With 600 stunning photographs, this comprehensive book showcases more than three decades of street art in San Francisco's legendary Mission District. Beginning in the early 1970s, a provocative street-art movement combining elements of Mexican mural painting, surrealism, pop art, urban punk, eco-warrior, cartoon, and graffiti has flourished in this dynamic, multicultural community. Rigo, Las Mujeres Muralistas, Gronk, Barry McGee (Twist), R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, the Billboard Liberation Front, Swoon, Sam Flores, Neckface, Shepard Fairey, Juana Alicia, Os Gemeos, Reminesce, and Andrew Schoultz are among the many artists who have made the streets of the Mission their public gallery. Essays and commentaries by insiders involved with the movement document the artistic, social, and political forces that have shaped Mission Muralismo.

A must-have for any street art enthusiast, this book presents the most mind blowing examples of renegade creativity in San Francisco. San Francisco's vibrant street art scene exists in areas off the city's well-worn tourist paths. The alleyways and hidden side streets of the Haight, the Tenderloin, and especially the Mission district's Clarion Alley offer unexpected treats to visitors lucky enough to stumble upon them. For more than five years, photographer Steve Rotman has obsessively documented this scene as it evolved on walls, sidewalks, billboards, fences, doors, and other public spaces. Culled from thousands of images, the result is a collection of work that attests to the artists' personal and stylistic diversity, from Mars1's robotic depictions of alternate universes which reflect the local counterculture spirit, to Neck Face's whimsically ghoulish creatures that serve as a testament to entrepreneurial hipsterdom, to Bigfoot's friendly green primates inspired by the area's rich graffiti culture. San Francisco's charm as an international destination also causes foreign artists to contribute to the street dialogue--Brazilian duo Os Gemeos, Londoner D*Face and German painter Dome have all graced the city's walls with their unique points of view. An enterprising photographer, Rotman has forged relationships with many of these often-reclusive artists, allowing him access to some of the lesser-known corners of the street art world.

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Documents the San Francisco Bay Area's contemporary street-art scene, showcasing the innovative art against the Northern California landscape and including dozens of artist profiles.

During the 1930s San Francisco's most ambitious public murals were painted by artists on the left. In this study, Anthony Lee shows how these painters, led by Diego Rivera, sought to transform murals into a vehicle for their rejection of the economic and political status quo and their support of labor and radical ideologies, including Communism. In addressing these subjects, the mural painters developed a new imagery, based on the activities of the city's laboring population - its efforts to organize, its protests, its strikes.

The expanded and revised third edition of a popular visual collection, San Francisco Bay Area Murals captures the mural movement in all its rich detail. These remarkably expressive works of street art are meticulously captured and reviewed by a longtime scholar and aficionado of murals.

A follow up to the highly successful examination of Bay Areas contemporary graffiti scene, this book gives the history of two decades of graffiti as seen throught the eyes of two graffiti artists. Veteran graffiti writers SFaustina and Jocelyn Superstar have collaborated on a history of the graffiti scene in the San Franscisco Bay area from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. The result of their collaboration, Bay Area Graffiti: 8090, provides a glimpse into street art history that is seldom seen: one that is authored by a pair of writers who have 40 years of graffiti experience between them and provides an insiders view on the history and relevance of graffiti. Bay Area Graffiti: 8090 will include interviews with a range of the periods artists, including BIGFOOT, ESKIMO, MQ, and REVOK.