Irreverent street artist Hanksy has a simple recipe for viral success. Step one: choose a pop culture symbol. Step two: select a divisive celebrity. Step three: mash them up. Then sit back and see your work go wild.

So it goes with "Dump Trump," a piece he painted on a brick wall in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the summer of 2015. The combination of the all-too-familiar poop emoji (replete with flies) and Donald Trump's irate, comb-over-topped mug was too good of a chance to pass up. 

"That Donald Trump was a five-minute decision," Hanksy told Business Insider. "I had wanted to paint something else there, and five minutes before I sketched this out and thought, let's do that."

So is it a joke, or is it a political statement?

"I'm just anti-Trump," Hanksy said. "It's not politics, it's common sense."

The image has become his most popular ever, with more than 8,000 likes on his personal Instagram. Called "Dump Trump" or "Tronald Dump" by fans, it's plastered across Instagram; a search for "#hanksy" (which has almost 12,000 images) brings up a feed heavily populated with shots of the Trump art.

Hanksy says that he got at least 20,000 new Instagram followers in just two weeks after putting it up, and the image has been picked up and plastered on all kinds of unauthorized merchandise. 

Hanksy believes it's gone viral because street art is an entry point for millennials into what can be a confusing political process. It simplifies the message down to easily legible — and highly shareable — memes.

"Dump Trump" is certainly crystal clear.

On a drunken whim, he purchased 5,000 campaign buttons decorated with Dump Trump. He was in New Hampshire for the Republican primary, and next week, he's heading to South Carolina with his team in a campaign he calls "Dump Across America."  They'll distribute thousands of buttons, banners, and yard signs, stirring up whatever trouble they can (within the law, and within reason). 

"[We're] trying to get people to join the (bowel) movement," he explains.

To Hanksy, this particular work is less about his own profile as an artist and much more about giving people a powerful image to put to use in the political process.

"I've always respected that the right image can sway someone. And I know this is a cartoon piece of imagery — when it comes down to it, it's just a turd — but there are layers to it," he said. "You never know what can take off, what can hit people and trigger things in someone."

"I'm not a political group. I'm just one stupid kid from the Lower East Side who wants to get his image in the hands of people and let them run with it."

And what about other street artists? A new "Dump Trump" piece recently popped up next to Trump Place in Manhattan, Vandalog reports.

The revolution may not be televised, but it may happen on Instagram.

SEE ALSO: Meet Hanksy, the viral graffiti artist turning heads with his paintings of Donald Trump and Miley Cyrus

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NOW WATCH: 'He’s a p----': Watch Trump repeat a supporter's vulgar insult of Cruz

Spain has produced some of the world's most groundbreaking artists including Picasso, Miro and Dali. Today, Barcelona remains one of the best destinations to see edgy art.

Most travellers are familiar with Gaudi's playful Modernisme works. However, not many venture into El Raval, a former red light district that is now a center of young subcultures. I spent a day here, hanging out with skaters at cafes covered in graffiti.

Barcelona's Gothic District also lives up to name. I browsed alternative fashion boutiques in the narrow streets, and took photos with skull murals.

In Granada, I felt like I had stepped back in time to the Kingdom of the Moors. My filmmakers and I rented a 16th century house, and admired the swirling Arabic architecture of Alhambra palace.

Watch a travel video about artistic attractions in Spain:

Produced by Borderless Media and hosted by La Carmina.

Disclaimer: La Carmina and travel TV filmmakers were guests of Spain Tourism and Eurail.

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Although Barcelona has world-class museums, some of the most inspiring art I saw was in the streets.

El Raval was once filled with brothels and dive bars. Now it is a hipster area, with tattoo shops and cafes instead.

You won't find many tourists in this neighborhood, which has a large immigrant population and a gritty, industrial feeling.

Street art is, by nature, controversial. To some, it's vandalism and an eyesore. To others, it's a great backdrop for their next Instagram shot. But to the artists themselves, it's their way to broadcast the social and political currents running through a city.

"The street is the common denominator, the bell curve and the barometer of all things,"street artists Enzo & Nio write in the new book "Outdoor Gallery - New York City". "You go to the street when there is nowhere else to go. You go to the street to shout at the world... The streets serve as a mirror on society."

