized until today, at least in France? How have we justified public investment in this specific field?Two different issues have been retained:The first one, which we can call the anthropological one has looked at urban art practices, often without considering aesthetics. The MUCEM in Marseille, one of the rare museum in the world which has a graffiti collection, consider it as a culture, not as art. They have collected objects, not artworks.

The second one, more spread between collectors and in the art market, includes graffiti writing and street art in a linear history of art. The Pressionnisme exhibition now in Paris perfectly embodies this model, which was created in NYC in the 1970s, when graffiti writers started to consider writing as art.Today, this approach is no longer defendable, because it comes from a Vasarian ideal of art, which is understandable only inside Western culture. However, Im quite sure that it will still be dominant, because it remains the best one to assign an economic value to artists and their art.

From analytics to pragmatism: cause Kant is totally unuseful to study rapAs Richard Shusterman has demonstrated in his book Lart ltat vif (1991), we had to abandon the traditional clash between practice and aesthetics supported by analytic aesthetics into Western philosophy and to look at the pragmatic aesthetics of the American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952). Aesthetics seems more rich of meanings if we admit that, adopting practice, it concerns also social and politics. Enlargement and emancipation of the aesthetics field involve a reconsideration of the notion of art by freeing it from the shackles that separate it from life and popular culture. Today, art, life and popular culture suffer from this restrictive identification of art only into fine arts. Defending the new aesthetic legitimacy allows to give a more democratic definition of art, to redefine art history frontiers (and to stop wasting energy in trying to explain links and difference between graffiti, art and vandalism)