Cedar Lewisohn has written the first account of Street Art, tracing its history from cave painting through to the vibrant art emerging today on the walls of London, Madrid and Sao Paolo, via Brassai’s photographs of 1920s Paris and Basquiat and Haring’s New York.

The book is illustrated with over 120 colour photographs of street art from around the world, containing interviews with leading street art proponents of the last three decades, including Henry Chalfant, Lady Pink, Blek le Rat, Mode 2, Barry McGee (Twist), Shephard Fairey (Obey), Futura 2000 and Os Gemeos.

Pre-order this book at Amazon (Available Sept. 17, 2008)

Os Gemeos opened up their show Too Far Too Close at Deitch over the weekend. The exhibit builds upon a group of artworks created for the Museum Het Domein in the Netherlands, and looks amazing. Hmm … might need to fly out to N.Y. to catch this show.

Peep photos of the show at c-monster.net (courtesy of Luna Park).

Show runs June 28 — August 09, 2008

>Photos< The opening reception for “In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor” was on Saturday, June 21st at the Laguna Art Museum. The exhibit features the work of over 150 artists whom the curators position as being part of an unrecognized art movement taking place in the U.S. for the past 40 years.

Barry Mcgee

Andrew Schoultz

The show was massively impressive, and similar in scale (if not larger) as The Beautiful Losers exhibit. It was pretty evident looking at the artwork placards that Nike head Mark Parker has amassed an impressive collection of this genre. Parker loaned around a dozen pieces to the show, including standout pieces by: Os Gemeos, Phil Frost, Mark Ryden, Marc Dean Veca, and Todd Schorr (whose 10′ x 12′ commissioned piece made it’s public debut at the opening).

Joe Sorren

Thomas Campbell

Bay Area artists represented in the exhibit included: Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Andrew Schoultz, Thomas Campbell, Tiffany Bozic and Silvia Ji. It was especially nice to see work from Margaret Kilgallen, as her name was not included in any of the print collateral for the show. Definitely worth the trip down to So. Cal to catch this exhibit.

Tiffany Bozic & Henry Darger

Os Gemeos

See more photos here

June 22 - October 5, 2008. An exhibition catalog with an initial run of 1,000 copies should be available in September, and is currently available for pre-purchase from the museum.

On Friday May 23, the Tate Modern opens ‘Street Art‘,  a group exhibition which is the first commission to use the building’s iconic river facade as a canvas, and the first major public museum display of street art in London.

The six participating artists are: Blu from Bologna, Italy; the artist collective Faile from New York, USA; JR from Paris, France; Nunca and Os Gemeos, both from Sao Paulo, Brazil and Sixeart from Barcelona, Spain.

Be sure to read the Guardian’s article ‘How the Tate got streetwise‘ which explains the street art phenomenon and why it’s now centered in Britain, despite it’s American origins.

Taken from St Pauls steps (photo: Romanywg)

Check out Romanywg’s  set of pics on flickr of the work in progress.

photos via flickr: Mike S2 and Romanywg
via: The World’s Best Ever