"Outdoor Gallery" author Yoav Litvin is a photographer, writer, and doctor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience who has made it his mission to document this ever-shifting conversation in New York's streets.

"There's a raw character to NYC that is unique," Litvin said to Business Insider. "After all, it is the mecca of graffiti and street art and has an interesting and troubling history." In fact, New York City is the birthplace of the graffiti "writing" movement of the 1960s, which evolved into the image-driven street art we see today.

But despite the city's rich past with graffiti, its not a street art free-for-all; Litvin says the authorities are "very strict" compared to other places, and artists caught in the act can be fined up to $350.

Below, a selection of the most noteworthy, provocative, and eye-catching works currently on display in the city, as Litvin sees it. Go now, before they're gone.

SEE ALSO: Meet Hanksy, the viral graffiti artist turning heads with his paintings of Donald Trump and Miley Cyrus

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Thanks to the radical (and often illegal) nature of the medium, street artists tend to be enigmatic characters with provocative perspectives and political messages. This chimney in Long Island City is decorated with an austere, pensive piece by brothers and artists Icy and Sot.

Location: Long Island City, Queens

Artists: Icy and Sot

Story: Since 2006, the two Iranian brothers and stencil artists have contributed to Iranian and international urban art culture through their stencil work, usually depicting human rights, ecological justice, and social and political issues.

Buff Monster's eerie creations, like this eyeball-filled wall, are both creepy and striking. "As the empire city, New York City attracts the best of the best and all eyes are directed here," Litvin said.

Location: Bushwick, Brooklyn

Artist: Buff Monster

Story: Buff Monster is a popular artist famous for his signature use of the color pink. Over the last 15 years, he's crossed over as both a street artist and gallery artist, and his meticulously executed paintings have been shown in galleries around the world.

Brazilian artist Alexandre Keto puts up stylized murals like this one in Long Island City, drawing attention to race and class issues.

Location: Long Island City, Queens

Artist: Alexandre Keto

Story: As an artist and educator, Alexandre Keto uses bold, stylized portraits to highlight contemporary social issues. 

Cities aren't static.

They're shaped by the people that live there. 

Whether or not you call it vandalism, places like New York, São Paulo, and Berlin are transformed by the artists that turn bare walls into art.

New York has its share of major murals ...

... like this Eduardo Kobra sighted from the High Line public walkway.

The city has also has plenty of culture-jamming defacing of advertisements.

Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra is out to set a world record during this year's Rio Olympics, but it's not related to sports — unless you consider hours and hours of painting an athletic feat (which, perhaps, you should).

The artist is painting a huge, colorful mural called "Etnias," or "Ethnicities" in Rio de Janeiro, depicting the faces of indigenous people from five different continents. Kobra is hoping his mural will be deemed the largest ever designed by one artist. Guinness has yet to properly adjudicate that his artwork has broken the world record, but it's breathtaking and nearly twice the size of the mural that currently holds the record.

Take a look.

SEE ALSO: An artist created a giant mural across 50 buildings in Cairo without the government noticing

The mural, which is now complete, depicts indigenous men and women from five continents. That number was inspired by the five Olympic rings, according to the official Olympics site.

Source: Rio 2016

The work covers a 620-foot-long stretch in Rio's Praça Mauá port. Kobra designed the mural himself, but four guest artists helped him paint it. The team worked over 12 hours a day for the past two months to get it done.

The tribes represented in the portraits are the Mursi from Ethiopia, the Kayin from Thailand, the Tapajos from Brazil, a Supi man from Europe, and a Huli from Papua New Guinea.

SEE ALSO: 28 iconic photos from every modern Summer Olympic Games

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For the past few years, teams of researchers have been figuring out how to transform carbon dioxide emissions into diamonds, solid rocks, and clean energy.

Turns out they can also create art from it. Graviky Labs, a spinoff group from the MIT Media Lab, developed a way to capture air pollution and make art supplies — pens, oil-based paints and spray paints — from the carbon soot.

