In this paper author analyses the contemporary notion and the theory of the image in the context of urban visual culture and the society of the spectacle to which he attributes two seemingly connected phenomena – graffiti and street art. With the intracoronary chapters author will create the premises for the contemporary critical analysis of both phenomena from the standpoint of the image theory which is constituted in the second half of the twentieth century through philosophical inquiry into technology and through critical analysis of society. In both cases we find the notion of the everyday life to bear substantial ontological significance in the context of understanding the role of the image in the contemporary age and it is therefore that we are able to analyze graffiti especially through the image theory and its significant bond with the everyday life. Author therefore considers graffiti a part of the situationist theory and practice which prove themselves to be crucial for the contemporary understanding of the society of the spectacle as well as media culture in general. This is exactly where – towards the conclusion of the paper – the premises are established for the critical analysis of substantial differences of graffiti and street art in their conditions and symptoms in the context of contemporary art-history. Thus, the author will be able to consider a new path of valorization for the graffiti practice that was by now not recorded in the local art history as well as analysis of subversive artistic practices on the street and in the everyday life. Conceptual highlight is given to the continuity of one possible 'alternative art history' from situationism to graffiti and the most contemporary virtual everyday practices of resistance and contestation of our post-modern culture. It is exactly the communicative and experimental qualities of the graffiti practice that are worth considering as a part of its specific aesthetic of visual signification, affirmation of the public space as surface 73 and as the materialization of the conditions for the possibility of dialogue and authentic life in the communal space that is only through recurrent practice present to us as a societal whole. KEYWORDS: Street art, situationism, graffiti, everyday life, art of the street 74