Using the Street for Art: A Reply to Baldini

I reply to Andrea Baldini's critical discussion of my "Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces" (2010) by taking up the question: what is "the street" in street art? I argue that the relevant notion of the street is a space whose function it is to facilitate self-expression. I show how this clarifies and extends the theory developed in Riggle (2010). I then argue, contra Baldini, that street art is not always subversive, and when it is, it is not always in virtue of its challenging the co-opting of public space by commercial art.