Appropriately dubbed Air Ink, the materials are created by attaching cylindrical devices to the tailpipes of cars, trucks, and motorcycles and capturing the emissions. A device the company calls Kaalink then separates out the carbon as soot, leaving out other polluting agents like heavy metals and carcinogens. The carbon can then be retrieved from the Kaalink to be mixed with oils and water to make paints, inks, and so on.  

Just 30-50 minutes of car pollution can generate enough purified carbon to fill an Air Ink pen, Graviky Labs claims.

The company, which is based Bengaluru, India, partnered with Tiger Beer to commission street artists to create murals using Air Ink in Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district. The collection of inky black-and-white art went up on buildings and malls June 17 — you can see more images of them on Air Ink's website.

Anirudh Sharma, one of Graviky Labs' founders, got the idea to create the ink when he noticed his clothes were getting stained from the heavy air pollution in India, according to the MIT Spectrum. 

In February, research from Greenpeace, which used NASA satellite readings of air quality, revealed that India's pollution concentrations overtook Beijing's in 2015. In May, the World Health Organization found that six of the top 15 most polluted cities in the world were in India.

So the country's pollution problem is, of course, too big and complicated to solve by sticking cylinders onto tailpipes and turning all C02 emissions into art materials.

But highlighting the issue through artistic expression could at least become one of many ways to work towards a solution. Sharma tells Huffington Post India that he's planning to bring the inks to market by the end of 2016, after receiving certification for the Kaalink device.

SEE ALSO: This sleek air purifier destroys pollutants instead of just catching them

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Bristol, home to the elusive graffiti artist Banksy, has a new hooded culprit roaming the streets at night — and his sights are set on bad grammar.

According to the BBC, the man calls himself a "grammar vigilante," and has been correcting the city's street signs and shop fronts for 13 years.

He works in the middle of the night, using stickers to add apostrophes or change bad grammar.

He has even invented an "apostrophiser," a device that helps him add apostrophes in hard to reach places.

He's a "highly qualified professional" by day, according to the Metro, who added that "only a handful of his friends and family know what he gets up to after dark."

Travelling around in a hood in an effort to remain unseen, he told the BBC: "I have felt extremely nervous. The heart has been thumping."

However, he said he doesn't think what he's doing is a crime.

"I do think it's a cause worth pursuing," he said. "It's more of a crime to have apostrophes wrong in the first place."

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The art found on the 69th floor of 4 World Trade Center is not the kind you would expect to see in the Financial District. 

Larry Silverstein, founder of Silverstein Properties, the developer of 4WTC and many of buildings in the area, is a fan and proprietor of the arts and has worked to bring art to all of the newly developed buildings in the area.

But Robert Marcucci, Silverstein Properties' art consultant, and Dara McQuillan, the company's chief marketing officer, were nervous about approaching Silverstein with the idea of a street art studio and gallery in the building. 

They recalled bringing Silverstein and his wife down from a party to show them their ideas, hoping that the celebration upstairs had put him in a good mood. 

Luckily for Marcucci and McQuillan, Silverstein was thrilled about the out-of-the-box approach to bringing more art to the area. 

"I think it is a positive change," Silverstein said. "We are living in a world that is so rapidly changing. [The art] is unusual and totally new and different, but it's something that will soon be grasped by the commercial community."

Spotify, who will move from the Flatiron District to 4WTC, plans to keep the art and incorporate it into their office design. 

Take a look at the whimsical pieces from Art4WTC:

Art4WTC showcases the work of more than 50 artists from New York City and around the world.

The artists utilized the entire space on the 69th floor of 4WTC, from the walls ...

... to the windows ...

Whether it's to show off the fancy heart-shaped milk swirl sitting on top of their latte, or to point out the mistake the barista made in spelling their name, people enjoy using coffee as the subject of their Instagrams.

Tokyo-based illustrator Adrian Hogan doesn't just Instagram coffee cups though, he makes them into art and then posts videos of them to his account.

According to CNN, Hogan — an Australia native — came to Japan five years ago to teach English. He then went back to Australia to study fine art and returned to Japan in 2013.

