Street-art and gentrification

Though it was long considered as mere vandalism, graffiti art has now acquired a solid reputation
on the market of art. While many continue to work anonymously under pseudonyms, like Banksy,
Ronzo, C215, or Invader, other street artists have come out of the shadow and are
sometimes commissioned to paint the façades of buildings. Their work adds incredible value to
those buildings, even to whole districts, which results in their gentrification. This phenomenon
occurs when the value of dilapidated buildings and under-privileged neighbourhoods suddenly
rises, driving poor residents out of their homes, while middle-class or well-off people replace them.
Many hardcore artists now denounce this trend, saying street-art should not be used for
boosting real-estate prices, and that it does not belong in a museum either. Banksy recently
protested in a similar line. One of his works was being sold at auction, and he had integrated
a shredder into the frame of his work, so that when the painting was sold, it was shredded to
pieces.

The great Depression through the eyes of American artists

The Great Depression refers to a period of American history in the 1930s when a severe economic
crisis struck the United States. It originated in the Wall Street crash of September 1929. Stock
market prices collapsed, causing millions of American investors to lose fortunes. The economic
disaster sent ripples through the whole American society. It challenged the concept of the
American Dream, and destroyed people’s faith and confidence in a brighter future. Also at that
period, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, States of the Middle West dubbed the“Dust Bowl”, were
hit by periods of drought and strong winds, which forced poor farmers to abandon their land
and try their luck in the city, notably in California, which could be reached following the famous
Route 66. Artists witnessed those changes in society, and documented them in their works.
Photographer Dorothea Lange captured the misery and distress, but also the dignity of those
struck by poverty. In The Grapes of Wrath, novelist John Steinbeck portrayed men and
women streaming to California in search of employment and decent living conditions. Regionalist
painters expressed nostalgia of the old rural society that was disappearing, like Grant Wood
with American Gothic.