Detroit Graffiti

author: Chris Freitag

name: Wayne

average rating: 2.83

book published: 2014

rating: 3

read at: 2014/12/28

date added: 2014/12/28

shelves: non-fiction

review:

'Detroit Graffiti' takes us on a tour of some of the interesting graffiti that has cropped up in Detroit. In an introduction, the idea of artists taking spraycations to the city to practice their art is mentioned along with the rules of not spraying an active building, residence or church. In a city of so many abandoned buildings, this leaves a lot of potentially empty canvas.



The book is divided up by neighborhoods, like Eastern Market, or the Old Packard Automotive Plant. The art is labelled where it can be showing who the artist. Most of the art is stylized names of the artists (Elmer gets around, as he is featured in most sections of the books). There are scattered quotes by some of the artists, but I think I would have like more insight from them than just the scattershot quote here and there. One artist named Malt seems to have parlayed his graffiti skills into commissions as a muralist. Some of the danger of doing this is mentioned in the book. Doing graffiti in some parts of Detroit would seem to be quite hazardous.



The work, since it's mostly stylized names, has a sameness to it, but it's still rather uniquely beautiful, and there are a few artistic murals that are just great to look at. Other than knowing the neighborhoods, it's hard to get context on many of the pictures since they are on concrete walls. There are some shots of whole buildings. I suppose it's better to see something full of color on the side of a building versus a rotting, empty building, and it seems that Detroit has found a potentially new tourism avenue. When it was done, I wasn't sure whether to revel in the art at large, or to mourn for a city that, at least in terms of this book, seems to be dying. I would have liked to have seen more evidence of urban hope, and less pages and pages of tags.



I received a review copy of this ebook from Schiffer Publishing Ltd. and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.





via Wayne's bookshelf: read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1104559534?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss