Product Description

"In the beginning, there was the Word. On the streets and in the yards, the word was the Name. And the name was everything. It was persona and place, form and content, truth and fiction. The name was an act of self-invention, a pure visual manifestation, through alter ego, alias, and nom de plume, of personal expressions in the public realm. The name was a line and the line begat the Mark. Then, in the great style wars toward the end of the second millennium, medium, meaning, and message were joined in a golden era where the name became the source and signifier of Style. And when the name became wild style, the word was Dondi."

-- from the Foreword

The dominance of the graffiti aesthetic in contemporary culture is undeniable. But how did an art form spawned in the train yards of 1970s New York achieve the ubiquity it now enjoys at every level of the mass-media landscape? There are many answers to the question, but one major factor is indisputable: Dondi White.

Coming of age in hardscrabble East New York in the early 1970s, Dondi White unknowingly began the process of introducing a whole new artistic dialect into the cacophony of the American art scene. His train pieces painted from roughly 1977 to 1982 stand as some of the most influential works ever committed to Transit Authority steel. Writing with legendary partners such as DURO, NOC 167, KID 56, KEL 139, and FUZZ ONE, Dondi created some of graffiti art's most enduring iconography. His pieces just don't stop -- and neither do the aliases. From the badass Mr. Whites to the cocky, self-satisfied Busses, from the nasty Pres to the perfect, vicious Rolls, Dondi straight killed it, again and again. Works like Children of the Grave Part 2 and Mr White + Bev remain benchmark pieces for graffiti aficionados the world over.

In the 1980s, partially through his collaborations with noted photographers Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, Dondi White's work entered the rarefied world of fine art. In making the transition from subway car to canvas, Dondi retained his unfaltering sense of letter form and balance, and his paintings remain a testament to the clarity of his aesthetic. Dondi's canvases were subsequently shown in galleries from New York to Amsterdam to Tokyo and beyond, influencing a new generation of young artists and introducing an indigenous American art form to the rest of the world.

Dondi White: Style Master General presents the life and work of a seminal -- yet heretofore overlooked -- American artist whose work has resonated on every level of our popular culture. Filled with rare photographs, original sketches, unpublished interview materials, and testimony from some of Dondi's closest cohorts, here, finally, is the full story. At the time of his death in 1998, Dondi had seen the majority of his work destroyed -- scraped off, painted over, or chemically removed from the steel upon which it thrived. Within these pages, however, it still speaks volumes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157534 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-01
• Released on: 2001-11-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Nearly 20 years after the art world began to consider graffiti a contender, one of its most acclaimed progenitors from the '70s and '80s is honored in a retrospective called DONDI Style Master General: The Life and Art of Dondi White by Andrew Witten and Michael White. Raised in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood, White was part of an active culture of graffiti "writers": "Dondi and his generation perfected the energetic, edgy, probing styles of their predecessors, learning control, fitting the painting to the car/canvas." Gifted with vision, purpose and talent, White also stood out for crossing boundaries within graffiti-artist and gang culture. Photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant made his work visible to the art world and had a hand in transforming subway-art culture in the process. Color photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Andrew Witten--aka Zephyr--has been referred to by the New York Times as "the elder statesman of New York graffiti." He was an integral of the graffiti art movement of the early 80s as a member of the Fun Gallery, whose artists also included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and Asia, and a number of his paintings reside in the permanent collections of the Boymans and Groninger museums, among others. He currently runs his own firm, Zephyr Designs, here in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Dondi
Rest in peace Dondi, your art will never die! If you liked Subway Art and Spraycan Art then grab yourself of a copy of this absolute gem as Dondi was truly up there with the likes of Seen etc and my favorite Dondi piece still has to be the children of the grave. Buy this as in a few years when it's harder to get your gonna regret it and probably pay a lot of dollar.

old skool dope
i grew up in brooklyn in the 70s and was witness to much of what is shown in this book. there are dozens of train photos from all phases of dondis subway days which i spent much time looking at. what really fascinates me though are the hidden things in these photos. anybody pick up on the iz the wiz throwups in the top photo of page 26. how about the le throwup in the top photo of page 57 or the blade tags inside the windows of the photo on pages 71/72? ever wonder what are those pieces faded beneath so much of dondis work? the birth of graffiti book out recently showed the very beginnings of the graff movement in nyc, but there seems to be a lack of photo/written history of the stuff from that time till the late seventies. i wonder how many people know how cool it is to just sit, relax and look at something like this that you've admired for so long without having to run down a train platform and try and commit to memory the amazing blur that just went by. the interview with dondi was very insightful and actually gave me a renewed appreciation for his work. the book itself is medium sized, hardcover and the paper is of excellent quality. i would love to see more books like this on other just as prominent writers. blade, lee, seen etc.

the bomb
this is one great book,very well detailed from dondis underground train bombing days plus his days when he was hitting up art gallerys and it even tells you about dondi b4 he was even a writer.plenty of great pics plus lots of top reading too.one of the better graff books.