Scrawl Too: More Dirt

Rating:
Summary: One of the best graffiti surveys availiable.
Review: There are a lot of graffiti art books on the market that don't capture the essence of street graphics. They either fixate on a certain style or get caught up in an outdated romanticism of the tagger figure. 'Scrawl Too' is an awesome, beautiful book featuring bombs from all over the world and scores of contemporary graffiti artists.

I got the sense that each of the featured artists has a self-awareness of the state of graffiti art in the market culture. Barry McGee has developed an iconography that captures pathos, suffering, indifference, and humor. Obey Giant emphasizes and parodies the ubiquitousness of corporate logos and has developed a brand more based on 'street cred' than market trends. (Or gives the appearance of doing so anyway). The book also focuses on smaller scale bombs and tags and in doing so a pattern emerges. Most of the pieces seem to be a reaction to the near-loss of urban spaces, both public and private to (mostly)gentrification and a dying connection between the people that inhabit them.