Street Art in the Context of the Historical Avant-garde

The objective of this study is to determine a role of historical avant-garde in forming a phenomenon of the modern culture as street-art. This study was carried out using a comparative, social and historical approaches. The revelation of connections and differences between practices of street-art and avant-garde was carried out according to following parameters such as a place of action, a specific character of the art process, its result (work), addressee/reference group, a social component. A number of peculiarities of street art, the origin of which is inspired by historical avant-garde. First of all, it is an urban art characterizing by maximum democratization and a social direction of art, removing art borders and a problem of the work of art quality. At the same time the identity of street art with avant-garde is discourteous. Street art does not possess this attributive feature as utopia, it is realistic oriented to “here and now”. Avant-garde idea of building a new world and a new man using art means is changed for less ambitious social practices directed to setting up the interaction with different reference groups. Radicalism of avant-garde lay not so much in the political sphere as aesthetic one. Radicalism of street art is connected with politicization. The novelties in the sphere of art forms of street art are not significant, they are connected with using new technologies. The results of this study showed that although street art is not avant-garde of the modern art but it is founded by the cultural field occurring due to historical avant-garde.   Keywords: avant-garde, relational art, social practice, street art, urbanis