Books

Amsterdam street art

From a subversive underground art movement, street art has grown in recent years forming a ubiquitous presence on the streets . The importance of graffiti and street art to modern art is increasingly acknowledged and the art form has, deservedly, secured its position in galleries and the collections of prominent museums.

Amsterdam has always been a unique place in the world of graffiti and street art. The city provided a grateful canvas for local artists and soon became popular among foreign street artists as well. Many of them found the space they needed to further develop their art on the walls of squatted and empty buildings, in the quiet streets and secluded areas.

New Orleans: Murals, Street Art & Graffiti Vol.1

by Katie Yellow

This was written to put a limelight on the street art scene in the Crescent City.

Living in New Orleans curating shows, promoting and selling art, and helping artists get paid gigs I built close friendships with artists. I realized how special the public art is in New Orleans. I found myself wanting to share their work. It was clunky to pull out my phone and navigate IG and some did not have websites. This shortfall paired with a powerful moment standing in the Martha Cooper Library at Urban Nation in Berlin; I realized it was time to write my first book on muralists & graffitists.

Sexuality, Subjectivity, and LGBTQ Militancy in the United States

by Guillaume Marche
June 6th, 2019

As LGBTQ movements in Western Europe and North America are becoming increasingly successful at awarding LGBTQ people rights, especially institutional recognition for same-sex couples and their families, what becomes of the deeper social transformation that these movements initially aimed to achieve? The United States is in many ways a paradigmatic model for LGBTQ movements in other countries.

This book focuses on the transformations of the United States’ LGBTQ movement since the 1980s, highlighting the relationship between its institutionalization and the disappearance of sexuality from its most visible claims, so that its growing visibility and legitimation since the 1990s have not led to an increase in militancy.

Urban Scrawl: The Written Word in Street Art

by Lou Chamberlin
April 2, 2019

Street art is now a recognised art form that can be thought-provoking, political, humorous or shocking. Urban Scrawl documents some of the world’s most interesting street-art words and typography, from formal typography to angsty scrawl, presented in a small-format hardback that’s perfect for any gift or self-purchase.

Lou Chamberlin has travelled from Warsaw to London, Tokyo to New York, Cape Town to Santiago, and within her home country of Australia, in search of the world’s most interesting and intriguing street art. Her photographs capture these works at a moment in time, documenting and celebrating the ever-changing street art scene.

The SAGE Handbook of Resistance

by David Courpasson and Steven Vallas
October 8, 2016

Occupy. Indignados. The Tea Party. The Arab Spring. Anonymous. These and other terms have become part of an emerging lexicon in recent years, signalling an important development that has gripped many parts of the world: millions of people are increasingly involved, whether directly or indirectly, in movements of resistance and protestation.

However, resistance and its conceptual “companions”, protest, contestation, opposition, disobedience and mobilization, all seem to be still mostly seen in public and private discourses as illegitimate and problematic forms of action. The time is, therefore, ripe to delve into the concerns, themes and legitimacy.

Chosen by Library Journal as one of the best reference texts of 2016.

The Moral Panics of Sexuality

by B. Fahs and M. Dudy
September 12, 2013

A provocative feminist analysis of the moral panics of sexuality, this interdisciplinary edited collection showcases the range of historical and contemporary crises we too often suppress, including vagina dentata, vampires, cannibalism, age appropriateness, breast cancer, menstrual panics, and sex education.

Live and Let Live: Diversity, Conflict, and Community in an Integrated Neigborhood

By Evelyn M. Perry
December 12, 2016

We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, Americans are demonstrably not very good at living with difference. Perry’s analysis of the multiethnic, mixed-income Milwaukee community of Riverwest, where residents maintain relative stability without insisting on conformity, advances our understanding of why and how neighborhoods matter. In response to the myriad urban quantitative assessments, Perry examines the impacts of neighborhood diversity using more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews.

Her in-depth examination of life “on the block” expands our understanding of the mechanisms by which neighborhoods shape the perceptions, behaviors, and opportunities of those who live in them. Perry challenges researchers’ assumptions about what “good” communities look like and what well-regulated communities want. Live and Let Live shifts the conventional scholarly focus from “What can integration do?” to “How is integration done?”

Democracy, Participation and Contestation: Civil society, governance and the future of liberal democracy

edited by Emmanuelle Avril, Johann N Neem
August 7, 2014

The establishment of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic has not been a smooth evolution towards an idealized presumed endpoint. Far from it, democratization has been marked by setbacks and victories, a process often referred to as ‘contested democracy’. In view of recent mobilizations such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, in which new technologies have played a key role, there is a need for a renewed analysis of the long-term evolution of US and UK political systems. Using new areas of research, this book argues that the ideals and the practices of Anglo-American democracy can be best understood by studying diverse forms of participation, which go beyond classical expressions of contestation and dissent such as voting.

The authors analyze political parties, social movements, communications and social media, governance, cultural diversity, identity politics, public-private actors and social cohesion to illustrate how the structure and context of popular participation play a significant role in whether, and when, citizens ́ efforts have any meaningful impact on those who exercise political power. In doing so, the authors take crucial steps towards understanding how a vigorous public sphere and popular sovereignty can be made to work in today’s global environment.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, British and US history, democracy, political participation, governance, social movements and politics.

Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art

edited by Jeffrey Ian Ross
March 2, 2016

The Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art integrates and reviews current scholarship in the field of graffiti and street art. Thirty-seven original contributions are organized around four sections:

• History, Types, and Writers/Artist of Graffiti and Street Art;
• Theoretical Explanations of Graffiti and Street Art/Causes of Graffiti and Street Art;
• Regional/Municipal Variations/Differences of Graffiti and Street Art;
• Effects of Graffiti and Street Art

Chapters are written by experts from different countries throughout the world and their expertise spans the fields of American Studies, Art Theory, Criminology, Criminal justice, Ethnography, Photography, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Visual Communication.

The Handbook will be of interest to researchers, instructors, advanced students, libraries, and art gallery and museum curators.

This book is also accessible to practitioners and policy makers in the fields of criminal justice, law enforcement, art history, museum studies, tourism studies, and urban studies as well as members of the news media. The Handbook includes 70 images, a glossary, a chronology, and the electronic edition will be widely hyperlinked.

San Francisco Street Art

by Steve Rotman
2009

A must-have for any street art enthusiast, this book presents the most mind blowing examples of renegade creativity in San Francisco.

Street Art and Contemporary Art

Julien’s Auctions
October 22, 2016

Julien’s Auctions, the world’s premier Street Art auction house, announces the October 22nd biannual Street Art and Contemporary Art live auction featuring the naked Donald Trump statue entitled “The Emperor Has No Balls” (Estimate: $10,000-20,000) by anonymous art collective INDECLINE which appeared on the 4600 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the National Immigration Forum, one of the leading immigrant advocacy organizations in the country, with a mission to advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation. This auction includes other coveted works by Street and Contemporary artists including Banksy, Keith Haring, Jean Michelle Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Shepard Fairey.