Earlier this week, we explored 7 essential books on street art. If you’re ever fostered fantasies of spraying down a center-city building a tag of your own but never gotten past ogling the spray cans at Home Depot, then there’s a middle-ground oasis for you. Enter Walls Notebook, a charming activity book (and a fine addition to our favorite coloring books for grown-ups) that invites you, armed with a Sharpie, to unleash your inner graffiti artist on irresistibly inviting blank-slate urban walls from around NYC. It’s part Stencil 101, part Trespass, part playful new way of making street art more than a spectator sport.

The brainchild of NYC-based photographer and designer Sherwood Forlee, Walls Notebook is an absolute treat, reminiscent of Kerri Smith’s fantastic activity books for grown-ups.

via Quipsologies; images via the.

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Street art is a frequent fascination around here. Today, we turn to seven stunning, intelligent books that examine street art from a variety of angles, from the artistic to the sociocultural to the political and beyond, to glean holistic understanding of the ubiquitous, important but often misunderstood medium for public dialogue and civic self-expression.

TRESPASS

WoosterCollective is among the most authoritative blogs on street art. Last fall, its founders, Marc and Sara Schiller, poured years’ worth of expertise and insight into Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art — a gorgeous and thoughtful anthology that covers everything from Guatemalan guerrilla gardeners to icons like Banksy and Barry McGee that’s as much an exhaustive compendium of compelling artwork as it is a modern manifesto for activism, democracy and freedom of speech. And since the lavish 320-page volume comes from Taschen, easily the most visually ambitious publisher today, it’s an absolute treat for the eye.

What makes Trespass different from other street art books is that it’s not a street art book. It’s a book that certainly includes street art and graffiti but goes beyond that to also address performance, protest, sculpture, and the whole goal of the book was to really look at the context of street art in a much larger historical perspective.” ~ Marc Schiller

Originally reviewed, with video, here.

STREET SKETCHBOOK

One of street art’s most characteristic features is that it’s so fundamentally public and in-your-face. But what goes into the private creative process of a street artist? That’s exactly what Tristan Manco examines in Street Sketchbook: Journeys, the follow-up to his 2007 Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists — a rare peek inside the sketchbooks of 26 of the world’s hottest new artists, and one of our 5 voyeuristic peeks inside the notebooks of cross-disciplinary creators.

Originally reviewed, with more images, here.

ARABIC GRAFFITI

It’s no secret that the the majority of street art coverage in the media, from blogs to books to films, has a severe geographic bias, with a tendency to focus on Western lettering and imagery. Arabic Graffiti is a breath of fresh Eastern air in the global dialogue on street art. The ambitious anthology by Berlin street culture tastemaker Don Karl and Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi explores the use of Arabic script in urban context, curating graffiti artists and typographers from the Middle East and around the world who incorporate Arabic calligraphy styles in their artwork — a beautiful intersection of tradition and contemporary creativity.

Part cultural anthropology, part study in creative ingenuity, Arabic Graffiti is also a timely and needed cross-cultural bridge of visual communication in the context of today’s global political climate. (For more on the subject, see the fantastic Cultural Connectives.)

Originally reviewed, with more images, here.

STREET WORLD

What makes street art so fascinating is that it isn’t an isolated discipline — rather, it’s the confluence of a myriad cultural phenomena, offers commentary on countless social issues, and borrows inspiration from a multitude of other creative domains. In Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents (which you might recall from this old piece on Beautiful Losers, the excellent documentary about contemporary street art culture), Roger Gastman, Caleb Neelon and Anthony Smyrski examine street art culture from a holistic standpoint, as it relates to other forms of urban expression — skateboarding, bike messengering, DJing, fashion, gang politics, music, design, photography — and explore how the advent of the Internet has fostered a new global street culture in less than a generation. From New York’s back-alleys to Brazil’s mega-cities to South Africa’s townships, the hefty tome is divided into more than 50 topics, each illustrated with dozens of photographs.

