Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

It goes without saying that, within the most recent decades, what has been called contemporary art remains to be unsorted. But what happens if the focus lies on so-called urban art? Sometimes the classification becomes even more blurred. This paper aims to bring to light the (artistic or not so artistic) production of JR (Paris, 1983) and pursue the discussion itself about whether the social label applied to any artistic production precedes the very essence of art. Neither it would be fair nor possible to talk about JR and his art without bringing up both the “artivist” and “artivism” concepts with all their possible implications in one sense as well as in the other. Are we dealing with a societal interference in art? Or, on the contrary, has art decided to radically intervene in society?