Futura Deluxe Edition

Book excerpt: This is a special deluxe edition of the trade edition--available in a quantity of 248 units. Each book is housed in a fabric clamshell slipcase that's been hand embellished--individually--by the artist; each special deluxe edition is entirely unique. Every slipcase features a spraypainted exterior, featuring a masking technique that features the artist's signature, in an alternative and complementary design to the monograph's normal cover. The custom clamshell will be available in one of 9 colors; buyers will be sent a color to them at random, and as a surprise. (Photos of the clamshells by ShiLei Wang.) Having forged his graphic style painting subways in New York in the late 1970s, Futura was among the first graffiti artists to be shown in contemporary galleries in the early 1980s, where his paintings shared space with works by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf. As the commercialization of street culture in the 1990s inspired collaborations with fashion and lifestyle brands, Futura's work moved toward a more refined expression of his abstract graffiti style. Commissions from era-defining brands such as A Bathing Ape, Stüssy, Supreme, and Mo' Wax saw his artwork canonized as an elemental component of the street aesthetic. Collected here, among never-before-published reproductions of earlier paintings and drawings, is an archive of personal photography and ephemera that reveals how integral Futura has been to the evolution of street art and culture. Guided through more than forty years of work, and with interviews with key players in Futura's career, this is at once a definitive monograph of a legend of contemporary art and an indispensable chapter in the history of graffiti.