STREET KNOWLEDGE

Today, street art is so ubiquitous it’s easy to forget it’s a fairly nascent form of urban dialogue. But where did it begin and how did it make its way around the world? That’s exactly what King Adz explores in Street Knowledge — a fascinating encyclopedia and insider’s guide to street art culture around the world, tracing the evolution of the movement from its groundbreaking days in 1980′s New York to the bleeding-edge work of modern-day Middle Eastern artists. From old-school graffiti legends to modern street art icons, including film-makers, designers, DJ’s, writers and poets, the book reveals the deep and lateral propagation of street art across just about every aspect of contemporary culture.

From interviews with some of world’s most influential street art talent, including Banksy, Quik, Shepard Fairey and the Obey crew, Martha Cooper, David LaChapelle and Tony Kaye, to profiles of up-and-comers from across the globe, Street Knowledge also places the featured street art in the context of the cities where it appears, doubling as an underground guide to the hottest art, culture, music, fashion, dining and film spots in some of the world’s most exciting cities.

Originally reviewed last year.

URBAN IRAN

In 2008, our friends at Mark Batty released the excellent Urban Iran — a gripping, visually stunning anthology by photographers Karan Rashid and Sina Araghi exploring the rich spectrum of street art across Iran’s cities and countryside.

Alongside the lavish visual spreads are illuminating essays that examine the artwork in a sociopolitical context, bridging this faceted visual landscape with the cultural undercurrents that power it.

What makes the project particularly intriguing is that it came mere months before the 2009 Iranian uprisings, but the content and context of the street art themes featured in the book — censorship, rebellion, political disillusionment, a yearning for justice and democracy — presage what was to come.

Originally reviewed, with more images, here.

DRAINSPOTTING

Street art is considered a subculture in and of itself, but the fact remains that it’s divisible into a great diversity of subgenres itself. Among the most fascinating is Japan’s unusual style of manhole cover graffiti, cataloged in Drainspotting — a stunning photographic anthology of the remarkable street art gems found across nearly 95% of the country’s 1780 municipalities. With their bold colors and dramatic motifs, from doves to dragons, the book’s 100 photographs capture the best and most visually compelling of Japan’s 6000 distinct manhole cover designs, part of a 20-year beautification program, orchestrated by what’s essentially Japan’s version of the WPA, aiming to make manholes reflect the uniqueness of each city — its mythology, its aesthetic sensibility, its legacy and essence.

The cherry on top? There’s also a Drainspotting iPad app, a beautiful homage to the classic Japanese intersection of art and technology. The app uses geolocation, inviting users to drainspot Japan, scavenger-hunt-style, and discover more examples of this unique visual subculture that didn’t make the book.

Originally featured here last spring.

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Last week’s Arabic Graffiti is already one of the most-liked books we’ve featured this year. And though an important non-Western voice in the global conversation on street art, it isn’t the only one. In 2008, indie powerhouse Mark Batty Publisher released the excellent Urban Iran — a gripping, visually stunning anthology by photographers Karan Rashid and Sina Araghi exploring the rich spectrum of street art across Iran’s cities and countryside. Alongside the lavish visual spreads are illuminating essays that examine the artwork in a sociopolitical context, bridging this faceted visual landscape with the cultural undercurrents that power it.

What makes the project particularly intriguing is that it came mere months before the 2009 Iranian uprisings, but the content and context of the street art themes featured in the book — censorship, rebellion, political disillusionment, a yearning for justice and democracy — presage what was to come.

Reshad embodies urban Iran, celebrating it and criticizing it simultaneously, and that seems to be the essence of the country today. Of course, there is nothing new about such a relationship, but that’s the ultimate point. Iranians are not just some aggregate, its purpose to serve as nothing more than media headlines and statistics for government reports. They are individuals, struggling and enjoying life the best they can, the same as the rest of us.”

Lavish and thoughtful, Urban Iran is the kind of gem that restores your faith in the art of books and the role of editors as curators of the meaningful, as amplifiers of voices that matter, as bastions of cultural aspiration.

