Nothing can replace the experience of reading a printed and bound collection of images and texts – and the number of Street Art and graffiti related books that come out every year continues to grow in quantity and quality. We don’t receive all of them, and we don’t get the chance to thoroughly review them sometimes, but many of them do pass our desk and we take time to highlight ones that strike a chord throughout the year.

Here is a BSA Hot List selection from 2016 – a cross section really – that impressed us for one reason or another. Full disclosure: we were fundamental to the design and structure of the Icy & Sot book and wrote the Afterword and worked closely with the artists for months, and Ella & Pitr drew us into one of their illustrations, so there is a little more than usual bias in those choices. But otherwise, we’re confident that you’re well served by choosing from these titles for Christmas presents or Hanukkah gifts or Solstice offerings …

“Tracing Morocco”, Hendrik Beikirch

From BSA:

Dignity in “Tracing Morrocco” gives pause, requests your consideration.

Last year we wrote about Hendrik Beikirch’s journey to Morocco, The Trades. With the support of the Foundation Montresso he embarked  on a project to paint the portraits of people whose trades might be in danger of becoming obsolete and/or disappearing due to the complexities of the modern world. Tracing Morocco, the book about the project is now out…

Hendrik Beikirch’s Tracing Morocco published by and in collaboration with Montresso Art Foundation. November 2016.

Click HERE for more about this book.

Alan KET Brings You “Urban Art Legends”

From BSA:

“This book is about the artists who have pioneered, promoted and transformed this ‘other’ art world,” says the author, himself a graffiti writer, artist, curator, activist, advisor and entrepreneur. What is fresh about his approach is the egalitarian respect that is given to artists regardless of their genre or associated scene, something we have always tried to balance as well amid a sometimes turbulent volley of antagonism that can sometimes distinguish graffiti/street art discourse.

KET: “Urban Art Legends” Lom Art. London 2015

Click HERE for more about his book.

Ella & Pitr Draw You Their Diary of World Travels in “Baiser D’Encre”

From BSA:

Who knew that babies could use so many diapers! What to do when you are in a foreign city and both of you are sick as dogs? Also, we may need a crane to help us finish the world’s largest roof mural.

These considerations are things you draw into your travelogue diary when you are Ella & Pitr, the painters of enormous kings, pilots, and couples cuddled in bed on fields, rooftops, and beaches around the world.

Ella & Pitr. Les Editions Papiers Peintres. France. November 2015.

Click HERE for more about this book.

MIKE MAKATRON : In 10 Cities and Multiple Worlds

From BSA:

Wanderer Mike Makatron has been spending his young manhood traveling the globe and painting walls and experimenting with styles of art ranging from fantasy illustration to loose and leafy botanicals, with symbols of indigenous spirits, psychedelic mushrooms and plenty of the time honored ying/yang.

Mike Makatron – In Ten Cities published by Trojan Press. Melbourne, Australia 2015.

Click HERE for more about this book.

“Daze World”, the Artist and Book from City to Canvas and Back

From BSA:

“This is not an autobiography in the practical sense. I didn’t cover the day-to-day minutia of my childhood or formative teenage years all the way to the present. Rather, I have chosen to take the reader on a journey that covers some of the seminal moments in my life. Those moments shaped my art and allowed me to continue to evolve as an artist,” says graffiti/street/studio artist DAZE of the brand new collection of images and essays that make up “Daze World,” the new hardcover from Schiffer.

DAZE WORLD: The Artwork Of Chris DAZE Ellis available through Schiffer Publishing.

Click HERE for more about this book.

“The Art Of The Mural: Volume 01″ Captures a Moment

From BSA:

Murals hold their own place onstage in public space today for a variety of reasons that we discuss regularly on BSA. From grassroots and public, to private and corporate, we have watched the genre professionalize as Street Art festivals and other initiatives are often coupling artists with brands and are selling canvasses through the organizers’ galleries. Today we have the first of a promised four-part book series by Art Whino gallerist and organizer of the Richmond Mural Project in Virginia, Shane Pomajambo, that features many artists he has worked with in the brand new “The Art of the Mural”.

The Art of The Mural: Contemporary International Urban Art. Volume 01 by Shaen Pomajambo. Schiffer Publishing

Click HERE for more about this book.

