• October 2, 2004
  • Posted by Marc

GRAFFITI WORLD… The Bar Has Been Set And It’s Now Pretty Fuckin’ High

For the
last few months we’ve been hearing terrific things about an upcoming book on
street art and graffiti called GRAFFITI
WORLD: STREET ART FROM FIVE CONTINENTS
. The book was conceived and put
together by Nicholas Ganz and edited by href="http://www.streetlogos.com/">Tristan Manco. Nicholas is a graffiti
artist himself who lives in Germany and Tristan, who many of you will know from
the Wooster site, is a graphic designer from Bristol. Tristan is also the author
of two other amazing books on this subject, Stencil Graffiti and most
recently, Street Logos.

So last week while in London, Sam
Clark, the designer of the book, showed us a preview copy. To say that we were
blown away by GRAFFITI WORLD would be a massive understatement. Sam’s layouts
are spectacular and the work that Nicholas and Tristan have put into the book is
remarkable. With over 2,000 meticulously laid out photographs, the book
showcases the work of over 180 artists from all over the world. Some you will
know from the Wooster website, but many of them you will not.

In our
minds, GRAFFITI WORLD is by far the best book ever to come out on graffiti and
street art. The main reason for this is the sheer magnitude and quality of the
photographs. They are amazing. The art on each and every page is absolutely
stunning. Graffiti World sets the bar so high, that it will be hard for others
to “one up” it. The book is so packed with art that it can take you days to
absorb it all. We’re still going through it. So without trying to sound like a
cheesy book critic, our advice to you is that if there’s one art book to get
this winter, this is the one.

And here’s one additional reason
why:

The retail price in Europe for GRAFFITI WORLD is only 20 pounds.
In the States you can pre-order the book on Amazon for $24.00 USD. When we asked
Sam why (and how) the book could have a price of only 20 pounds (most publishers
would have charged well over $100 for it) he mentioned that one of the main
reasons for this was the generosity of the artists themselves. The community of
artists around the world were kind enough to provide thousands of photographs
without taking a fee, and this savings was passed on to the buyer. So big up not
only to Nicholas, Tristan, Sam, their publishers at Thames and Hudson, but also
to all of the artists!

One other thing that we
thought was cool, was that 600 copies will be published in hand painted boxes by
a group of artists including Paris, Adam Neate, Kid Acne, Nick Walker, Other,
and Above. Here are a few samples:

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Other

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Adam Neate

src="http://www.woostercollective.com/images2/box3.jpg" />

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Kid Acne
src="http://www.woostercollective.com/images2/box4.jpg" />

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Above

src="http://www.woostercollective.com/images2/box5.jpg" />

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Nick Walker
src="http://www.woostercollective.com/images2/box6.jpg" />

/>Paris

In the US, the book
will be published later this month by Abrams. One nice touch that they did was
to turn the cover into a large fold out poster…

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