[USED] Soho Walls: Beyond Graffiti (1990)

Wall art is almost entirely an ephemeral art. It may last for a week or a month, during which other artists will react to it. paint over it, alter it. Or it may last only a few hours and then be gone forever.

David Robinson, who calls himself a photographer of street life, has spent a number of years intensively touring the area in lower New York called SoHo. Here, in a neighbourhood which transformed itself during the 1960s from a dying centre of small manufacturers into a thriving hub of the art world, is where wall art flourished - in a spirit or protest, of self-assertion, and of self-expression. It was undeniably a spin-off from the graffiti movement, though it differs from spraycan art in several respects Both movements, however, were largely anonymous, and both were unmistakable examples of the counter-culture.
Robinson makes the ephemeral permanent in his stunning photographs, which capture all the brilliance of colour, the wit and the social and aesthetic commentary inherent in SoHo wall art. In his informative introduction, he not only explains his personal attraction and commitment to wall art, but also traces its origins and development. The book is thus a gallery and a record of a form of contemporary art which may emerge and vanish in mysterious ways but deserves this unexpected and splendid vorm or preservation.