Rubin: “Scandinavia / New York” Studio Works and Murals

From BSA:

An immigrant’s tale, Rubin’s, and a New York story as well. For his first artists monograph the Fin by way of Sweden brazenly tells you his story in a most deliberate and considered way. It’s brazen because it’s a truth that has taken him a long time to be ready to tell, ready to be vulnerable. It’s carefully considered because – that’s his style.

Rubin. Scandinavia / New York. Studio Works and Murals. Published by Dokument Press 2016. Sweden.

Click HERE for more about this book.

“Street Art / Today” features 50 of the Most Influential Street Artists

From BSA:

It’s nearly impossible to arrange the work of Street Artists into lists of “top” or “most popular” or “most influential”, but it happens all the time now particularly as the street art world morphs into a commercial and professional scene for some. But it’s a dodgy business when one tries to rank art and artists – and most people will disagree with your list no matter what.

Street art / today: The 50 most influential street artists today by Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong published by Lannoo. Belgium.

Click HERE for more about this book.

Graffiti Murals: Exploring The Impacts Of Street Art

From BSA:

New Book by Patrick Verel Attempts to Untangle the Graffiti Mural Discussion

In Graffiti Murals: Exploring The Impacts Of Street Art, a methodical study of graffiti and murals in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Staten Island, Jersey City, Philadelphia, and Trenton (New Jersey), author Patrick Verel talks to all of the stakeholders he can find, revealing much in the telling of his findings. The author says he created this book from a paper he was researching for while completing his masters degree in urban studies, and you can tell his intention was to turn over as many stones as possible to study the impact this grassroots art movement is having on the communities that murals appear in.

Graffiti Murals: Exploring the Impact of Street Art. Patrick Verel. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Click HERE for more about this book.

Stik : His First Collected Volume of Work

From BSA:

An unusual little tall man, this Stik man.

Deceptively simple, he expresses profound truths that are anything but. Since the turn of this century in his hometown of Hackney, the formerly homeless Stik has been bringing his unassuming line drawn character out to the streets of northeast London, often Shoreditch. With few details and is as uncluttered as a logo, Stik towers above on the side of a housing behemoth, or a water tower, or a doorway.

STIK. Published by Penguin Books – Random House. New York City. 2016

Click HERE for more about this book.

Shepard Fairey: Earth Crisis

From BSA:

Artist and activist Shepard Fairey this week releases a 2 volume “Earth Crisis” set that commemorates a recent public environmental project and doubles as a collection of plates to jumpstart your collection which you could easily frame and hang. With it comes powerful socio-political messages common to his wheelhouse delivered with the artists often iconic sense of design.

Shepard Fairey / OBEY. Earth Crisis. Albin Michel Publishers . Galerie Itenerrance. Paris. July 2016

Click HERE for more about this book.

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free”

From BSA:

“We first met Icy and Sot the summer they arrived in New York. Their name was already preceding them on the Internet because even while still in Iran, they had developed a network of friends and collectors who had helped them to show their art in Europe. Images of their work had already caught our eye. We were lucky to be the first to interview them here.” – Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, Co-founders, Brooklyn Street Art

BSA is proud to tell you of this new book, the first monograph of Iranian Street Art brothers ICY & SOT, which we dedicated many hours of design, editing, interviewing, and writing to, in addition to contributing photographs by Jaime Rojo. Along with the brothers and book designer Cassandra Brinen, we spent many hours in New York meetings in each others apartments and Brooklyn cafes sorting through images and stories to find the narrative and the flow of the pages and chapters (even laying all the pages across a living room floor), all the time wondering if we could finish it in time and to the quality level and taste level everyone was looking for.

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free” Lebowski Publishers. Amsterdam 2016

Click HERE for more about this book.

Luna Park’s “(Un)Sanctioned” Book

From BSA:

The memory of the joy and the excitement of discovery of graffiti and Street Art is something we never take for granted, and we have always given voice to as many artists and photographers as possible on BSA for that reason. Luna, whose real name is Katherine Lorimer, this month introduces her first book-bound collection of many of her most electrifying moments of capture and documentation.

Heavy on New York artists, particularly her favorites and dear friends, the collection captures a splendid offering of the spine tingling pieces of ephemera one could stumble upon here in the last 11 years – if they did the hard work. Expertly collected and selected, this above all is a reflection of one personal journey.

Katherine ‘Luna Park’ Lorimer’s book (UN)SANCTIONED The Art On New York Streets from Carpet Bombing Culture

Click HERE for more about this book.