Most of the everyday writing from the ancient world--that is, informal writing not intended for a long life or wide public distribution--has perished. Reinterpreting the silences and blanks of the historical record, leading papyrologist Roger S. Bagnall convincingly argues, however, that ordinary people--from Britain to Egypt to Afghanistan--used writing in their daily lives far more extensively than has been recognized. Marshalling new and little-known evidence, including remarkable graffiti recently discovered in Smyrna, Bagnall presents a fascinating analysis of writing in different segments of society. His book offers a new picture of literacy in the ancient world in which Aramaic rivals Greek and Latin as a great international language, and in which many other local languages develop means of written expression alongside these metropolitan tongues.

The perfect fun and relaxing art project for adults and children, this activity pack includes everything needed for readers to make their own Pointillist sticker masterpiece. Containing 14 sticker sheets with over three-thousand colored circular stickers and an 18" x 32" (46 x 82.5 cm) poster "canvas" of colored outlines, readers simply need to match the colored stickers to the outlines found on the poster to recreate the painting. Given that Pointillism relies on the ability of the eye and brain to blend colored dots into a fuller range of tones, it's not necessary to place each sticker on precisely the right outline. As a result, every finished poster will be somewhat different- and extremely satisfying. With a handy folder-style flap that allows for easy storage and transportation of the artwork in progress, Dot Art: Sticker Seurat makes the perfect activity to take on vacation or to unwind after a busy day.

Richard Hambleton (1954 2017) was a Canadian artist known for his pioneering street art. He was a surviving member of a group that emerged from the New York City art scene during the booming art market of the 1980s, which also included his close friends Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. As a conceptual artist, Hambleton s early work instal-lations titled Image Mass Murder from 1976 1979 were secretly placed onto streets in over 15 cities, depicting chalk-body outlines and blood-splattered crime scenes of what appeared to be victims. This theme of a prevailing violence, fear, and morbid curiosity elicited surprise and anxiety from its unsuspecting viewers. In the early 1980s, Hambleton created his most iconic Shadow Man works artfully splattered ominous shadowy figures on unexpected street corners, walls, and alleys that startled viewers into a visceral awareness that the city was still a dangerous place. This book features over 200 images including his early Shadow Man canvas paintings, as well as photographs of his in situ street work, a selection of his Marlboro rodeo horse silhouettes, and his Beautiful Paintings series of landscapes and seascapes, alongside other works on paper; behind-the-scenes studio shots; personal, unseen photographs of the artist; and inspirational imagery. Hambleton was renowned for influencing artists such as Banksy, Blek le Rat, and Shepard Fairey. This arresting, one-of-a-kind book will appeal to those interested in visual arts, street art, graffiti, and art history.

This volume takes on the challenge of representing a sound installation by the Swiss artist Daniele Buetti, commissioned by the Schirn Museum in Frankfurt, which transfers color theory, meditation, and hypnosis into an artistic context. It's All in the Mind is built around a twenty-five-minute audio performance that takes the audience through the techniques of hypnosis. In the work, Buetti uses techniques that rely on "color purification," conjuring up different colors and their varying psychological effects. Interviews with specialists in hypnosis and in Buetti's work complement the illustrations and help explain and interpret the work.

In The City as Subject, Carolyn S. Loeb examines distinctive bodies of public art in Berlin: legal and illegal murals painted in West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, post-reunification public sculptures, and images and sites from the street art scene. Her careful analyses show how these developed new architectural and spatial vocabularies that drew on the city’s infrastructure and daily urban experience. These works challenged mainstream urban development practices and engaged with citizen activism and with a wider civic discourse about what a city can be. Loeb extends this urban focus to her examination of the extensive outdoor installation of the Berlin Wall Memorial and its mandate to represent the history of the city’s division. She studies its surrounding neighborhoods to show that, while the Memorial adopts many of the urban-oriented vocabularies established by the earlier works of public art she examines, it truncates the story of urban division, which stretches beyond the Wall’s existence. Loeb suggests that, by embracing more multi-vocal perspectives, the Memorial could encourage the kind of participatory and heterogeneous construction of the city championed by the earlier works of public art.