Bristol street artist Nick Walker has been busy in Paris; he's resurrected his Vandal character and also collaborated with SheOne. Here's a collection of some of his new street work, via Nuart.

Irak of Earsnot, via Brooklyn Street Art











Our favourite Australian street artists Rekaone, Ghostpatrol and TwoOne team up for this wall, depicting 'idle hands' in their own unique styles via Booooooom!





How and Nosm...





Sand One and Shiro, via Brooklyn Street Art




 
Phlegm's staggering robot, via Arrested Motion










Kurt Perschke has taken this giant red ball across the globe as part of his The Red Ball Project. You can check out its adventures here





Polish artist Peter Fuss stating the obvious but also making us smile during this bitterly cold spell, via Arrested Motion

check out last week's On The Streets here

Here's this week's round-up of our favourite new urban art on the street!




Shepard Fairey, via Street Art News

Suewde, via VAndalog

 

LYN via Vandalog


Optimo, via Brookyln Street Art



Mambo, via Unurth



Torsco, via Stick2target

We recently showed you this clip of David Choe painting the walls of Facebook's new head quarters. What we didn't tell you is that when David Choe first painted the walls of Facebook's first offices the then Facebook president Sean Parker offered Choe the choice between cash or shares in the company.

Choe, who has said that at the time he thought the idea of Facebook was ridiculous and pointless, chose the shares.

Well according to the New York Times, those shares are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly this year.

The NYTimes also said:

"Although Mr. Choe initially led a rough life including run-ins with the law, he is wealthy even without the Facebook offering. (It is unclear whether he sold any portion of his Facebook holdings on secondary markets.) Now a very successful artist with gallery shows and pieces exhibited in major museums,



Mr. Choe declined requests to be interviewed for this article; he said he wanted to maintain his privacy. He has, however, published an obscenity-strewn book of his art, “David Choe,” which includes images of the multimillion-dollar murals at Facebook.

Mr. Choe’s page on Facebook shows the life of a modern-day renegade artist. Among the images of his graffiti, there is a trail of images of him partying with scantily clad women and spending large amounts of money on alcohol. In recent weeks, Mr. Choe promoted photos of a $40,000 bottle of alcohol; a single shot, he boasted, costs $888."

(picture Albert Louden, via the Tate)

The 20th annual Outsider Art Fair took place in New York over the weekend, January 27-29, with over thirty exhibitors showing their best and boldest outsider art. But what exactly does that term mean these days?

The term (according to Wikipedia) was first coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut, a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture (Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates),

In this year's press release, the Outsider Art Fair defines the term as ' works made by artists who never went to art school and who generally make their paintings, drawings, sculptures and inventive, mixed-media creations for themselves or for small, local audiences, outside or removed from the cultural or commercial mainstream.'


(picture: Sava Sekulic via The Tate)

Journalist Paul Hiebert attended the Fair over the weekend and wrote an interesting write-up over at Flavourwire where he asked curators, scholars and artists at the Fair what the term meant to them.

Some of the comments included:

"I think outsider art is a pretty tenuous term, and it means a lot of different things to different people. For me, it means not part of the regular art world. But it’s also been ruined by the fact that this is such an insider thing. Sometimes it’s on the verge of exploitation. Once a piece crosses the threshold into being recognized by the art world as art, it becomes a different thing. It’s become very confusing in the last two decades.” — KT Tierney, Artist


“Outsider art is work that’s made outside of the traditional communication lines. I work a lot with autistic artists, and their artwork is a pressure valve because there is no filter. That work excites me because it possesses magic.” — Margaret Bodell, Gallerist at Umbrella Arts

“Outsider art is untrained work. It’s unconventional. It’s more interesting to me than the contemporary stuff because nobody’s playing by the rules. The advantage of being labeled an outsider is that people can feel like they discovered you, while the disadvantage is that you don’t have the blue-blood background to get you in the easy route.” — Jason D’Aquino, Artist


(picture: Tom Duncan, via Flavorwire)

In response to last year's Outsider Art Fair, Martha Schwendener wrote in the New York Times: "I once asked an art dealer how he determined whether someone was an outsider artist, and he offered this criterion: anyone who called up and said he or she was an outsider artist was immediately disqualified. In his view, outsider artists don’t self-identify and they don’t operate telephones. "

And, again in the New York Times Ken Johnson wrote: Some people think the label "outsider artist" should be retired. Why does it matter whether an artist is self-taught, mentally impaired or deranged. The best outsider art is good for the same reasons that art by professional insiders is good: because it is formally eye-catching, inventively made, unpredictably imaginative and passionately driven."

Did you attend the Outsider Art Fair?

What does Outsider Art mean to you?

Do you think the term still relevant?

Check out this video of Mr Brainwash taking over an abandoned industrial space in LA as part of his Art Show 2011, and inviting the local art community to help him re-decorate.




You can see more of Thierry Guetta, aka Mr Brainwash's, limited edition prints and work here.

Filtering the best new street art for your visual pleasure...

 

Ador and Kyro by Thias, via Vandalog

 

David Choe and DVS-1 via juxtapose

 

Ben Eine, above and below, via Arrested Motion

En Masse, via Brooklyn Street Art




Vinz, via Brooklyn Street



Laurence Billet above, via vandalog, obviously taking a stab at Damien Hirst's famous spot paintings.


Check out last week's On The Streets post

Below you'll find our weekly round-up of the best new urban art on the streets...




via Brooklyn Street Art




Dem189, Seth, Lek and Swiz pay tribute to Amy Winehouse, via here.




We can't get enough of ROA above, who we also featured here. Love how the outside staircase is incorporated into the tail.



Gaia, C215 and KCA via Brooklyn Street Art




Hanksy above, obviously a spoof on this Banksy piece




Palladino above, via Brooklyn Street Art


Check out last week's round-up of the best new street art here

Two weeks ago we brought you this video of David Choe and DVS1 collaborating as part of Nuart 2011, today we've got this killer video of German graffiti duo Herakut (Hera and Akut) creating this incredible installation also as part of Nuart 2011.  (nice song choice too!)

For more of Herakut's work, click here.

One of our favourite graffiti and contemporary artists Futura currently has a show on in Paris at Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, which includes 15 new works.

The theme of the show is 'expansion' and the work explores abstraction and spontaneity.

Check out this video below of Futura working his magic.

Futura 2000 - Galerie de Noirmont - Paris - Live Painting from Guillotine on Vimeo.
 

Check out more of Futura's work here