After being invited to paint on coffee cups at his friend Mariya Suzuki's solo exhibition "Coffee People," Hogan continued to sketch on cups, drawing scenes from Tokyo's busy streets.

Hogan posts these coffee cups sketches to his Instagram account in an intriguing way. He films his hand holding and rotating the cup, with the scene he just sketched as a background. The result is an impressive visual that shows just how closely Hogan's sketches mimic the reality of Tokyo street life.

The illustrator draws everything from parks to busy street corners.

Here are some of Hogan's most recent videos.

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A street artist has set their sights Goldman Sachs and is putting up stickers around New York City attacking the investment giant. 

Business Insider has seen two of the stickers, which both feature a version of the company's logo modified to say "Goldman Rats" and an image of a cartoonish rodent sticking out its tongue. 

One of the stickers (pictured above) is captioned "PHOOEY ON YOU, POORS." I spotted it in the subway last week, but it seems to have been around much longer. A Pinterest user based in New York took a picture of the same sticker about one year ago.

The second sticker also includes a shot at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Text surrounding a picture of the cartoon rat declares, "WE'VE SELECTED HILLARY FOR YOU SUBMIT, POORS."

I spotted the Clinton sticker in a Brooklyn subway station last week, but it seems to have appeared in multiple locations. A blog dedicated to Brooklyn street art posted a picture taken of one of the stickers last month. 

The Clinton sticker is clearly relatively new. In the sticker, the "H" in "Hillary" is copied from her campaign logo, which was unveiled when she launched her campaign in April. It echoes a line of attack that has been used by one of Clinton's Democratic rivals, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who has suggested Goldman Sachs would like to see her in the White House.

It's not clear who made the stickers..

The "Phooey" sticker bears a graffiti signature, but I can't make out what it says. If you know more please get in touch.

Check out the Clinton "Goldman Rats" sticker below. 

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In the midst of a six-year recession, Greece's public is reeling from the effects of unemployment rates that are more than double the eurozone average.

Just this week, the International Monetary Fund announced that if the country fails to make the $1.8 billion debt payment that's due in less than two weeks, there would be no grace period. 

Greece's street artists have been voicing their grievances all over the public walls of the cities, publicizing their impressions of the IMF and Greece's current government. From simple tags, to more extravagant statements - take a look at these street artists' take on Greece's current state of affairs.

(Captions by Sarah Jacobs and Reuters) 

Violent demonstrations broke out in Athens in 2010 due to austerity measures. Here, riot police are on the scene. Behind them, a message on a bank wall informs the International Monetary Fund to get out.

Police stand guard outside a hotel in Athens while protesters rally in response to a Greek pensioner's recent suicide due to the economy.

Greece's new left-wing government announced this February that they will not take actions that would hurt the share values of the country's banks and does not plan to appoint party officials at key management posts.

Detroit police want street artist Shepard Fairey. 

On Wednesday, police issued a felony arrest warrant, accusing him of property crimes that could land him a penalty of five years in jail and $10,000 fine. 

"When he returns to the area, he will be arrested if he doesn't turn himself in first," Detroit Police sergeant and head of the city’s graffiti task force Rebeca McKay told the Detroit Free Press. 

Fairey had been in Detroit last month after he was commissioned to construct his largest mural to date by Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s Real Estate Services. The completed mural is 184-feet-by-60-feet and covers the face of One Campus Martius.

Fairey was in Detroit for a nine-day residency in collaboration with the Library Street Collective, during which he completed multiple projects and installations across the city. Among them: a black and white skull mural called “Pattern of Destruction” in an alley in the Z Parking Garage called “the Beltway," several small panels also along the beltway, and a 14-foot water tower. 

Shortly after completing his residency, police began investigating a series of black-and-white Andre the Giant panels attributed to Fairey that had appeared on nine locations, including two city buildings, in downtown Detroit.  

The total damage, according to police: $9,105.54 

At the time, Fairey’s collaboration with Bedrock and other corporations in Detroit was seen as odd, a criticism which he addressed prior to his residency. 

"I don't think it's hypocritical for me, because I've always espoused what I call the inside-outside strategy," Fairey told the Detroit Free Press. "I still do stuff on the street without permission. I'll be doing stuff on the street when I'm in Detroit. But the idea of being able to infiltrate the system on its own terms and make things better from within is something I've always believed in." 

