What is graffiti? And why have we, as a culture, had the urge to do it since 30,000 BCE? Artist Fiona McDonald explores the ways in which graffiti works to forever compel and simultaneously repel us as a society. When did graffiti turn into graffiti art, and why do we now pay thousands of dollars for a Banksy print when just twenty years ago, seminal graffiti artists from the Bronx were thrown into jail for having the same idea? Graffiti has not always been imbued with a sense of aesthetic, but when and why did we suddenly “decide” that it is worthy of consideration and criticism, just within the past few years? Throughout history, graffiti has served as an innately individualistic expression (such as Viking graffiti on the walls of eighth-century churches), but it has also evolved into a visual and narrative expression of a collective group. Graffiti brings to mind not only hip-hop culture and urban landscapes, but petroglyphs, tree trunks strewn with carved hearts symbolizing love, and million-dollar works of art. Learn about more graffiti artists and rebels such as: the band Black Flag, Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy, Dandi, Zephyr, Blek le Rat, Nunca, Keith Haring, and more! Illustrated with stunning full-color photos of graffiti throughout time, The Popular History of Graffiti promises to be an important and dynamic addition to graffiti literature.

Book description to come.

This collection of unique works by 150 Los Angeles graffiti and tattoo artists represents an unprecedented collaboration across the city’s diverse artistic landscape. Many graffiti artists carry sketchbooks, called black books, and they ask crew members and others whose work they admire to inscribe their books with lettering or drawings. A few years ago, the Getty Research Institute invited artists, including Angst, Axis, Big Sleeps, Chaz, Cre8, Defer, EyeOne, Fishe, Heaven, Hyde, Look, ManOne, and Prime, to consider the idea of a citywide graffiti black book. During visits to the Getty Center, the artists viewed rare books related to calligraphy and letterforms, including works by Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci. The artists instantly recognized the connections to their own practices and were particularly drawn to a liber amicorum (book of friends), a form of autograph book popular in the seventeenth century. Passed from hand to hand, it was filled with signatures, poetry, and coats of arms, like a black book from another era. Inspired by this meeting of minds across centuries, these artists became both creators and curators, crafting their own pages and inviting others to contribute. Eventually 150 Los Angeles artists decorated 143 individual pages. These were bound together into an exquisite artists’ book that became known as the Getty Graffiti Black Book. This publication reproduces each page from the original artists’ book and recounts the story of an unprecedented collaboration across the diverse artistic landscape of Los Angeles.

Ranging from the birth of simple signature tags to today's vibrant murals, and covering the ups and downs of the movement, the culture's value system, and its social framework, "Graffiti New York" provides an essential history of this art form. Illustrated.

The original collection featured in "Graffiti World" highlighted more than 2,000 illustrations by 150 artists from around the world. This updated edition includes a new section devoted to work created in the five years since the book's first edition.

The definitive book on New York's subway graffiti movement, "Graffiti Kings" features personal interviews with the artists and more than 275 full-color, previously unpublished photographs that bring the movement's origins to life.

Graffiti are ubiquitous within the ancient world, but remain underexploited as a form of archaeological or historical evidence. They include a great variety of texts and images written or drawn inside and outside buildings, in public and private places, on monuments in the city, on objects used in daily life, and on mountains in the countryside. In each case they can be seen as actively engaging with their environment in a variety of ways. Ancient Graffiti in Context interrogates this cultural phenomenon and by doing so, brings it into the mainstream of ancient history and archaeology. Focusing on different approaches to and interpretations of graffiti from a variety of sites and chronological contexts, Baird and Taylor pose a series of questions not previously asked of this evidence, such as: What are graffiti, and how can we interpret them? In what ways, and with whom, do graffiti communicate? To what extent do graffiti represent or subvert the cultural values of the society in which they occur? By comparing themes across time and space, and viewing graffiti in context, this book provides a series of interpretative strategies for scholars and students of the ancient world. As such it will be essential reading for Classical archaeologists and historians alike.