Graffitecture is an exploration of what happens when graffiti, a highly innovative, wholly original art form rooted in urban culture, both clashes and commingles with the built environment. It is an essential publication for anyone interested in learning more about graffiti and its influence on art, graphic design, typography, popular culture, and communication.
Photographer and Graffitecture editor Doug Fogelson invited more than 40 prolific Chicago graffiti artists to manipulate over 60 of his photographs. The images depict interiors and exteriors of diverse, high-end spaces such as homes, hotels, office buildings, and stores (as well some of the more traditional places where graffiti occurs). In doing so artists were asked, What would YOU do here?
The Chicago based artists (include provocative figures such as the X-Men, Jeff Zimmerman, Chris Silva, Fact, Gusher, Michael Genovese, Sketcherone, Merdok and many others) manipulated the prints any way they saw fit. The results range from a pen-and-ink subway train riding through an office building lobby to a colorful, futuristic mural splashed on the screen at an empty home movie theater.
Graffitecture also examines graffiti's artistic and cultural significance through four essays written by Illinois-based professors and artists. John Jennings, a graphic design and urban studies professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ponders mainstream society's appropriation of graffiti's unique typography. Bridgette R. McCullough, an art historian, Manet scholar, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, compares modern-day graffiti to abstract art. Another Art Institute professor, furniture designer/artist/curator Bridgette Buckley, examines the symbiotic relationship between architecture and illicit painting. Tim Hartford, president of Hartford Design, ponders the very meaning of graffiti and its place in history.
The collaborative images are presented in a full-color gallery while the essays are presented with Fogelson's black-and-white aerial panoramas of Chicago's landmarks and skyline. Designed by Dan De Los Monteros and David Castillo