Back at The Thousands in November, I spoke to the folks from Organart for a piece on Resonance 104.4FM in London, and indie radio station here. The piece is now part one of a series called Create and Survive, and it can be heard on Resonance this Thursday at 8pm GMT. If you’re in London, you can listen on the radio, otherwise the show will also be streaming online. Learn more here.
Don’t ask me how it happened, I’m still not entirely sure, but if you happen to pick up a copy of Vogue Italia this month, you’ll find an article about me and street art on page 96. I don’t speak Italian, but based on Google’s very rough translation, the article seems to be about The Thousands and me proselytizing street art as “museum quality.” So that’s pretty cool. And, because a. I’m no fashion icon, and b. it was an article about the virtues of street art, instead of photos of me taken by a famous photographer, the article features some pictures from The Thousands book of work by Burning Candy, Skewville, Elbow-toe and Chris Stain, so be on the look out for next year’s line of Skewville inspired tshirts at H&M.
There was a very positive response from my first holiday gift guide post about affordable prints, so I thought it might be worth putting together a similar list for art books.
1. The Faith of Graffiti by Norman Mailer and Jon Naar
Okay, this book isn’t actually released until December 29th, but it absolutely needs to be included in this list. A full decade before Subway Art was published, Mailer wrote a brilliant essay to accompany Naar’s photographs of the very earliest New York City graffiti, most of which would be considered tags today. This book is an essential piece of graffiti history, but it has been largely ignored by history in favor of the next book on this list.
2. Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
While Naar did a great job documenting the very earliest stages of graffiti, Subway Art is what turned graffiti into an international phenomena and forced people to look at graffiti as more than petty vandalism. This new edition of the book includes new photographs and is in a much larger format, so many of the photos that are in your old copy of Subway Art are now printed much larger and nicer. While The Faith of Graffiti documents the earliest moments in graffiti history, there is no more important book about graffiti or street art than Subway Art.
3. Keith Haring by Jeffrey Deitch and many others
If you like Keith Haring, this is the definitive book of his artwork. It’s pretty huge, weighing in at almost 9 pounds. It’s not cheap either (almost $40 at the time of this post), so it’s really for those who absolutely love Haring, but you’re not going to find a better book of his artwork.
4. Brooklyn Street Art by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington
Probably the best of Prestel’s series of street art books, this is a solid overview of Brooklyn’s street art. A great stocking stuffer.
5. Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution by Cedar Lewisohn
In my opinion, maybe the best street art book for the street art lover. Not just a book of photos, this book covers a great deal of street art history in a very serious way.
6. Wall and Piece by Banksy
Honestly, I kind of hope that nobody buys Wall and Piece because it’s on this list. Pretty much anybody who reads Vandalog should have at least one copy of Wall and Piece. Banksy is a genius. ‘Nuff said.
7. Young, Sleek, And Full Of Hell by Aaron Rose
I just read this book a week or two ago, and if you liked the film Beautiful Losers, this book is a great companion. It tells the story of New York’s Alleged Gallery, mostly through pictures and interviews with many of the people who were associated with the gallery over it’s lifetime.
8. Pictures of Walls
A funny little stocking stuffer. One of those things that makes me smile.
9. Untitled II: The Beautiful Renaissance by Gary Shove
This book doesn’t take itself too seriously and it’s full of pretty pictures. It’s good overview of recent street art, and includes some new artists that I wasn’t familiar with as well as many of that greats that I know and love.
10. The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In by RJ Rushmore
Can of had to include my own book, didn’t I? What I love about this book isn’t what I wrote, but what other people wrote. Know Hope’s biography of Chris Stain taught me as much about Chris as it did Know Hope’s personality. An excerpt from Mike Snelle’s forward to the book was recently posted on Drago’s website.
A little diary entry sort of thing from me went online today on Drago’s website. Of course, I encourage you to have a read of the full thing yourself, but here’s a sample:
I went to Miami for Art Basel and the satellite events there. The experience has made me realize how mainstream some street art and graffiti has become. Primary Flight and Deitch’s Wynwood Walls projects introduced the city of Miami and the art tourists to over 100 talented artists and writers who pretty much took over the Wynwood district with their murals. Inside Basel, there were a surprising number of galleries showing artwork by street artists, and the Deitch Projects booth was probably 50% street artists. The Artwhino, SCOPE, Aqua and Fountain fairs were full of low-brow, street and urban art and there were projects like BKMIA and Graffiti Gone Global that showcased street art and graffiti (or perhaps my favorite new catchall term for the street/urban/graffiti art genres: urban folk art).
