So recently I've been taking an interest in 15th century Islamic arts, from the calligraphers to the miniaturists, its highly disciplined tradition of art that is far removed from the frivolous painters of the west at that point in history. I have also always been interested in graffiti as means of reinterpreting the urban landscape.
So finding this book, Arabic Graffiti(ISBN:978-3937946269) was a terrific find. Arabic by its very nature carries a distinct warrior-like ethos and how that relates to modern graffiti is something I'd defineately like to explore a bit more. It was Rammmellzee, the great american lingual alchemist, who devised the theory behind the "Wildstyle". He spoke in depth about the 'militarisation of the alphabet' in his theory of Gothic Futurism. Anyway I hope to blog a bit more about this book once I get hold of a copy.
P.S. The last picture, the "CTRL+ALT+DELETE" on the Palestinian wall isn't really arabic and falls within the genre intelligent/socially-concious street-art, but fuck it's a damn fine piece of graffiti.
No comments:
Post a Comment