Getty | L.A. Graffiti Black Book: Artists in Conversation

In celebration of the publication of L.A. Graffiti Black Book, the Getty Research Institute will host a conversation with five of the contributing artists to discuss the volume’s impact on their individual and communal art practices. The original Getty Black Book, which collects the work of over 150 of Los Angeles’s leading graffiti and tattoo artists, drew inspiration from many rare books in the GRI’s collection, in particular a seventeenth-century liber amicorum (“book of friends”), in which the owner’s acquaintances each contributed an illustration in the spirit of an autograph book. These graffiti artists saw a resonance in the black sketch books that they carry and invite other artists to “hit” with original work, and named the Getty Black Book L.A. Liber Amicorum because it bound rival crews into a book of friends. This published version makes the original accessible to a world-wide audience for the first time.