Way back in December, I had the privilege to meet and interview Martha Cooper while she was photographing the artists at Primary Flight. Here’s the video from that day:
Martha Cooper’s photos from that video can be found in the books Subway Art
Children of the Grave by Dondi
One of my all time favorite pieces of subway graffiti is Children of The Grave Part 2 by Dondi:
Martha Cooper has just posted on this photo, along with photos of Children of The Grave parts 1 and 3, on her blog. These pieces are legendary.
Blade, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant video
Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper took the photos for the legendary graffiti book Subway Art, and Blade is one of the writers featured in the book. I think these interviews with them were filmed at a show that the three of them were involved with earlier this year in Paris. It’s a cool video if you love classic graffiti (and Wu-Tang Clan’s music).
Via Senses Lost
The Art Street Journal Issue 6 – January
The first issue of The Art Street Journal 2010 is out! Inside, amongst other things, you’ll find reviews on some of the best shows from December (like Grifters at Lazarides) and previews of some of the ones we’re most excited about in January (like A Cry For Help at Thinkspace). There are a lot of interviews in this issue, too – Martha Cooper, Mark Jenkins (who’s showing here at Carmichael Gallery with Aakash Nihalani in January) Stephan Doitschinoff and Zezao.
This month’s Unurth page is very cool (I love that this page enables us to fit so many different artists into the paper – it really is hard to include everything you want to cover in sixteen pages and Sebastian does a fantastic job of highlighting the best on the street), plus we’ve finally started the tasj bookshelf page. Each month, this page will feature a selection of the best publications out there (RJ’s The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In makes it in first time, of course, as does Issue 10 of Very Nearly Almost).
As always, tasj is free and we’ll deliver it anywhere in the world. You can get it here.
– Elisa
Blu in Bogotá
Blu has been busy in the Colombian capital lately for Memoria Canalla, a project organized by Bastardilla and Stinkfish. Martha Cooper and Onesto, who both traveled to the city in September, are amongst others who have participated.
Photos from Blu’s blog
Street Art Christmas Gift Guide
Christmas is only days away, and I know I’ve still got shopping to do. If you’re like me and you’ve got street art fans that you’ve still got to buy gifts for, look no futher.
1. The Elms Lesters Book – £175: Elms Lesters has released this giant book just in time for Christmas. They’ve been working on it for years, and I can see why. There are photos from all their major exhibitions over the years, and interviews with some of their best known artists conducted by art historian Ben Jones.
2. Keith Haring – $63: Another mammoth street art book. A team including Jeffrey Deitch of Deitch Projects have made the definitive book on Keith Haring.
3. Bomb It – $19.95: I’ve actually put this on my Christmas list, so I haven’t seen it yet, but everybody I’ve talked to has said this movie is great. This documentary goes through the history of graffiti, from cave paintings in Pompeii to the modern day.
4. Style Wars – $24.99: The original graffiti documentary, and a must-have for any fan’s collection. This film helped to define 80’s graffiti.
5. Subway Art – $14.96: Like Style Wars, a classic book on graffiti. Martha Cooper’s photographs influenced a generation of writers.
Week of The Tag
I’ve been a bit light on posts this week. Schoolwork has been piling up a bit, and I submit my university applications next week, so I’ve been working on those. I have been following the news though, and it seems like everybody is talking about tags this week.
- Hooked has released a zine called Tags: East London, and you can probably tell what it’s about from the title. 30 pages full color photos of some of London’s best tags. Get a copy for just £3.50 including UK postage here.
- Beautiful Crime sums up “The Great Debate” about “the merits of paste-ups, graffiti, street art, tagging and photoshopping” based on this flickr comments exchange between Mike Marcus, nolionsinengland, HowAboutNo! and redalert51.
- Fecal Face has a Q&A with graffiti photographer Martha Cooper. Fans of ’80’s graffiti should definitely have a read. Cooper has a new book out called Tag Town: The Origins of Writing, available here.
- There’s also been some great news in the world of character tags:
– UK Street Art reports that The Toaster has put out a couple of fairly cheap prints over at Nelly Duff. Just £50, but they aren’t very large.
– Hooked announces the release of new Sickboy prints from his recent Stay Free show (I wasn’t able to go, but Graffoto’s got a review)