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We love street art, but the majority of coverage on the subject has a severe geographic bias — every street art encyclopedia, every showcase of notable work, every documentary on graffiti culture tends to focus on Western lettering and imagery. Until now. Arabic Graffiti is an ambitious new anthology by Berlin street culture tastemaker Don Karl and Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi exploring the use of Arabic script in urban context. The lush hardcover tome curates graffiti artists and typographers from the Middle East and around the world, who incorporate Arabic calligraphy styles in their artwork – a beautiful intersection of tradition and contemporary creativity.

Images courtesy of Slanted

Part cultural anthropology, part study in creative ingenuity, Arabic Graffiti is one of the most exciting design books to come by this year and a timely cross-cultural bridge of visual communication in the context of today’s global political climate.

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Last fall, in a bold and unexpected move, TED granted the $100,000 TEDPrize to shadowy Parisian street artist JR. Known for his large-scale graffiti murals tackling social justice and human rights issues like freedom and identity, the semi-anonymous 27-year-old artist made his most revealing public appearance to date on the TED stage this week, showing some of his truly incredible work and sharing his vision for how the prize will empower his art.

The launch of JR’s Inside Out Project, an ambitious global collaborative art initiative, is a truly inspired experiment in civic engagement through art — a different iteration of something we looked at earlier this week.

If JR’s project tickled your soul like it did ours, here’s how to get involved.

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From Brazil’s iconic favelas to Tokyo’s backalleys, it reveals both globe-trotting adventures and rich internal landscapes in 227 large-format pages and lush double-spreads of pure creative genius.

Street Sketchbook: Journeys is the sequel to Tristan Manco’s 2007 gem, Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists.

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Much of street art revolves around the cult of the individual creator, creeping through the night to meticulously paint, stencil or tag a wall by hand. But can technology subvert this ethos? Facadeprinter is an inkjet printer in architectonical scale — a simple, software-controlled robot that shoots artwork from a distance of up to 12 meters, dot by dot, onto the target surface area. Think Banksy meets paintball meets ChalkBot — in other words, graffiti for geeks.

Designed by German duo Martin Fussenegger and Michael Sebastian, Facadeprinter can render artwork as large as 8 by 10 meters and, depending on the paint used, can produce permanent or temporary images. Besides the obvious uses in large-scale street art and advertising installations, the technology could have some interesting and rather useful applications in disaster relief, where the rapid printing process can enable quick and effective visual communication signaling shelter, food and water, danger zones, or medical aid.

Design is research. Driven by the desire to discover and understand. Above all a new design comes from a foreshadowing, which is looked into. Step by step this turns into an insight. If someone finally senses the result as being ‘beautiful’ or ‘new’, these are the many steps required of understanding, which produce a coherent whole. New aesthetics through new technology. Thus the Facadeprinter and the resulting rough printed appearance inseparably belong together.”

Here’s how it works: An integrated laser displays a bounding box of the artwork onto the wall, affixing its position. A paintball system converted into a printhead then shoots the color balls onto the wall, conveying the gelatine-encapsulated color balls to the marker where they are accelerated to a speed of 200km per hour. Upon contact with the wall, the balls burst, leaving dots 5 to 10 cm in diameter. The emptied out gelatine shells fall down to the ground where they can decompose naturally after rain without residue.

What makes Facadeprinter particularly interesting is that it’s an odd intersection of art and algorithm, raising questions of whether we can automate street art and preserve its message, and whether urban visual communication can serve as a design-driven humanitarian solution.

via

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We have a soft spot for street art, especially unusual work that plays with pieces of the urban environment in unexpected ways. (Like those Brazilian storm drain graffiti.) Well, this month, we’re in luck: June 22 marks the official release of the much-anticipated Drainspotting book — a stunning photographic anthology of Japan’s remarkable custom manhole covers, found across nearly 95% of the country’s 1780 municipalities.

The book features a curated selection of over 100 photographs, capturing the best and most visually compelling of Japan’s 6000 distinct manhole cover designs, part of a 20-year beautification program — orchestrated by what’s essentially Japan’s version of the WPA — aiming to make manholes reflect the uniqueness of each city — its mythology, its aesthetic sensibility, its legacy and essence.

