Codex Urbanus - Why is art in the streets?

For four decades, street art has never ceased to thwart codes and arouse the interest of an ever-growing public. From Miami to Shanghai via London and Berlin, hordes of tourists and photographers are interested in the frescoes and graffiti on the walls, and Paris, with a unique historical scene, is establishing itself as one of the capitals of this movement. Paradoxically, and despite a wealth of literature on the subject, no one seems to try to understand what led to the fact that artists suddenly started placing art in the street, illegally and for free. However, street art is a pure product of our society, and constitutes a healthy and artistic reaction to a world that erects more and more barriers between the citizen and his freedom. It deserves greater attention and questioning than the usual confusion maintained in the media between graffiti, street art and municipal art. This essay, in the form of a manifesto, attempts not to propose yet another historical chronology of urban art but to understand the reasons that have pushed women and men to wildly and artistically invest the walls, in order to bring out the primordial asperities of which stands out as the major artistic movement of our time.