Monumental Graffiti

What graffiti says about contemporary society, and why it demands our urgent attention as a form of civic expression.

What is graffiti—vandalism, ornament, art? What if, rather than any of those things, we thought of graffiti as a monument? How would that change our understanding of graffiti, and, in turn, our understanding of monument? In Monumental Graffiti, curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. He applies monument as a lens to understand graffiti and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, challenging us to consider what the appropriate monument for our contemporary world could be.

Monumental Graffiti unpacks today’s iconoclastic moment, showing us why graffiti demands our urgent attention as a form of expression that challenges power structures by questioning whose voices are included in—and whose are excluded from—public space. Written from twenty years of embedded research on graffiti, the book includes works from graffiti writers such as 10Foot, Delta, Egs, Honet, Mosa, Petro, Revok, and Wombat, alongside those of artists such as Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Deller, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Klara Liden, Gordon Matta-Clark, William Pope.L, Cy Twombly, and many more.

Richly illustrated, this study of graffiti as monument and monument as graffiti is as fascinating as it is ethnographically expansive.Introduction: Monumental Graffiti
Part I: Form
1. Site
2. Style
3. Time
Part II: Message
4. Speech
5. Action
6. Participation
Part III: Trace
7. Publicity and Privacy
8. Visibility and Invisibility
9. Spectacularity and Temporality
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography“…thinking about the present as a moment when many are needing to urgently reimagine the aesthetics of resistance, dissensus, alterity, and otherness, Monumental Graffiti is required reading.”
—Scratching the Surface

“Schacter’s exuberant academic book traces the line of graffiti, using ‘public space’ as the frame (literally), balancing the individual acts of graffiti writers and other public-space remodelers against the monuments and official totems of colonization that tag spaces you might otherwise think belonged to the people.”
—4columns

“[Monumental Graffiti], with numerous full-color photographs of examples, from the crude and quick-drawn tag to the massive mural-esque installations, is academic in its examination, and accessible, too, in the way it considers not just what graffiti is and does, but how that contrasts with what the monument is and does, the way it enforces and bolsters institutions and institutional heritage.”
—The Boston Globe

“A vivid and ambitious new book.”
—Critical Inquiry“You can ride spray paint like a broomstick: around the world, down train tunnels, up to the rooftops, different mindsets, alien social groups—places where you find your sense of self. Devotees leave a web of marks that, after a few decades, form a monument to an alternative existence. Rafael’s book is proper; it’s refreshing to be understood.”
—10Foot, graffiti artist
 
“Rafael Schacter offers an original and insightful approach to urban graffiti through the conceptual lens of monumentality. Exploring the semantic space of monumental graffiti poses a set of unique challenges, which the author engages brilliantly.”
—Andrea Mubi Brighenti, University of Trento; author of Elias Canetti and Social TheoryRafael Schacter is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University College London and head of the Material, Visual, and Digital Culture subsection. He is the author of Street to Studio, Ornament and Order, and the award-winning World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti. Schacter has curated exhibitions at London’s Tate Modern, Somerset House, and many other galleries.