20 Books Like The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti

A bombastic start that leads to a gentle beautiful ending. Nothing works how you expect it to in this novel. The graffiti is woven through the story like broad brush strokes of a Van Gogh painting. Abrupt and yet conveying of most delicate feelings. Open the first page, leave all your expectations to the side and let yourself be taken on the ride. The less I tell you the better.

There is no escaping that name when broaching the subject Graffiti. Banksy is the king. In Wall And Piece you get a broad study of his creations. You can leaf through and enjoy the pictures, but I highly recommend that you invest the time to read the witty and through-provoking text accompanying them. I am not saying that a comparison to Tolstoy immediately came to mind. All I am saying is that I continued to think about the book days and weeks after reading it.

My interest in graffiti started during a visit to Ramallah, Palestine. Since there is no functioning government that can remove graffiti, the city walls are covered in layers upon layers of graffiti. Anything reachable by human hand is decorated in paint. From the profound to the vulgar. Political to benign. It suddenly occurred to me that in the city of Ramallah no one needs to wonder: “What are people thinking? What is on their mind?” The writing is on the wall. Simply open your eyes and absorb the order within the chaos. Against the Wall reminds me of that moment of inspiration that later informed my novel.

Anonymouse is a charming illustrated picture book for children that grownups will appreciate. It tells the story of a mysterious graffiti artist that creates art specifically for animals. What I love most about it, is that it illustrates the transformative power of art. As the different animals are surprised and delighted with the graffiti, their lives, how they see themselves and relate to each other are enhanced in surprising ways.

Norman Mailer is a legend of American literature and, without a doubt, the most famous writer to have ever written seriously about graffiti. Alongside the equally legendary British photographer Jon Naar, whose stunning images grace their joint work, this book is up there as one of the most influential books on graffiti ever written.

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its publishing in 2024, Mailer and Naar’s book was the first to take graffiti seriously as both a public act and public art alike. Whilst much of Mailer’s essay is colored by his own personal tribulations and enmities, and whilst Naar’s photos are in some ways more ethnographic rather than focussing on the “best” works of the era, the book’s unmistakable positioning of graffiti as art was critical in reframing the possibilities of the practice. In this way, The Faith is not only critical as a document of its time but… show more.

I learned so much from reading anthropologist Susan Phillips’ fantastic account of Los Angeles over the last 100 years. Exploring the history of the city from the ground up, she combines a microscopic analysis of the city’s diverse graffiti cultures–from the graffiti of hobos to that of surfers, prisoners, and punks–with a macroscopic account of the changing nature of this most famous megalopolis.

I loved the beautiful, intimate images Philips included, as well as her refreshing, first-person appearance throughout the book. More than anything, though, I really enjoyed the way that Phillip's approach extends the understanding of 20th-century graffiti beyond the traditional East Cost (and hip-hop-centric) focus, seeing an entire world within the traces the most marginalized leave behind and showing how graffiti reveals as much about the changing nature of a city as of society itself.

This book blew my mind when I first read it. In fact, it continues to do so today, over 20 years since it was first written. Perverse, contradictory, offensive, effervescent, and totally un-put-downable, Brown (aka Nov, aka Nov York, aka Dumaar Freemaninov) takes us on an extraordinary journey into the life of a 1990s New York graffiti writer, into the underbelly and dirt of the city and into its drugged out, demented dramas.

How autobiographical is it? How much is truth? How much fiction? Whichever the answer, Brown’s anarchic, unique book took me on a trip that I will never forget, and in doing so, gives an insight into a world far beyond the graffiti image itself. A must-read (and to be read aloud whilst travelling on the subway as per the author’s instructions)! 

When we first moved to our farm, we discovered witches’ marks carved into the walls of our granary. Hundreds of years old, these ancient scribblings are absolutely everywhere–churches, grand homes, cottages, and farm buildings. These are not mindless doodles, however, but prayers for a good harvest or desperate protections against harm.

Matthew Champion’s well-researched book is a highly readable summary of this secretive and surprisingly common practice.

The summer I finished my PhD, I had the feeling that I had made a huge mistake—the mistake being I hadn’t written my whole doctorate on the life and work of Rammellzee, the pioneering artist and mythical graffiti writer who had died aged just 49 the year before. A game-changing innovator who combined literature, music, performance, sculpture, and fashion to produce an avant-garde art practice that is still influential today, Rammellzee showed what was possible when graffiti was truly unshackled and set free.

Whilst it was too late for me to go back in time and restart my PhD, thankfully, Maxwell Wolf and Jeff Mao have produced the most definitive monograph on Rammellzee to date. Packed full of incredible images and the most mind-bending ephemera, it’s a must for anyone interested in graffiti, Afrofuturism, or performance art, let alone anyone who wants to learn about one of the most electrifying,… show more.

Gordon Matta-Clark is one of my favorite ever artists. An innovator who crossed the fields of architecture and art, Matta-Clark found new modes of expression by simultaneously deconstructing his urban surroundings and destabilizing the canonical regulations of art. What’s more, and unlike many of his contemporaries, Matta-Clark had a keen eye for graffiti, using it within his own practice (such as in the work “Graffiti Truck”) as well as archiving the images that surrounded him in 1970s New York. 

Whilst some of these images have previously been seen in exhibitions of Matta-Clark's work (his hand-colored, stunning “Photoglyphs” most famously), the majority of the 2000 photos Matta-Clark took during the early ‘70s have never been seen until the publication of this stunning book. At over 400 pages and with over 400 beautiful color images, as well as containing interviews and essays by some key practitioners and writers of the era, this… show more.