As one could guess from Fairey’s history and his not-so-cryptic statement, he was planning on doing unsanctioned (some might call “illegal") work in addition to his commissioned pieces. 

It appears that Detroit officials have no leniency for Fairey. Police chief James Craig told media during a news conference during the initial investigation that police “treat everyone the same.”

Mayor Mike Duggan expressed similar sentiments. 

"As I've said to the chief, I expect this to be investigated vigorously. I think Prosecutor (Kym) Worthy has brought seven different felony charges in the last six months against graffiti artists. … Graffiti is being dramatically reduced,” Duggan said during a press conference in early June. 

Fairey may have picked the wrong city to tag. Duggan declared a war on graffiti last fall and has been quoted in the past as saying, "I hate graffiti," according to Daily Detroit.

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Buenos Aires (AFP) - Around the corner from a bland grey street in the working class Tres de Febrero suburb of Buenos Aires, a blue boat starts to take form on a wall.

Street artist Andres Rotundo Fraga, wearing a green overall and armed with a brush and some acrylic paint, has started a three-day project aimed at reviving an apartment wall damaged by indecipherable graffiti.  

"The walls were damaged by vandals, by rude people," says 80-year old Edith Campelo, who lives in the building. 

"We have no money to paint so the municipality kindly sent us this great artist so we can embellish the wall." 

Though graffiti is illegal in Buenos Aires, it is typically allowed if the building owners give their permission. 

Sometimes, the government or local authorities fund the murals themselves as a decorated wall tends to remain in better condition than a plain one. 

"It is in poor or middle-class neighborhoods that people take care of a mural as one of their own," says Diego Silva, coordinator of the ART3 public project that funds graffiti work in the Tres de Febrero municipality.

"Four or five year-old murals can be damaged by the weather and the deterioration of the wall, but never because they've been vandalized. The murals are fully respected," he adds, as he stands in one of the most impoverished areas of the municipality, in front of an impeccable mural of a red lighthouse.

ART3 and other government or non-government projects in the city want to fight vandalism with street art, thereby making residents more mindful of their surroundings and improving their quality of life.

"They're not just drawings. From the time we first started we always said it was something for people to participate in," says Silva of the district's 400 murals.

Capital of street art

In Europe, despite some artists gaining international fame like Banksy, graffiti continues to be largely stigmatized and synonymous with vandalism.

But in Buenos Aires the opposite is true. The Argentine capital has become one of the world's centers of street art with thousands of murals decorating houses, schools and even churches. 

Muralists receive entire blocks or 25-meter-high facades to express themselves using oil or acrylic paint and aerosol spray.

Festivals celebrate their work and some urban artists like Martin Ron or Fio Silva have been asked to paint abroad.

"The murals are here to surprise, to add pleasure, art, culture and joy to the public space," says Patricio di Stefano, the sub-secretary of public space for the city of Buenos Aires, which spends more than 60,000 dollars a year commissioning graffiti.  

Graffiti tour companies have also started to appear, showing tourists the city's great outdoor museum. 

Some murals feature local idols, like football star Carlos Tevez, whose face is famously painted across a building in Fuerte Apache, his poor Buenos Aires neighborhood.

Other murals portray centaurs, giant eyes and various multicolored fictional creations coming straight out of the artists' imagination.

For tour company Graffitimundo member Cecilia Quiles, Buenos Aires' vibrant urban art scene is partly a reaction to Argentina's 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship.

"Buenos Aires is a city that has been scarred", says Quiles about those years "when public monuments were actively cleaned up and graffiti strongly repressed." 

Today, street art has given a new lease of life to Buenos Aires' walls, providing a new form of freedom of expression and improving the quality of life of some of its 10 million residents.

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The mysterious Banksy has struck again with the artist's most ambitious project to date: a theme park.

Take a peek inside the demented "Dismaland," which features art from the activist and a twisted castle.

Produced by Lamar Salter. Original reporting by Julie Zeveloff.

