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MBP Holiday Gift Guide, Part 3: The Urban Art Fanatic
December 7, 2009
Starting several years ago, MBP decided to showcase street art in the way we think it deserves. Now, we have an array of regionally-specific and topical graffiti and urban art titles that will whet the whistles of the most discerning street art fans – from the buildings of Los Angeles, to the bathrooms of New York’s CBGB, to the streets of Valencia, Spain and Tokyo, Japan.
$10 – $15
Going Postal
by Martha Cooper
$9.95
Cooper has compiled a collection of photographs shot in numerous cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tokyo, Berlin and Amsterdam, featuring postal-sticker art created by FAUST, STAIN, C.DAMAGE, GET2, COSBE and many more. Going Postal documents how an old-school method has burgeoned into another rich facet of the world’s graffiti cultures.
Bathroom Graffiti
By Mark Ferem
$14.95
If you’ve ever used a public restroom, chances are you’ve read some bathroom graffiti, or at least noticed it. Often bawdy, funny and smart, sometimes illegible, it is a ubiquitous means of expression found across the United States and all over the world. Do the private, intimate moments in the bathroom provide people the opportunity to freely express themselves, leaving little nuggets of truth and insight for the next user? If you ask Mark Ferem, the answer is yes.
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$25 – $45
Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne
by Jake Smallman & Carl Nyman
$27.95
An edgy, lavish visual survey, Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne shows the best work of the best stencil artists working in Melbourne, Australia. Through intimate interviews, dynamic layouts and a riot of examples the street artists are shown in the context of world street art culture. Melbourne’s walls are both canvases and meeting places for ideas, making it the hot-bed for stencil graffiti art.
Los Angeles Graffiti
by Roger Gastman & Sonja Teri
$27.95
Graffiti makes us think of cities. Urban denizens are used to seeing ink and paint scrawled and plastered on trains, buses and alleyways, and in heavily trafficked city centers, where structures of steel and glass tower. With its lack of a central point, of all major American cities, the sprawling megalopolis of Los Angeles does not conform to typical urban planning laws.
PEEL: The Art of the Sticker
by Dave & Holly Combs
$27.95
Showcasing stickers, interviews and articles from the first eight issues of PEEL Magazine, this book celebrates the innovation and diversity of sticker and street art, including interviews with some of the scene’s legendary figures like Shepard Fairey and SEEN, along with profiles of international sticker communities, and sticker designs from artists across the globe. And of course, the book has stickers, 69 of them.
Graffiti Japan
by Remo Camerota
$27.95
Japan has long been a breeding ground for innovative approaches to Western traditions, like movies and baseball. But, the fanatical embrace with which Japanese artists have welcomed graffiti has made for a form of graffiti wholly apart from its Western origins. Photographed by Remo Camerota, Graffiti Japan captures the culturally unique aspects of Japanese street art, providing the most complete look at Japan’s contemporary graffiti scene ever compiled.
Protest Graffiti Mexico: Oaxaca
by Louis E.V Nevaer
$27.95
On October 27, 2006, when Mexican police opened fire on a crowd of protesters in the city of Oaxaca, killing three people, including American journalist Brad Roland Will, the world became aware of a social conflict that at its core was about the right to an education. Since 1981, teachers in the Mexican state have held annual strikes, but 2006 was the first time that violence erupted. Within hours of these shootings, graffiti calling the region’s governor a murderer was sprayed throughout the city. The graffiti that has since overwhelmed the historic city center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, constitutes the protest art of a community rising up to defend teachers, and our collective fundamental right as human beings to have access to education.
Bay Area Graffiti
by Steve Rotman
$45.00
Fabled as a region that embraces freedom of expression in all of its guises, the San Francisco Bay Area has long been a world-renowned cultural hotbed. “Bay Area Graffiti” is the first comprehensive retrospective of the area’s vibrant contemporary street-art scene. Documented by the distinctive photographic eye of Steve Rotman, his images showcase the innovative art made all over the Bay Area, as well as how it blends into the stunning landscapes.
Textura: Valencia Street Art
by Luz A. Martín
$34.95
Valencia is Spain’s third largest city and is a hotbed of vibrant street art. Photographer Luz A. Martín, a native of Valencia, has been wandering the streets of her hometown capturing the artwork that brings the walls, alleyways and buildings to life.
