Late 1970s New York City was bankrupt and its streets dirty and dangerous. But thecity had a wild, raw energy that made it the crucible for the birth of rap culture and graffiti. Graffiti writers worked in extremely tough conditions: uncollected garbage, darkness, cramped spaces, and the constant threat of police raids, assault by security staff and attacks by rival crews. It was not unlike practicing performance art in a war zone. Yet during the fertile years of the late 1970s and 1980s they evolved their art from stylized signatures to full-blown Technicolor dreamscapes. Henry Chalfant...

This is the illustrated story of New York artist Chris Daze Ellis's successful transition from the subways to international studios and galleries. Follow his 30 year career from his teen years as a graffiti writer to his current life as a professional painter, mentor, and family man. This book, with more than 250 photographs, is a journey that tracks seminal moments in Daze's life that shaped his art. View his aesthetic evolution, from "Graffiti High" (New York's High School of Art and Design) and an "unsanctioned" street art phase to exhibitions with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat....

NYC graffiti art, heavy metal, comic books, and fantasy art intersect here in Louie "KR.ONE" Gasparro's visual autobiography. This legendary Queens artist-drummer weaves these powerful influences into a medium he calls "Graffantasy," creating tags, wall pieces, paintings and illustrations, model trains, jackets, and more. Gaze at this modern Renaissance man's work from 1977 to the present, and trace his evolution from his adolescent days watching bombed subway cars whirring by in a KOLORSTORM, to the underground period tagging trains and evading cops, to his legal works and whole-school...