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The second episode of the most recent season of "Homeland" contained subversive graffiti, which if you were paying attention and are fluent in Arabic reads, "Homeland is racist." 

Produced by Jacqui Frank

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"I always wanted to be a Disney cartoonist," Hanksy, the 30-something anonymous street artist, tells us.

It's ironic, then, that he has made his name by turning cultural icons into bitingly funny (and often crude) memes, bringing out the darker side of the images we devour every day. In New York City, for example, he recently painted an image of the iPhone's poop emoji emblazoned with Donald Trump's face. He called it "Dump Trump".

Hanksy, who hails from the Midwest but has lived and worked in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Chinatown for the last five years, is an enigma. Or at least, as he openly admits, being enigmatic is his "shtick." Uncannily adept at distilling pop culture conversations into digestible visual puns, he's made some of the most iconic street art works in the last five years. And it all started out as, more or less, a joke. 

Let's take a look at some of his work.

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"I've always been fan of low-brow humor, wordplay, and the easy chuckle — the easy lol, that's what I like," he said. Here, the Simpsons character Mr. Burns makes for a basic pun.

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"Whatever makes me laugh, that's what I want to do," he said. "If it didn't make me roll my eyes in disgust/laughter, I wouldn't do it."

The name "Hanksy" itself is a mash-up, just like his first piece of street art. It's a riff on the work of infamous artist Banksy, known for his politically incisive work and complete anonymity.

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The story goes that back in 2011, soon after moving to New York City, Hanksy was working on a freelance writing assignment when the pun came to mind. He thought an image of Hanks' face in the Banksy style might be even wittier. No matter that he hadn't taken an art class since high school, or done any real street art before.

"I'm not a trained artist," Hanksy said.

Someone snapped a photo of it and sent it to a popular street art blog, and the rest, as they say, is history.

A former digital marketer, one of his main gimmicks is putting famous faces on other things — sometimes animals, sometimes inanimate objects.

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Irreverent street artist Hanksy has a simple recipe for viral success. Step one: choose a pop culture symbol. Step two: select a divisive celebrity. Step three: mash them up. Then sit back and see your work go wild.

So it goes with "Dump Trump," a piece he painted on a brick wall in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the summer of 2015. The combination of the all-too-familiar poop emoji (replete with flies) and Donald Trump's irate, comb-over-topped mug was too good of a chance to pass up. 

"That Donald Trump was a five-minute decision," Hanksy told Business Insider. "I had wanted to paint something else there, and five minutes before I sketched this out and thought, let's do that."

So is it a joke, or is it a political statement?

"I'm just anti-Trump," Hanksy said. "It's not politics, it's common sense."

The image has become his most popular ever, with more than 8,000 likes on his personal Instagram. Called "Dump Trump" or "Tronald Dump" by fans, it's plastered across Instagram; a search for "#hanksy" (which has almost 12,000 images) brings up a feed heavily populated with shots of the Trump art.

Hanksy says that he got at least 20,000 new Instagram followers in just two weeks after putting it up, and the image has been picked up and plastered on all kinds of unauthorized merchandise. 

Hanksy believes it's gone viral because street art is an entry point for millennials into what can be a confusing political process. It simplifies the message down to easily legible — and highly shareable — memes.

"Dump Trump" is certainly crystal clear.

On a drunken whim, he purchased 5,000 campaign buttons decorated with Dump Trump. He was in New Hampshire for the Republican primary, and next week, he's heading to South Carolina with his team in a campaign he calls "Dump Across America."  They'll distribute thousands of buttons, banners, and yard signs, stirring up whatever trouble they can (within the law, and within reason). 

"[We're] trying to get people to join the (bowel) movement," he explains.

To Hanksy, this particular work is less about his own profile as an artist and much more about giving people a powerful image to put to use in the political process.

"I've always respected that the right image can sway someone. And I know this is a cartoon piece of imagery — when it comes down to it, it's just a turd — but there are layers to it," he said. "You never know what can take off, what can hit people and trigger things in someone."

"I'm not a political group. I'm just one stupid kid from the Lower East Side who wants to get his image in the hands of people and let them run with it."

