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What graffiti says about contemporary society, and why it demands our urgent attention as a form of civic expression. What is graffiti—vandalism, ornament, art? What if, rather than any of those things, we thought of graffiti as a monument? How would that change our understanding of graffiti, and, in turn, our understanding of monument? In Monumental Graffiti, curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. He applies monument as a lens to understand graffiti and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, challengin...
This truly global and visually stunning compendium showcases some of the most breath-taking pieces of street art and graffiti from around the world. Since its genesis on the East Coast of the United States in the late 1960s, street art has travelled to nearly every corner of the globe, morphing into highly ornate and vibrant new styles. This unique atlas is the first truly geographical survey of urban art, revised and updated in 2023 to include new voices, increased female representation and cities emerging as street art hubs. Featuring specially commissioned works from major graffiti and street art practitioners, it offers you an insider’s view of the urban landscape as the artists themse...
Over the last forty years, graffiti and street-art have become a global phenomenon within the visual arts. Whilst they have increasingly been taken seriously by the art establishment (or perhaps the art market), their academic and popular examination still remains within old debates which argue over whether these acts are vandalism or art, and which examine the role of graffiti in gang culture and in terms of visual pollution. Based on an in-depth ethnographic study working with some of the world’s most influential Independent Public Artists, this book takes a completely new approach. Placing these illicit aesthetic practices within a broader historical, political, and aesthetic context, i...
Bursting with color and energy, this revised edition of the definitive guide to street art and graffiti covers the world's most significant artists, styles, and the urban landscapes that form their canvas Ten years after its original publication, The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti is recognized as the definitive guide to the most significant artists and styles of street art and graffiti around the world. This revised edition brings the content up to our present moment, expanding its geographic breadth to six continents. Featuring more than 700 full-color photographs of raw, energetic, whimsical, and eye-catching art, the book is visually exciting as well as an essential survey of the...
"For fifty years, graffiti and street art have been challenging conventions and stimulating debate around our perceptions of what constitutes art. As the genre enters its sixth decade, this ground-breaking book presents a new interpretation of where these alternative artforms are situated today. Introducing the concept of 'Intermural Art' - art in-between the walls - Rafael Schacter presents a genre at a key moment of transition. While many street and graffiti artists are still challenging the orthodoxies of the public sphere, an increasingly prevalent group are reshaping the field by their studio practice. No longer furtively entering the institution, no longer slavishly reproducing exterio...
London’s Urban Landscape is the first major study of a global city to adopt a materialist perspective and stress the significance of place and the built environment to the urban landscape. Edited by Christopher Tilley, the volume is inspired by phenomenological thinking and presents fine-grained ethnographies of the practices of everyday life in London. In doing so, it charts a unique perspective on the city that integrates ethnographies of daily life with an analysis of material culture. The first part of the volume considers the residential sphere of urban life, discussing in detailed case studies ordinary residential streets, housing estates, suburbia and London’s mobile ‘linear vil...
Graffiti and street art images are ubiquitous, and they enjoy a very special place in collective imaginary due to their ambiguous nature. Sometimes enigmatic in meaning, often stylistically crude and aesthetically aggressive, yet always visually arresting, they fill our field of vision with texts and images that no one can escape. As they take place on surfaces and travel through various channels, they provide viewers an entry point to the subtext of the cities we live in, while questioning how we read, write and represent them. This book is structured around these three distinct, albeit by definition interwoven, key frames. The contributors of this volume critically investigate underexplore...
Onward / Upward traces the fascinating trajectory of Augustine Kofies work, from his early figurative pieces executed in an illustrative style with emphasis on the figure, to his more recent forays into geometric forms and abstraction using collage and found images. Sketches, initial drawings and a grouping of paintings on clipboards give a strong sense of not only the working process of this incredible artist, but help document how he achieves such enduring finished paintings. KOFIEs background growing up as a graffiti writer in Los Angeles in the 1990s has further informed his amazing outdoor murals, including a featured signature piece from Mexico City. Augustine has exhibited his work in Milan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town, Miami, Glasgow, London, Vancouver, Berlin, Basel, Melbourne and beyond. Edition is limited to 1000 copies.
Brad Downey is a Berlin-based, Kentucky-born artist who has made radical and inspiring artworks all across the globe. This book presents the first full assessment of his works: sculptures, architecture, performances, installations, films, drawings, collages and activism, all inspired by the objects and activities of daily life. With humor, sensitivity, and insight, Downey examines the fabric of our cities and our forgotten margins and disputed borders. In doing so, he weaves new narratives into their chaotic patterns and makes vague the divisions between art and the everyday. Through an abundance of texts, photos, film-stills, drawings, sketches, collages, portraits and self-portraits, Downe...
This volume comprises a curated conversation between members of the Material Culture Section of University College London Anthropology. In laying out the state of play in the field, it challenges how the anthropology of material culture is being done and argues for new directions of enquiry and new methods of investigation. The contributors consider the ramifications of specific research methods and explore new methodological frameworks to address areas of human experience that require a new analytical approach. The case studies draw from a range of contexts, including digital objects, infrastructure, data, extraterrestriality, ethnographic curation, and medical materiality. They include timely reappraisals of now-classical analytical models that have shaped the way we understand the object, the discipline, knowledge formation, and the artefact.