Art Books: Explore the World of Graffiti & Street Art

I received a nice e-mail by Dave the Chimp today, informing me that he has a new obsession: Socks! Limited to only 300 boxed sets, each set contains three different pairs of socks featuring my Human Bein characters, two big stickers, and a 48 page full colour book of the Human Beins enjoying life in the streets of Berlin and Hamburg. 75% of the socks in the world are made in China, but these beautiful box sets are made completely in Germany, with all the printing and box manufacture made within 5 miles of were I live. (Dave the Chimp) ...

Some days ago, I stumbled upon a crazy stencil art book, which contains real cardboard stencils maybe 20 famous stencil artist from around the globe! Its name: “The Street Art Stencil Book”. When I first saw the book I thought “Oh, aha, another of these stencil art documentary books…” but when I took a closer look, I found these ready stencils and was dizzy. “The Street Art Stencil Book” includes articles about artists like Pure Evil, Blek Le Rat, XOOOOX, C215, M-City and others and, as I already said, an original stencil of each of them: ...

Recently I visited the Design Museum in London and stumble over an very interesting book, which unfortunately was totally new for me. Murals: Practiques, Murals, Contemporanies (2010) by the Joan Miró Foundation shows different aspects of the very interesting urban art form of mural painting! On about 140 colored pages, the book begin with the traditional work of different protagonists as the Soninke women of Mauritania and continues with the work of artists who generally intervene in public places, including Lothar Gotz (Germany), Scope One (Singapore), UTR Crew (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Brian Rea (USA), Nuria & Eltono (Spain and France) and others. ...

Last Saturday, Poster Boy hit London for the launch of his book “The War of Art” and to promote his defense fund for urban artists (K.A.R.A.T.E.) at Pure Evil Gallery. The book documents his ad-alterations in New York City’s subway and shows some interesting collaborations with other street artists. It’s highly interesting because it also introduces you to the politically background (keywords are ad-busting, public space and artistic freedom)… The earnings will be used to support the “Kids Are Really Against The Empire” (K.A.R.A.T.E.) defense fund for urban artists. The people behind the idea of helping protect and defend artists working in public space are currently considering applying for 501(c)(3) status, which means to become a non-profit organisation in the U.S.A… ...

Amazing, famous New York based urban artist and ad-alterer Poster Boy will be in London on Saturday for the “The War of Art” book launch at Pure Evil gallery! Additionally they will officially kick off a legal defense fund for artists called “Kids Are Really Against The Empire”… Kids Are Rallying Against The Empire (K.A.R.A.T.E.) is a grass roots effort we hope to eventually turn into a non-profit organization. Sadly, when dealing with the legal system most artists don’t know, understand, or are intimidated into forgoing their rights. Artists are often poorly represented in court and do not have financial access to proper counsel. K.A.R.A.T.E. is committed to helping artists defend themselves in court for art-related crimes conceived in public space. (Poster Boy) ...

In 2009, a very interesting graffiti book called “Subway World” was published by Dokument Press, which somehow past my attention. Anyway, here is the article about that clean book about international train graffiti… Subway World is a book about graffiti on subway trains all over the world. What started in New York in the seventies has become an worldwide artform with thousands of artists. The tradition of using subway cars as canvases has been preserved and has become an integrated part of the graffiti movement. Subway World takes you through more than 70 cities and four different continents. (dokument.org) ...

In addition to the stencil art show by two Hamburg-based street artist tomorrow at ATM Gallery, I want to give you some impressions of that nice book about the famous Hamburger stencil art crew Los Piratoz, which is maybe the most active street art crew in the Hanseatic city. As I could read in the book, which is entitled “Yes we Arrrrr!” and arrived at my home in the last week, they started round about 2002 to stick stencil sprayed stickers in the streets and decided a short while after to creatively work under the label Los Piratoz. ...

As mentioned before, the opening of the Papergirl #5 exhibition took place yesterday at the Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin. About 230 different artist and art collectives, including Luna Park, Dave the Chimp, SP-38, The Walters, Tika, 1010, Rero, Various & Gould and many more joined the alternative urban art project this year and made me happy while looking at their great prints, collages, painting, stencil artworks and photos! In the style of American paperboys the art project Papergirl distributes rolled art pieces to random passers-by in the streets. It is a question of chance and luck who will eventually catch such a roll of art, but the excitement of making surprising presents is actually what Papergirl is all about! This year PAPERGIRL BERLIN celebrates its 5th anniversary and we hope you will be a part of it when the motto is: Papergirl #5 - We’ve got the drive! (Neurotitan Gallery) ...

In addition to “The Urban Cookbook” by writer and author King Adz, which is a collection of creative recipes for the graffiti generation, there’s another cookbook out now - It’s name: Street Art Cookbook. Street Art Cookbook is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) bible on street art written by Benke Carlsson and Hop Louie and was published two weeks ago. It’s maybe the first street art handbook, containing dozens of different techniques, tips and tricks for creating urban art pieces. ...

It would be a torture to write down all the participating artist of this year’s issue of the Berlin-based Papergirl project. 238 different artist from all over the globe joined that alternative street art project, which was held the first time in 2006. They ride their bikes, carrying rolls filled with collections of art, throwing them to lucky catchers on the street, in their cars, other bikers, people who might not normally be exposed to urban art. In addition a Papergirl USA project recently launched and new projects are sprouting up in over a dozen cities around the world. (coolhunting.com) Papergirl’s basic idea is to bring art into the public space in a different way than usual. For that reason, the project includes an exhibition, an urban action (hand out the artworks), a bicycle workshop and a party. It’s a wide range the organizers have to cover, but in the fifth year everything should work fine. ...