The bold colors and dramatic motifs — from doves to dragons — really come to life in the book’s crisp photography and superb art direction. But what makes it all so extraordinary is that what begins as a window into art ends as a door into a rich cultural storytelling and heritage.

It gets better — there’s also a Drainspotting iPad app, a beautiful homage to the classic Japanese intersection of art and technology. The app uses geolocation, inviting users to drainspot Japan, scavenger-hunt-style, and discover more examples of this unique visual subculture that didn’t make the book.

Drainspotting comes out next Tuesday and is now available for pre-order.

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In 2008, Beautiful Losers — a documentary about contemporary street art culture from director Aaron Rose — made serious waves at SXSW. This year, the film is finally making its full-blown national screening tour — and we think it’s a must-see.

Based on the eponymous and equally excellent book, the film explores the creative process and cultural influences of iconic artists like Barry McGee, Jo Jackson, Mike Mills, Brain Pickings darling Shepard Fairey, and many more.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyRAHKTy6hI

The greatest cultural accomplishments in history have never been the result of the brainstorms of marketing men, corporate focus groups, or any homogenized methods; they have always happened organically. More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it.

We think Beautiful Losers is important for two reasons: For one, it’s a genuine piece of cultural anthropology that captures some of the rawest, most powerful creative genius of our time.

But, more importantly, it’s a brilliant testament to the importance of the cross-pollination of ideas — you begin to see the influences of various subcultures, from skateboarding to street fashion to graffiti to indie music, on these artists’ original creative output. And this matters, because it’s real-life proof for the power of remix culture — something essential to the ability to harness our collective creativity, yet unfortunately hindered by current copyright law.

For an even deeper perspective on the global, cross-cultural influences in street art, check out Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents — another excellent book, exploring the emergence of a new global creative culture driven by the advent of the Internet as a cross-pollination platform for wildly diverse subcultures and modes of self expression.

Thanks, Amy!

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Today, we’re looking at art that blows — literally. Think of this as a niche appendix to our best-of graffiti and socially-conscious street art series a while back, with a nod to the superhero issue. Yep, we’re multi-pronged like that.

D.BILLY

As much as we respect comic book culture, we’ve always wondered what it is exactly about the action illustrations that inspires such unconditional reverence, such loyal followings and such… dedicated… fan conventions. Could it be the unique intersection of visual and sound effects on the printed page, creating a POW! new reality of WURRRG! mixed media and OOH! non-linear perception? Perhaps.

And street artist D.Billy has decided to explore that intersection in our very real reality with his visual representations of sound effects through installations of colorful media like balloons and party steamers.

He works in “found scenes” of urban landscape and, after photographing the finished creations, he leaves the installations on the scene to engage passers-by and inspire a new awareness of the surroundings normally taken for granted.

We love the idea of bringing surreal elements to the most mundane corners of reality, and doing it in a way that plays with how we’re used to experiencing our own senses. Check out D.Billy’s Flickr stream and think about the visual action soundtrack to your own neighborhood. WOWZA!

JOSHUA ALLEN HARRIS

While bursts of color splattered throughout the otherwise mundane environment sure can be stride-stopping, it’s all the more fascinating when the stride-stopping stuff comes from the most mundane of materials. Case in point: artist Joshua Allen Harris, who uses plastic bags and subway vent air to create inflatable sculptures.

Harris has animated anything from a giant ape to a giraffe to the Loch Ness monster to an entire zoo. New York Magazine recently interviewed the artist for a look behind this unique breed of urban surrealism.

The magic of it is that it looks like plain ol’ trash until a train passes underneath, animating the sculptures and bringing entire scenes to life. And since Harris works mostly in the streets of New York, we find his work to be a brilliant, playful way to engage the world’s most notorious intentionally-oblivious pedestrians.

BANKSY IN, BANKSY OUT

Finally, Banksy is outed?

We won’t include a photo here because we think half the fascination of it is in the mystery — leave the man/woman be.

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