But that paragraph is very misleading, but because my conclusion to the post suggests that not all hope is lost for the underground nature of street art.
Check out the rest of the post on Drago’s website.
BrewDog sponsored The Thousands with a very generous donation of their Punk IPA beer, so in return I want to take some time out from writing about street art to mention their (very tasty) beer and PunkDog, a site to create custom labels for BrewDog beer.
On PunkDog you can design your own beer label with words and pictures and even fill your bottles with one of three of BrewDog’s beers. I can only vouch for the Punk IPA, but from what I hear, everything else they brew is just as good. I think I’ll have to give these a try for my next Vandalog event. It would be cool to have good beer with the Vandalog logo on it.
Order by the 18th and you can have your PunkDog beer in time for Christmas. A 6 pack is just £18.99 plus shipping.
What are you waiting for, try out the PunkDog label designer now.
Photo by unusualimage
As previously mentioned, the Burning Candy crew painted an amazing mural at The Thousands last month. I spoke with Sweet Toof about that mural, so here’s that conversation and a time lapse of the mural going up:
The Answer by Hera
I’m not sure I’ve given this a proper mention on Vandalog yet. For The Thousands, Campbarbossa and I teamed up to create a special edition of The Thousands coupled with a lithograph by Hera of her sketch The Answer. The print is an edition of 100 and is of course signed by Hera. The print and book combo is available on the Campbarbossa website for £100.
One of these prints is already sitting on my desk I’m going to send it to the framers as soon as I get back from my vacation (which starts tomorrow), it turned out really well. Because it is a lithograph, it really looks exactly like a slightly scaled down version of an original Hera sketch, which are some of the best sketches in the street art scene (in my humble and clearly very biased opinion).
Always one to look for a bargain when it comes to prints, I think we kept this priced pretty reasonably. The Thousands is available for £23 from Drago, so if you were already thinking about buying a book, the print essentially costs less than £80.
Be on the look out in the next week or two for some Christmas suggestions for books and dvds that aren’t by me, but this is probably the best item to add to your holiday gift lists 
Once again, the book and print combo is available from Campbarbossa for £100.
Last Wednesday was the opening of The Thousands, the art exhibition I curated. The photos are on flickr and the blog posts are online, and yet, I haven’t mentioned the show much on Vandalog since the opening. It’s been busy, so now I’m making up for that.
The folks at Babelgum have been super-supportive, with three videos about the show. The first is a behind the scenes look at the show, a bit of the set up, as well as a chat with me about the exhibition. The next two are tours of the exhibition.
And there are hundreds of photos on flickr in The Thousands’ group pool of all the pieces in the show.
Just hours before opening, the books arrived. The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In was sold at the show, and now you can buy it on Drago’s website. And forget about hours, minutes before we opened the doors, Hera finished signing her prints for the special edition of the book with a lithograph of one of Hera’s sketches (you can get those at CampBarbossa £100).
Photo by Tim Boddy
Of course, the opening was packed. Thanks to BrewDog, there was a steady supply of their Punk IPA beer until 15 minutes before closing time. And Gold Peg was also there selling some ice cream at the Mad Beef Ice Cream Parlour. I was worried about who would show up on Wednesday, but not only did we have artists like Know Hope, Hera and the Burning Candy crew, but there were people I didn’t recognize! That felt pretty cool.
I think The Thousands looked amazing, but I’m not the only one. Here are some reviews I found:
Which brings me to the murals. The murals looked amazing. As planned, Burning Candy showed up to paint this (daytime shot here):
Photo by Marta Ka
Unexpectedly though, I found out that there were 3 small walls on the building that I could have painted, so I invited Inketish, Pure Evil and Know Hope to come by. Here are those results:
Know Hope
Pure Evil
Inkfetish
And here are some interviews and articles that were done in the lead up to the show:
So that’s The Thouands in a nutshell. It was an amazing experience and I hope to do it again.
Thanks 1000x over to all the people who helped put the show together, especially my mom who doesn’t even like street art that much.
In case you missed seeing The Thousands in person, check out this quick video tour of the show. Part two coming soon.
The Thousands opens in two hours. I’m super busy, but I will say this: It looks awesome. Arrested Motion has some photos of the set up.
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