I'm going to recommend watching the first 2:30 of this film. You could watch all of it, it's pretty interesting, but it is an hour and a half long; so unless you have the time right now, you might want to come back later.
Watched those two minutes?
Good.
Here's the point: public opinion and quality.
These two things may or may not coincide, but they do have strong ties to each other.
A great part of the Art Nouveau movement came as a reaction to the materialism created by the Industrial Revolution, and the decline in the quality of work.
A large part of the Street Art movement comes from a reaction to materialism and government.
Again, these might not be the same thing, but they are very similar.
The movie focuses on a man named Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant, who managed to be almost at the very start of the Street Art movement. And not only was he at the start of it, he caught a great deal of it on camera. He followed many of the greats for years before delving into the world himself. And when he did that, he did it almost overnight.
Generally, the public views graffiti as graffiti, and street art as street art. What's the difference? I'm not sure I could tell you. Mostly, it seems to be just how much a particular piece or line or shape appeals to an individual person. But to law enforcement, it's all graffiti, and it's all illegal.
Funny thing is, you can get paid for doing it.
Street Art has become such a widely known phenomenon that well works by well known artists sell by the thousands at exorbitant prices. And they sell to everyone.
Here's where the quality part comes in: one of the most prolific and well paid street artists? Thierry Guetta.
Now, this might not make a lot of sense unless you've actually seen all the movie, but the quality of the man's work is... shall we say, unimpressive.
Which is how public opinion and quality tie together. It would seem that, to the general public, quality is not quite as necessary as the name placed on an object. If someone offered you a Banksy sketch, something utterly ridiculous, maybe a few lines on a piece of paper, a smiley-face somewhere, which would matter more? The lines, or the person who drew them?
This is, essentially where Art Nouveau came in. When the Industrial Revolution allowed for more and more people to have works of art, the public was happy. The artists were not.
Street Art isn't necessarily the next big thing in the Graphic Design world. Maybe it is. I'm not sure if it's gone on long enough yet for it to be considered the next big movement. But it seems to me to have shades of a movement long past, shades of a struggle that hasn't quite been able to work itself out even hundreds of years later.
