Street Art & Graffiti Quiz

1. Banksy is a famous anonymous street artist. Where is Banksy believed to be from?

1. Bristol, England
2. London
3. New York
4. Paris

2. Jean-Michel Basquiat rose from New York street art to fine art fame in the 1980s. He initially became known under what tag name?

1. CORNBREAD
2. KAWS
3. SAMO
4. TAKI 183

3. Keith Haring began his art career drawing in which New York City location?

1. In Central Park on the pathways
2. On billboards in Times Square
3. On fire hydrants throughout Manhattan
4. On the blank black advertising panels in New York subway stations

4. What is the legal distinction between 'street art' and 'graffiti'?

1. Street art always features political imagery; graffiti features only tags and letters
2. Street art is typically commissioned or tolerated; graffiti is applied without permission — though culturally both terms overlap
3. Street art uses spray paint; graffiti uses markers
4. There is no legal distinction — both are legally defined as vandalism in most jurisdictions

5. Shepard Fairey's 'HOPE' poster became an iconic image from which US presidential campaign?

1. Barack Obama 2008
2. Bernie Sanders 2016
3. Bill Clinton 1992
4. George W. Bush 2004

6. What is 'TAKI 183', considered one of graffiti's founding origin stories?

1. A code used by early New York City graffiti artists for a particular style
2. A famous mural in the Bronx that inspired the hip-hop movement
3. A New York City tagline painted by a teenager named Demetrius whose nickname was TAKI and lived on 183rd Street
4. The tag name of a Philadelphia graffiti pioneer who first used spray paint on trains

7. What is 'wildstyle' in graffiti culture?

1. A freestyle, no-planning approach to creating graffiti
2. A highly complex, interlocking lettering style where letters are interwoven and decorated to be difficult to read for non-graffiti writers
3. Graffiti painted at extreme heights on buildings or bridges
4. Unsanctioned graffiti painted in the wilderness

8. Banksy's famous work showing a girl releasing a red heart-shaped balloon is called what?

1. Girl with Balloon
2. Heart Release
3. Hope Floats
4. Love Balloon

9. Os Gemeos (The Twins) are celebrated street artists from which country?

1. Brazil
2. Mexico
3. Portugal
4. Spain

10. What is 'yarn bombing' (also called guerrilla knitting)?

1. A form of street art using colourful yarn or knitted/crocheted coverings applied to public objects like trees, statues, and railings
2. A protest art form using flammable materials
3. A technique of using compressed yarn fibres to create textured murals
4. Using explosive paint canisters for large-scale murals

11. The East Side Gallery in Berlin is a famous outdoor gallery of what?

1. A gallery of graffiti from East German dissident artists during the communist era
2. A series of glass-fronted exhibition spaces in former East Berlin
3. Art painted directly on a surviving 1.3km section of the Berlin Wall by international artists after German reunification
4. Commissioned sculptures along the East Berlin waterfront

12. What is 'wheatpasting' (also called wheatpaste) in street art?

1. A stencilling technique using wheat grain patterns
2. A type of textured mural using recycled food materials
3. Applying paper-based artwork (posters, prints) to walls using a flour-and-water adhesive paste — a cheaper and faster method than spray paint
4. Using wheat grain in street art pigments for an organic look

13. Invader is a French street artist who makes art from what material?

1. Broken mirror pieces
2. Ceramic mosaic tiles arranged into Space Invader-inspired pixel art
3. Discarded circuit boards arranged into mosaics
4. Melted plastic waste

14. What is 'anamorphic street art'?

1. 3D street art or optical illusions drawn on flat surfaces that appear three-dimensional when viewed from a specific angle
2. Art made from natural materials that degrade over time
3. Street art that can only be seen in ultraviolet light
4. Street art that changes colour in different weather conditions

15. Futura 2000 is a pioneer of which type of graffiti style that moved away from lettering toward abstract forms?

1. Abstract graffiti — non-representational, non-lettering based street art inspired by abstract expressionism
2. Character art — large cartoonish characters
3. Photorealistic portrait murals
4. Stencil-based political street art

16. The term 'KAWS' refers to which internationally celebrated street-art-turned-fine-art figure?

1. A graffiti crew from Los Angeles
2. A Japanese street art collective
3. Brian Donnelly — an American artist known for his XX-eyed cartoon characters who progressed from graffiti to toys to major gallery exhibitions
4. The artist name of Shepard Fairey

17. What did Banksy's 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' (2010) claim to be, and why was it controversial?

1. A competition to find unknown street artists
2. A documentary about street art, but widely believed to be a mockumentary or hoax involving a fictional character named Mr. Brainwash
3. A legitimate art heist documentary
4. A secretly funded advertising campaign for a gallery

18. What is 'Spraycan Art' and when did it emerge as a recognised art form?

1. A Banksy-coined term for spray-can street art
2. A contemporary fine art movement using spray techniques
3. Any art using spray cans — a category dating to the invention of aerosol paint in 1949
4. The specific New York graffiti movement of the 1970s–80s, with the aerosol spray can as its primary medium, formally recognised after publications like Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper's 'Subway Art' (1984)

19. What is a 'throwie' in graffiti culture?

1. A graffiti tag left in an extremely dangerous or high-visibility location
2. A graffiti writer who is caught and prosecuted
3. A large-scale mural painted on a building
4. A quick, simple graffiti consisting of a bubble-letter name outline with fill — done fast with minimal risk of being caught

20. Which city is considered the most important hub of street art today, with legal walls and a rich tradition?

1. Los Angeles
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. New York City
4. There is no single city — multiple cities including Berlin, São Paulo, London, and Los Angeles all have strong claims