Following hot on the heels of the premier issue is Writing Hessisch 2! This is the Hessian ethnocultural graffiti magazine from Germany. The publication focuses on the industrial Hesse region of Germany and is uniquely written in the local dialect. Once again the mag is limited to five-hundred copies and has a similar look to the first. While the design is familiar the content has a different layout that is ordered by aesthetics rather than categorised by name. There is also an English PDF translation provided with this issue which is really useful.
Muralismo Morte is the second book by Jens Besser I’ve reviewed. In this book the content is made up of photographs interrupted by short pieces of writing linking them together. Rather than examining the more theoretical side of muralism they discuss some history, first-hand experiences, or the ideas behind the work of the artists. The photographs show different styles and techniques, covering a broad range of surfaces and situations, which are brought together under the term of ‘new muralism’. The introduction to the book describes the evolution of a new generation of muralists whose abstract work departed from the writing and letterforms of graffiti to focus on the characters that were no longer “the icing on the cake of a burner.” This is the new muralism that is represented here. To avoid producing yet another anthology of street-art the author has attempted to show lesser known painters with the main focus on illegal productions.
This article is a bit off topic as it’s not really about graffiti and it’s not a review of a graffiti publication either. It’s actually a football fanzine called Stand. The publication is usually an interesting read, which isn’t dominated by all things premier league, and is about as close to an ‘ultras’ stance as you can find in the UK.
Chemistry is a Dutch graffiti magazine that comes across as quite a sophisticated publication. While there are no texts in this seventh issue the content stretches beyond purely graffiti with sections on urban exploration, some fine art, and a ‘minimal complexity’ chapter that probably wouldn’t look out of place in an architectural journal.
Without trying to sound like too much of a Germanophile Artistz is typical of the sort of graffiti publications from the country that are well produced, contain good quality photos of a nice size, have interesting content and generally just get the job done well. This particular German magazine focuses on transport in Berlin. It is thoughtfully laid out with photographic chapters that are split up by pages of interviews and text with English translations.
I recently got sent a copy of a book called Time for Murals. The book was published after a conference, organised by the artist Jens Besser, that took place a couple of years ago on the subject of the “contemporary phenomenon” that are urban murals. Now murals aren’t my usual area of interest but in my home town of London there are a few cool murals dating from the late seventies and eighties that I really like. The sort of murals that I see going up nowadays all seem to be large scale pieces of street-art rather than the community focused and often politicised murals that came before. Anyway as Besser points out in the book “a narrow interpretation may result in nerdiness”. So, as not to be classed a graff-nerd, it’s probably healthy to delve into another type of urban art that isn’t usually graffiti and doesn’t have to be street-art. Each chapter in the book is written by different artists and organisers discussing the place of murals in the city and within the urban art scene, descriptions of mural festivals, community initiatives, a bit of mural history and finally an interview.
Thrappage was a zine that originally ran from 1999-2001. I’d never actually heard of it before so I was intrigued to see a new anthology has been released. Thrappage: Greatest Hits is a collection of some of the best content from the original publication. There is an intro and an outro that explain what the magazine was, how it was received, and what it lead onto.
Up until now New York’s most famous literary son has been Holden Caulfield. However the privaleged protagonist of JD Salinger’s boring coming of age novel never hit up a million tags. In fact, regarding a million, Holden Caulfield believed that “you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘Fuck you’ signs” graffitied in that number of years. Well, the author of What Do One Million Ja Tags Signify? estimates, “through averages & fudging with time & math”, that the eponymous tagger of the title has put up a million of his own fuck you’s in just thirty years!
