So, the artists insisted on the Getty Black Book’s real title: They named it LA Liber Amicorum, for it had transformed rival crews into an LA Book of Friends.ġ0 years later Getty published a mini-me trade version: LA Graffiti Black Book (Los Angeles, Getty Publications: 2022) with an intro. A kindred object to a street writer’s black book. They had been struck by a 17th-century liber amicorum (“book of friends”), a genre of manuscript originally sold as bound blank leaves, passed from hand to hand to be filled with signatures, poetry, mottoes, and coats of arms-artistic symbols of social identity. In 2012 The 151 responded by donating 143 works on paper-some were collaborative-bound into a unique black-leather 4 x 1 foot volume (when opened), called Getty Graffiti Black Book. The artists, however, wanted another title. 151 of Los Angeles’s most renowned graffiti and tattoo artists pored through Renaissance writing manuals, emblem books, and catalogues of horse-brands, volumes on perspective and sacred geometry, virtuoso calligraphic penwork (both European and Islamic) and a 1751 book from Naples on Peruvian Quipu ‘knot-language.’ There were others.

Through the Sweeney’s Brafman invited art-crews from all over the city to GRI to view and page through books and manuscripts that somehow resonated with his nights in the Brooklyn yards. They were directed to Brafman, whose career stemmed from his favorite high school pastime: tagging D-trains with Egyptian hieroglyphs while they slept in the Brooklyn Rail Yards. In 2011 Art collectors Ed and Brandy Sweeney wanted to amass and donate to Getty Research Institute ( GRI) a master-piece book, a black book of graffiti and tattoo art that represented crews throughout LA.

Alphabet Soup ll Group Show Artists Talk with David Brafman and Steve GrodyĬonversation with Los Angeles leading artists, Chaz Bojorquez, David “Big Sleeps” Cavazos, Cryptik, Alex “Defer” Kizu, Jose “Prime” Reza, and moderated by David Brafmanĭavid Brafman has been the Getty’s rare books curator since 2002.

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