And what about other street artists? A new "Dump Trump" piece recently popped up next to Trump Place in Manhattan, Vandalog reports.

The revolution may not be televised, but it may happen on Instagram.

SEE ALSO: Meet Hanksy, the viral graffiti artist turning heads with his paintings of Donald Trump and Miley Cyrus

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NOW WATCH: 'He’s a p----': Watch Trump repeat a supporter's vulgar insult of Cruz

Spain has produced some of the world's most groundbreaking artists including Picasso, Miro and Dali. Today, Barcelona remains one of the best destinations to see edgy art.

Most travellers are familiar with Gaudi's playful Modernisme works. However, not many venture into El Raval, a former red light district that is now a center of young subcultures. I spent a day here, hanging out with skaters at cafes covered in graffiti.

Barcelona's Gothic District also lives up to name. I browsed alternative fashion boutiques in the narrow streets, and took photos with skull murals.

In Granada, I felt like I had stepped back in time to the Kingdom of the Moors. My filmmakers and I rented a 16th century house, and admired the swirling Arabic architecture of Alhambra palace.

Watch a travel video about artistic attractions in Spain:

Produced by Borderless Media and hosted by La Carmina.

Disclaimer: La Carmina and travel TV filmmakers were guests of Spain Tourism and Eurail.

SEE ALSO: 23 incredible travel destinations you probably didn't know existed

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Although Barcelona has world-class museums, some of the most inspiring art I saw was in the streets.

El Raval was once filled with brothels and dive bars. Now it is a hipster area, with tattoo shops and cafes instead.

You won't find many tourists in this neighborhood, which has a large immigrant population and a gritty, industrial feeling.

Street art is, by nature, controversial. To some, it's vandalism and an eyesore. To others, it's a great backdrop for their next Instagram shot. But to the artists themselves, it's their way to broadcast the social and political currents running through a city.

"The street is the common denominator, the bell curve and the barometer of all things," street artists Enzo & Nio write in the new book "Outdoor Gallery - New York City". "You go to the street when there is nowhere else to go. You go to the street to shout at the world... The streets serve as a mirror on society."

"Outdoor Gallery" author Yoav Litvin is a photographer, writer, and doctor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience who has made it his mission to document this ever-shifting conversation in New York's streets.

"There's a raw character to NYC that is unique," Litvin said to Business Insider. "After all, it is the mecca of graffiti and street art and has an interesting and troubling history." In fact, New York City is the birthplace of the graffiti "writing" movement of the 1960s, which evolved into the image-driven street art we see today.

But despite the city's rich past with graffiti, its not a street art free-for-all; Litvin says the authorities are "very strict" compared to other places, and artists caught in the act can be fined up to $350.

Below, a selection of the most noteworthy, provocative, and eye-catching works currently on display in the city, as Litvin sees it. Go now, before they're gone.

SEE ALSO: Meet Hanksy, the viral graffiti artist turning heads with his paintings of Donald Trump and Miley Cyrus

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Thanks to the radical (and often illegal) nature of the medium, street artists tend to be enigmatic characters with provocative perspectives and political messages. This chimney in Long Island City is decorated with an austere, pensive piece by brothers and artists Icy and Sot.

Location: Long Island City, Queens

Artists: Icy and Sot

Story: Since 2006, the two Iranian brothers and stencil artists have contributed to Iranian and international urban art culture through their stencil work, usually depicting human rights, ecological justice, and social and political issues.

Buff Monster's eerie creations, like this eyeball-filled wall, are both creepy and striking. "As the empire city, New York City attracts the best of the best and all eyes are directed here," Litvin said.

Location: Bushwick, Brooklyn

Artist: Buff Monster

Story: Buff Monster is a popular artist famous for his signature use of the color pink. Over the last 15 years, he's crossed over as both a street artist and gallery artist, and his meticulously executed paintings have been shown in galleries around the world.

Brazilian artist Alexandre Keto puts up stylized murals like this one in Long Island City, drawing attention to race and class issues.

Location: Long Island City, Queens

Artist: Alexandre Keto

Story: As an artist and educator, Alexandre Keto uses bold, stylized portraits to highlight contemporary social issues.